For more than 15 years, we have helped dozens of students get into top-tier colleges and universities.

As you and your family are well aware, the process of getting into academic institutions has become intensely competitive. There are pieces of your academic profile – your GPA, standardized test scores, extracurricular activities, recommendation letters, and more – that are key to your candidacy. But too often, students ignore the essay component of their applications, believing that the rest of their apps will be enough to make an impression on admissions committees. The truth is, with admissions rates declining by the year, the personal statement is a powerful tool for distinguishing yourself from other candidates who might otherwise look identical to you on paper. That’s what we focus on: making sure your personal essays are as strong as possible, showcasing a unique and intriguing student that the schools will feel they need to admit.

We can help you brainstorm and create the most authentic persuasive essay(s) targeted at your specific candidate schools. Our method is to make strong suggestions regarding content and substance, as well as tone and nuance. We probe and we edit, but we do not write the essays ourselves. We work together with you to revise and refine each essay until the final draft you submit is an interesting, clear, and genuine piece that reveals to the admissions committee(s) exactly who you are.

For our initial meeting, we meet with you (and your family when appropriate) for 60 minutes. We typically meet via video chat given that some of us are now based in the Bay Area while others are in Los Angeles and New York. During that initial meeting we try to get a sense of you as a student and admissions candidate, and give you a sense of what it would be like to work with us. We may also ask for and read samples of your writing, any preliminary drafts of essays, and resumes. From then on, if we decide to work together, we can communicate extensively online – both via weekly video chats and in-line edits in your essay documents. Students and members of our team have successfully brainstormed, drafted, then polished and edited essays from across oceans, continents, the Bay, as well as across town via email and instant messaging (at appointed times).

Admissions officers can tell from a mile away if an essay has been ghostwritten, so it is important that you find your own voice. Students who have gone through this process have told us that while they were intimidated, overwhelmed, anxious, and/or frustrated at the beginning, they came away with a better understanding of themselves (as both writers and people), a real sense of accomplishment, and confidence as they took the next steps in their academic careers.

Each personal statement is, by definition, unique. We do not have permission to use actual ones, but we do have testimonials that you can review.

We do not guarantee that the candidates we work with will get admitted to every school to which they apply. We do, however, believe that each candidate will have a chance to put their best foot forward with (an) elegant, articulate, and compelling essay(s) in their own voice that will make readers take notice.

We’re strong editors who, for more than 15 years, have helped dozens of students get into top-tier colleges and universities. These include: Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Brown, Penn, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell, Duke, Northwestern, University of Chicago, UCLA, Cal, UNC, Emory, University of Washington, Tufts, NYU, and many more.