• So many qualified kids get rejected from their ideal school. Why?

Get to Yes

The college essay is a unique type of essay.
It is not a research paper, and it is not a creative writing assignment. It's unlike anything most high school students have ever had to write.

Although the essay must be grammatically flawless, this is not a writing exercise for an English class. Having a well-written essay isn't enough. The college essay is a chance to breathe life into the application and distance your child from others with similar grades and test scores.

Unfortunately, the reality is many students get rejected from colleges even though the students had qualifying grades and test scores. Where they fail is in under-selling themselves because they were never taught this writing style in school. As such, they fail to tell their story in a concise and compelling way such that the college admissions team is moved to say Yes.

I will help your child's essay stand out.
My experience in advertising and marketing, combined with my knowledge about colleges, universities and the application process, will ensure all of your child's essays “sell” your child to the college and stand out from the tens of thousands of essays from similarly talented kids.

While every student has a unique story to tell, there are similarities in how best to tell this unique story. The college essay is not the narrative, analytical, expository or augmentative writing styles normally taught in school. The college essay is a style unto itself that draws aspects from these styles and adds a healthy measure of persuasion enabling the application reviewer to confidently envision your child in the next Freshman class.

Unfortunately, this is not a skill your child can afford to learn by trial and error. There is one chance to make sure your child rises above all other applicants. Please let me help you and your child benefit from my years of experience as you only get one chance to get this right.

Here's a little more specific insight into my process…
Regardless of the breadth of our working together, it always starts with my getting to know your child. This is a journey. I find it best if we agree upfront on how we wish to move forward.

I am happy for parents, high school counselors or anyone to be involved in this process. Together, we will make your child's story stand out and appeal to the college admission offices. Or, if you wish, leave it to your child and me. Sometimes, it adds undue stress to you and your child if we work collaboratively all the time. I will follow your lead on how you wish our team to work together. That said, while this is your child's story to tell, learning insights from you or others may help us uncover a gem that forms an important aspect of your child's essays. We can have this session together with your child or at a time that is convenient for you.

Below are the key steps to the process we will follow and what I need from your child.

Discovery

I want to hear stories - brag a little!
I want to know the colleges being targeted - and why. I want to learn a ‘resume’ of activities, accomplishments, awards and interesting experiences (whether good, bad or downright unfortunate). Tell me about something from childhood that stuck with you and why. If you know what you want to do after college, let me know this, too. And, tell me what led you to this aspiration and what you've done to convince yourself of this. Let's talk about favorite classes, best vacations, hobbies and sports interests and memories that make you smile or make you want to cry.

This is not a time to be humble, embarrassed or otherwise hold back on me. I am looking for gems and a “thread” onto which to build the story of you. We need to boil your story down to just a few hundred words, but the more we have at the start, the better the story at the end.

Remember, I am a market research expert. Part of my job is asking the right questions and uncovering more insights. In this initial conversation, I will draw out aspects of a student's life that might be crafted into the perfect personal essay. Working together, we will identify nuggets the student might not have realized could be crafted into a superb essay.

Topic Assessment

Crafting and Selecting ‘Story’ Options
I will let you know a few threads that I believe to be potential essay builders, and I'll want to know your thoughts, too. We will agree on a few to advance to a rough outline to test the robustness of the central idea around which you will ultimately write the essay.

This rough outline is the first step to structuring the key components of what will become the essay. This is a pretty easy process and we usually do it together over the phone, and I will send you my notes afterwards for your review and enhancement. I like to ‘sleep’ on this for a few days and ask you to do the same - perhaps even share them with close family, teachers or others who might add a fresh idea to the story based on how well they know you. After all, we are working to make you shine and stand out from the crowd. So, let's get help and ideas from those who know you best.

We will build an Essay Organizer at this stage. A place to keep our ideas and rough outlines that we will explore - either as the core personal essay or for use in supplemental essays.

Writing

For this stage, just write.
Don't worry about the word count, and don't worry about fine tuning. Just focus on telling your story. We will be editing soon enough.

Depending on your schedule, we will agree on how to proceed with the lead thread. Some are happy to devote several hours in a row to write from beginning to end. Some prefer to write a section, have a conversation about it and together agree on how to tackle the next section.

Editing

In my experience, this is the hard part.
You have a first draft and now it's time to make it shine. It is common to fall in love with your first draft and maybe think it is good enough or even great. Generally, it is not. Stopping here and rushing to submit is a formula for failure. Sorry to be so blunt. Don't stop here. Now we make sure every word, every phrase and every sentence is working hard for you. We work to make sure your words create visual images for the reader. We fine tune the introduction so that it intrigues and compels the reader to continue with interest. We work to make sure the closing sentences summarize something great and unique about your life experience - something that the college essay reader wants in the next freshmen class.

By the way, I will make sure your grammar and sentence structures are flawless. I will make sure your writing style and tone of voice are consistent and strong. If you are as proud of the essay as I know you will be, once we reach this point in the process, we should start talking about those supplemental essays.

Let's get started

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