College & Graduate School Applications

• Common App

• Personal statements

• Supplemental essays

• Statements of purpose

• Short-answer responses

• Scholarship essays

• Academic writing samples

Application writing presents an unusual challenge: a writer must represent one’s life, intellectual trajectory, or a set of ambitions within a highly constrained format without sounding generic.  With the advent of AI, applicants now face the further challenge of needing to sound “unlike” an AI chatbot.

I help applicants discover material that is genuinely theirs and shape it into writing that is focused, memorable, and appropriate to its audience and purpose. We might begin before a single word has been drafted—with conversation, planning, and brainstorming, sometimes in real time—or with an existing essay that needs a more compelling structure, adjustment of focus, negotiation of examples and transitions, or more individual voice.

For graduate, law, medical, and other professional-school applicants, I work especially closely on articulating intellectual interests, professional motivations, prior experience, and the reasons a particular program represents a meaningful next step. The objective is to help applicants recognize what is distinctive in their own experience and communicate it with precision and conviction. My previous clients have gone on to competitive colleges and graduate, law, and medical programs.