
College application & Essay mentorship
May we tell you a secret?
After you choose your schools and define your major, every other aspect of the college application process is writing. Furthermore, except for the admission interview, the essays an applicant writes are a school’s only way to garner personal insights about the student; all other submitted materials fall to numerics and the opinions of others.
Essays are what make a student shine.
We are not college counselors but writing specialists working within the college academic system. While a college counselor’s skills lie in major refinement and the curation of a student’s school list, students choose to work with us because writing is our expertise.
College readiness starts now.
Our mentorship programs offer comprehensive guidance and individualized support beginning in a student’s freshman, sophomore, or junior year. Our approach prioritizes the nourishment of the whole person and the development of both critical thinking skills and the creative voice, ensuring students are well-prepared not only for the demands of college applications, but also for the future that awaits them.
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Our flagship program.
The Full-Service Application Strategy is a 1:1, fully tailored college mentorship program designed to encourage a trusting rapport between the student and the essay specialist—one rooted in the shared goal of acceptance to elite universities and programs in the U.S. and across the world.
Students engaged in the Full-Service Application Strategy are guided step-by-step through the entire application process. However, reflective of each student’s individuality and corresponding individualized needs, the Strategy does not function as a fixed-rate “package” in the way other college counseling consultants understand the term. All work is done on an hourly basis in order to afford families the most choice and students the most autonomy in their application process. We do not set any limits on the number of schools or essays or the time spent. Students are invited and encouraged to apply to as many schools as they desire. We never want a student to apply to a school where they cannot genuinely envision themselves thriving for four years.
Many families choose to secure their spot for our Full-Service College Application Strategy in their student’s freshman or sophomore year. Not only does this give families peace of mind, but it allows us to establish connections with students earlier so that we can support them and their writing to the best of our abilities before the college process looms.
For those students who join us in their freshman or sophomore year, we meet at several critical junctures to determine academic and extracurricular objectives and track the overall development of each students’ college applicant profile. Between these meetings, focus is placed on academic improvement, test prep, extracurricular advising, the development of critical thinking skills, and the nurturance of both analytical and creative writing skills. Programs are entirely customizable to an individual student’s needs. Students are very well prepared when the college application process begins in full force at the beginning of junior spring.
We work with students on seven types of writing:
The Personal Statements
The Supplemental Essays
Honors Program Essays & Scholarship Essays
Teacher Recommendation Requests and Materials
The Academic Résumé
The Activities Pages
Professional Business Writing
The Full-Service Application Strategy also includes assistance with:
Building a school list according to your unique criteria
Defining and refining your major(s)/minor(s)
Completing the Common Application and other state-specific or individual institutional applications
Planning high school courses
Brainstorming and executing passion projects
Devising holistic summer engagement
Training for admission interviews
Curating artistic portfolios for admission to film, art, theatre, music, writing, or dance programs
We work with a handful of students in the Full-Service Application Strategy each year. Our clients come to us for guidance from all over the world.
To inquire about availability for the 2025-2026 application season, please complete the contact form below.
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We also offer support to students who are not engaged with the Full-Service Application Strategy.
With the Proofreading Application Strategy, we offer detailed editorial feedback to students on their drafts, with a focus on the Common Application Personal Essay and the supplementals. Feedback consists of line edits, developmental suggestions, and an analysis of the overall effectiveness of the essay from a literary and an admissions perspective.
After an initial email exchange, students are invited to forward their essays as Google Docs. Edits and marginal comments will be returned in a timely manner, and we remain accessible to students for the duration of the application process if they have additional drafts. We do not limit the number of drafts or revision requests.
This service is not conducted face-to-face and does not involve the Interview; it therefore does not afford the same level of personal connection, but the student is assured of sending polished application materials to schools.
If a student who engages the Proofreading Application Strategy ends up requiring further attention, they are welcome to switch to the Full-Service Application Strategy for the remainder of the application process (assuming there is availability remaining in our schedule).
As with the Full-Service Application Strategy, the Proofreading option is also available to those students applying to graduate school (including law, medical, and business), private high school, academic summer programs, internships, and study away programs.
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We also offer personalized guidance with the following applications:
Graduate school applications (business, law, medical, etc.)
Transfer applications
Private high school applications
Study abroad applications
Summer program and internship application
For any of these applications, a student may engage the Full-Service or Proofreading Application Strategy.
We’ve helped students gain admission to colleges, universities, and graduate programs including:
American University
Barnard College
Bates College
Boston College
Bowdoin College
Brown University
Bryn Mawr College
Cal Tech
Carleton College
Carnegie Mellon University
Case Western Reserve University
Chapman University
Colgate University
Colorado School of Mines
Columbia University
Connecticut College
Cornell University
Dartmouth University
Digipen
Drexel University
Emory University
Fordham University
Georgetown University
Hamilton College
Harvard University
Harvey Mudd College
Imperial College London - School of Medicine
Johns Hopkins University
King’s College London - School of Medicine
Loyola Marymount University
Middlebury College
New York University
Northeastern University
Northwestern University
Norwich University
Oberlin College
Occidental College
Pepperdine University
Pomona College
Purdue University
Reed College
Rice University
Saint Andrews University
Santa Clara University
Sarah Lawrence College
Scripps College
Skidmore College
Smith College
Stanford University
Swarthmore College
Texas A&M
The New School
Tufts University
Tulane University
UC Berkeley
UCLA
UT - Austin
Union College
University of Chicago
University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign
University of Michigan
University of Notre Dame
University of Pennsylvania
University of Southern California
University of Virginia
University of Washington
Vanderbilt University
Wellesley College
Wesleyan University
Whitman College
