College & Graduate School Applications

Academic Writing Support

International & ESL Writers

Editing & Refinement

Tailored Writing Support

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 on the one hand or too different from how they would ordinarily write on the other.  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 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.

I coach students on Common App and other personal statements, supplemental essays, statements of purpose, short-answer responses, scholarship essays, and academic writing samples, and can also help applicants think strategically about how multiple pieces within an application complement one another rather than repeat the same story.

For graduate, law, medical, and other professional-school applicants, I can 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 students and clients have gone on to competitive colleges and graduate, law, and medical programs.

In academic writing, it is often the case that a student may not know what a prompt is really asking, how to turn an interest into a workable question, how to select and use evidence, how to articulate one’s interpretation of a source, or how to make several different ideas cohere as a single argument. I offer individualized support across the entire academic writing process, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. 

I can provide assistance with a wide range of tasks including high-school essays and capstone projects to college research papers, literature reviews, senior theses, and more advanced humanities writing. My background in philosophy and related fields in the humanities also allows me to engage in both subject-matter tutoring and writing instruction: sometimes the path to a better paper begins by understanding a text, problem, or theory more deeply.

I have worked with international and multilingual writers for more than twenty years. My approach is patient, explanatory, and individualized. We can work on grammar, syntax, idiom, punctuation, vocabulary, and sentence structure, but also on the less visible conventions that often make English-language writing difficult: how directly to state a claim, how individual paragraphs function successfully within a larger text, how much contextual information a reader needs to understand a writer’s argument, or how stylistic and organizational expectations change among disciplines and professional settings.

I can provide support with coursework, research papers, application materials, professional correspondence, presentations and written statements, or sustained coaching for someone who wants greater confidence and flexibility in written English.

For writers who already have substantial material on the page, I offer editing at several levels—from developmental consultation on the argument and structure of a piece to detailed attention to paragraphs, sentences, diction, grammar, style, and mechanics. A project may need large-scale rethinking, or a strong draft may simply need tightening, clarification, smoother transitions, greater stylistic consistency, or careful line editing before submission. I tailor the level of work to the writer and the project, and, where appropriate, explain significant edits so that the process remains collaborative rather than one-sided.

Not every writing problem fits neatly into a category. I can tailor my coaching for unusual assignments, independent projects, long-term writing goals, and writers who want an ongoing intellectual interlocutor rather than a conventional tutor or editor. I can meet regularly with individuals who want to become stronger readers and writers, and can help people work patiently through philosophy, literature, history, or religious texts before developing an essay. I can help turn a large and intimidating project into manageable problems, diagnose recurring difficulties in a writer’s process, help people develop their writing voice for a public audience, or talk through an idea before there is yet a draft to edit.