College Essays

Seniors and Graduate Students

Getting into college is becoming increasingly harder, especially into a selective one. A worthy investment in the college application process is working with a tutor who has experience with college essays and knows the elements that admission officers are looking for in top-notch essays. Writing a college essay is nothing like writing a theme paper for English! It takes time, craft, skill, and several drafts to write an essay that will impress a college admissions officer who has to read hundreds, even thousands, of college essays. How will yours stand out from the other 10,000 or more (!) essays being submitted by your cohort?

“Thomas was so excited after your session yesterday. I’m proud of his work. Your “magic” is invaluable. THANK YOU!” – Jacki (parent)

Within two sessions with Rosemary I went from having no idea what I was going to write about to having my strongest essay I've written. The help I received took my essay from average to extraordinary. Thank you so much for your help!
– Lars (student)

Process

Pre-Writing: Students fill-out a college grid and brainstorm sheet and print-off all essay prompts prior to meeting with an English essay tutor for the first time. During the first session, the tutor helps students pick appropriate topics for their essays, combine as many essays as possible based on prompts, read a short article on the elements of writing the college essay, and also read high quality sample essays.

Writing/Editing: For session two, students write a first draft for their main essay for the Common Application (CA) or for their #1 college if that college is not on the CA. During the second session, the tutor provides feedback, gives advice, and helps with editing. Students continue to write during this session. This process continues face-to-face until the student is done with all essays or has a good enough grasp of what to do to complete all other essays on his own. At some point, most kids do not need face-to-face sessions and can finish writing and sending their drafts via google-docs or word docs to the tutor to edit on-line.

Most kids need 3 face-to-face sessions.