Description

This package is for students who want hands-on help developing their Common App personal statement and one supplemental essay, rather than simply having a finished draft reviewed at the end. We will start with a conversation about you: what you have done, what matters to you, what you are hoping to communicate through your application, and which parts of your story are actually worth building an essay around. Often, the hardest part of the personal statement is not the writing itself but figuring out what you genuinely want an admissions officer to understand about you after reading it. From there, I will work with you on your Common App essay from the early brainstorming stage through to a final draft. We will think about structure, voice, what to include and leave out, and whether the essay is actually revealing something meaningful about you rather than simply sounding polished. We will also work through one supplemental essay together. That means looking carefully at what the school is really asking, deciding which part of your background or interests gives us the strongest answer, and making sure the supplemental adds something new to your application rather than repeating the personal statement. Throughout the process, you will receive detailed edits and feedback on your drafts, and we will talk through the reasoning behind the bigger changes. I will also keep an eye on the application as a whole: the essays should work together with your activities, academic interests, and wider profile to give the admissions reader a coherent sense of who you are. For some background on me, I studied at Princeton and Harvard Law School and am now completing my doctorate at Oxford as a Marshall Scholar. I have also worked professionally in admissions consulting and have spent years helping students think through both the strategy and writing behind highly selective applications. The goal is not for me to write an essay that sounds impressive on your behalf. It is to help you work out what is most interesting and distinctive about your own story, and then make sure the writing actually communicates it.