Four ways to work together.

The part that actually changes an essay is the conversation where a student defends what they wrote, hears where it lost me, and figures out loud what they were really trying to say. So every round of notes is followed by a session, not an email and a hope.

One essay, taken seriously.

For the student who has a draft and can tell it isn't landing, or who has one supplemental essay that's fighting them.

What's included

• A close read of the current draft against the actual prompt
• Written line notes in the document, plus a top-level note on structure, voice, and what the essay is really about
• A session to talk through the notes and plan the rewrite
• A second read of the revised draft with follow-up notes, and a second session to work through those

What it's good for

Common App personal statements, single supplemental essays, "Why this school" essays, scholarship essays, and transfer statements.

Both rounds are the same shape: written notes on the draft, then a conversation about them. No checklists, and nothing that ends with me emailing a document and leaving a student to guess.

Book a free 20-minute intro call to find the right fit.

Everything, start to finish, in the right order.

For families who want one person handling the whole writing side of the application.

What's included

• A planning session that maps every essay on the school list, with deadlines and a build order
• Brainstorming and story work before any drafting starts
• The Common App personal statement, taken through the full arc from first draft to final
• All four UC Personal Insight Questions, if UCs are on the list
• Supplemental essays for each school, including the short "why us" and activity responses that students tend to leave for the last night
• Written notes on every draft, each followed by a session. We talk after every round, not just at the start and the end
• A final pass across the whole set before submission, so the application reads as one person

What it's good for

Seniors with a long or varied school list, students who work better with structure and a calendar, and families who would like to stop being the deadline police.

Every draft comes back with written notes, and the schedule tightens around Early Decision and Early Action dates. Most ED and EA deadlines fall on Nov 1 or Nov 15, so we build the schedule around those first and check each school's own dates.

Book a free 20-minute intro call to find the right fit.

All four Personal Insight Questions, built as a set.

The University of California asks applicants to answer four short questions, each capped at 350 words. Students almost always approach them as four separate assignments, which is how you end up with four essays about the same two weeks of sophomore year.

What's included

• A brainstorming and selection session: which four of the eight prompts to answer, and what goes in each so the set covers real range
• Story work on each response so it centers on a specific moment instead of a summary
• Written notes on every draft, round by round, through final, with a session after each round to work through them
• Sessions scheduled around the student's workload, in person or by video
• A final read of all four together, to make sure they don't overlap and don't repeat

What it's good for

Seniors applying to any UC campus, and UC transfer applicants, who have a different set of requirements to work through.

UC application deadlines are usually in the fall, so check the UC admissions site for the current year's dates and we'll plan backward from there.

Book a free 20-minute intro call to find the right fit.

For the student who has nothing yet.

The most common reason a student hasn't started is not laziness. It's that they've decided their life isn't interesting, usually after reading a few essays online that made them feel worse.

What's included

• One session, roughly an hour, in person if that's workable, built around questions that are not "what's your greatest achievement"
• A written follow-up with three to five viable essay directions, what each one would be about, and the opening moment for each
• A recommendation on which one to write first and why

No commitment to anything after it. Some students take the list and go write on their own, which is a completely fine outcome.

What it's good for

Juniors getting an early start, seniors who are stuck at the blank page, and students who have written three drafts and hate all of them.

The written follow-up lands after the session, and it's yours to keep.

Book a free 20-minute intro call to find the right fit.

By senior fall, the essay is a reporting job. Whatever the student has actually done, thought about, and cared about is already on the page before they write a word. I can help them find it and tell it well, but I can't go back and give them two more years of it.

That's what this is. Start in tenth or eleventh grade and the plan itself becomes the story: a student who spends two years going deeper into a few real things instead of wider into a dozen safe ones ends up with something to say, and with an application where the essay, the activities and the transcript are all describing the same person.

This is not about manufacturing a narrative for admissions officers. Anyone can smell that, and readers who do this for a living can smell it fastest. It's the opposite. It's making sure a kid spends the two years before their application on things they actually care about, which is a better way to spend tenth and eleventh grade whether or not it helps them get in.

Most families come to me in the fall of senior year, when the essay is due and the list is already fixed. The students who have the easiest senior fall are the ones who started two years earlier, not because they did more, but because what they did added up to something.

This is the long version: I work with a student from tenth or eleventh grade through the day they submit.

Pricing depends on the start year and the scope.

A student starting in tenth grade is a different engagement from one starting in the spring of eleventh, so I quote it after we talk rather than guessing at it on a web page.

Interview Prep

Mock interviews, by the session.

Available on its own or alongside any of the packages above.

Some schools interview, some alumni networks interview, and most students have never been asked to talk about themselves for thirty minutes by a stranger who is evaluating them. It is a learnable skill and it is not the same skill as writing.

What a session is

• A real mock interview, run the way an actual alumni interview runs, not a list of practice questions
• Immediate feedback afterward on what landed, what rambled, and what a stranger would remember an hour later
• Written notes to work from before the real thing

I spent more than a decade interviewing applicants for Penn. I am not an admissions officer and I never read a file, but I sat across from hundreds of seventeen-year-olds and found out which ones I still remembered a week later. That is the whole basis of this.

This one is sold by the session rather than as a package, because most students need one and a few need two.

Book a free 20-minute intro call to find the right fit.