How Does College Essay Coaching Work?
The process of applying for college so often feels uniquely impersonal – application forms are rote, recommendations seem almost formulaic, and your standardized test scores and GPA are literally numbers. The sheer amount of data that students (and admissions officers) pore through is intimidating!
The college essay provides everyone with a much-needed break from statistics. And the cliché is true: it’s your opportunity to show admissions officers that you are “more than a number.” Particularly if Covid-19 has affected the amount of data you’re able to provide to the schools (as many students were unable to sit for SAT or ACT tests last year), the college essay is one of the most important – and undervalued – factors in the admissions process.
As such, college essay coaching has become ubiquitous, for good reason. We all know that college admissions have become increasingly competitive. Having a team of seasoned professionals (every coach on our team has guided numerous students through the admissions process) on your side is never a bad thing. So, what does a typical college essay coaching engagement look like?
The College List: I always recommend that students arrive at their first session with a (nearly) complete list of the colleges they’re applying to, including Safety, Target (or “Match”), and Reach schools. The first step entails working through this list together, adding all essay prompts onto a single document categorized by school. Tutors may also suggest additional schools to consider, based on their experience supporting an individual student!
Brainstorming: Some schools will provide you with one essay all students must answer, whereas others will allow students to choose amongst multiple prompts. Common App, for instance, is used by over 900 colleges and universities and offers 7 prompts to select from. Settling on a prompt can be daunting! Enter random brainstorming. My favorite brainstorming activity is to quickly answer a series of increasingly strange questions: What is a skill or talent you do not possess? What is something you’ve noticed about your hair – or the hair of others? What is something you misunderstood or mispronounced for a long time before being corrected? The answers to these questions will often help tease out an individual’s unique perspective on themselves and they world they occupy.
Drafts (1, 2, 3, ad infinitum…): The first draft is always the hardest, and requires both the most external support and the most independent contributions. After a student has selected a topic, I advise free writing, a nauseating affair that involves throwing all the words floating around in your head onto paper without considerations of grammar, style, or structure. This is typically where a tutor is able to discern a student’s voice – or how their essay needs to be written in order to sound authentic. Voice is intangible, hard to pinpoint, and even harder to effectively consolidate into a story that a reader might empathize with.
Editing: This is my favorite part of the writing process, and typically my students’ favorite part as well. It’s where the essay really begins to come together, transmogrify into something new that the student, parents, and tutor can be truly proud of. The editing process involves mutual revision, deep reflection, and a meticulous eye for errors or stray words.
College essay coaching is a symbiotic relationship between coach and student that nurtures the student’s creativity and distills their authentic voice through multiple drafts to forge with a single, cohesive narrative. For more information on our college essay coaching program, don’t hesitate to reach out. Our team of experienced tutors would be happy to guide you through the writing process.
