It all begins with an idea. We will brainstorm topics and points of view for the common app essay and all the supplementals. I use my skills as a journalist to interview students to help them find interesting stories to tell, just as I have interviewed profile subjects for over 20 years.

Every good story has a beginning, middle, and end with hooks that continue to draw the reader in. Creating an outline helps to organize the flow and identify important anecdotes to weave throughout your writing.

The way you tell a story makes all the difference. There are ways to make a statement and keep in mind, strategies for each school sometimes differ. I will also help strategize what the student should feature for each school and also which essays can be re-used or slightly altered to answer many prompts at different schools. We will formulate goals and execute them through writing.

The final step in all writing is to proofread the work and also refer back to the original outline to ensure the full story is being told. And, don’t forget some very important basic principles: word count, spelling, grammar, and punctuation.