College Essay Consulting

Turning a prepared student's story into one that actually lands.

How I work

Most college essays start from the wrong question: what will look impressive? The result tends to be generic: experiences described rather than conveyed, packaging that reads the same as everyone else's.

I start somewhere different. Before looking at a single sentence, I try to understand who the student actually is: what they've done, what they care about, where the real story already exists. Only then do I work on structure and direction: how to make that story land with a reader who has seen hundreds of applications that day.

This is less about editing and more about clarity. The student writes. I help them see what's already there.

Background

I hold a PhD in Developmental Psychology from Stanford, where I studied how children and adolescents develop language, reasoning, and social judgment. In other words, how people communicate who they are and what they mean.

During my time at Stanford I was involved in three selection processes:

• I served on the PhD admissions committee and participated in faculty hiring review in the Psychology department.
• I designed and ran the full admissions process for the CSLI undergraduate research internship program (700+ applicants, 12 placements, across 12 interdisciplinary labs) for four years. This included building the review structure, training reviewers, designing the scoring system, and facilitating the final decision meeting.

Over the past decade I've worked with students applying to undergraduate and graduate programs. A sample of where they've been admitted:

Who this is for

This tends to work best for students who:

• Have strong profiles but feel stuck on how to approach the essay
• Have a draft but aren't sure if the direction is right
• Are willing to do the thinking and the writing themselves

It's probably not a good fit if you're looking for someone to write or heavily rewrite the essay, or if you need full-cycle admissions support (school list, activities, timeline management).

How sessions work

I work in three to four focused sessions, typically over the course of a few weeks:

• First session: I read everything the student can share (draft, activity list, anything relevant) and we identify direction and what the essay needs to do.
• Middle sessions: structure, narrative arc, what's working and what isn't.
• Final session: line-level feedback on a near-complete draft.

After the first consultation, you'll leave with a clear read on where the essay stands and what it needs. From there, I'll let you know honestly whether I think continued work would make a meaningful difference.