So What is it That a College Application Essay Coach Does, Exactly?

Last year’s Varsity Blues scandal certainly did a number on my profession.  When some people hear “college essay tutor” or “ college application essay coach ,” they now think of some smarmy pseudo-educator earning millions to write some rich, underachieving kid’s personal statement.  Let me clear up two things before we go any further.  First, I don’t make millions.  Second, I don’t write kids’ essays.

So what do I do, as a college application essay coach?  

Well, to start, I get to know your kid.  I ask questions.  I listen.  I ask more questions.  I listen some more, but not with the ear of a mom or a priest.  Rather, I listen with the heart of a therapist and the eye of an artist-editor.  I listen for the nuggets of experience that can be shaped into a great personal statement.  How do I know which nuggets are “real” gold and which are “fool’s gold”?  Well, the same way you get to Carnegie Hall.  Practice.

Photo by @mimithian on Unsplash. All Crimson Coaching sessions are actually conducted online during the COVID pandemic.

My next job as a college application essay coach is to read ruthlessly and critique compassionately.  

When a kid pours his heart out onto the page, the first draft ain’t always pretty. While reading, I’m still looking for the real gold nuggets that can communicate to a college admissions officer the student’s lived experience. However, when I suggest what changes might need to be made to strengthen the essay’s core message, I do so in a way that doesn’t crush a sixteen-year-old and convinces them to keep trying.

 Maintaining a student’s motivation through the revision process is my last and perhaps most important role as a college application essay coach. 

As Amanda, one of my clients (and mom to twins with whom I worked last fall) wrote recently, “You help students achieve the good results that are lurking beneath the surface. You motivate them to achieve those results.”  As Nathaniel Hawthorne once wrote, “Easy reading is damn hard writing.”  Like any great college application essay coach, I inspire my students through the “damn hard” parts so that their personal statements and supplemental essays become easy – and convincing – reading to any admissions officer.

‘Til next week,

Dr. P.