It happens every year. Summer sneaks up on unsuspecting high school juniors and they realize, “oh no, I have to work on my college essays.” Between trips and summer jobs and every other little thing, high schoolers do nowadays, **blink**, and summer is over.
This is why we think helping students get on top of their college essays ASAP is such a big deal. The college admissions process includes a lot of writing. There is the Common App Essay. There are supplemental essays. For some, there are additional information essays. By the time a student is done writing, they can have easily written 5,000 words worth of essays and without help, it can be a challenging task.
This is where we come in. We offer a lot of services when it comes to getting students ready for college and we tailor that to the individual student and their needs. We help make college lists. We can help with resumes. We set up extracurriculars and SAT plans. But every student we work with always needs help writing a college essay.
So how do we do it?
We start trends and know what makes a good essay.
No two college essays are the same, but there are trends that work and there are those that don’t. If you know of a trend, it’s already too late and you can’t use that topic or format. The best essays allow the reader to get to know a deeper truth about the student. The best essays are well thought out and creative. They catch the attention of overworked admissions counselors. However, crafting this kind of essay can be a tall order for a student. For many high school students, the Common App essay is the first piece of creative writing that they will do outside of an English class. High schools don’t teach how to write a great personal essay, but we do.
We push our kids to think outside the box.
Every essay we write comes from brainstorming. We think it is essential for students to really think about what they want to tell colleges. We take time during the brainstorming stage to figure out what kind of person our students are and what type of traits they want to show off. Are they brave? Thoughtful? Funny? Adventurous? These are important when it comes to the type of story they should be telling.
Once we have an idea, it’s important to push our students creatively. Admissions officers read hundreds of essays about any given topic. It might sound callous, but no matter how unique you think your story is, there is probably someone else that has a similar one. We push our students to stand out by making them consider creative ways of telling their stories. By playing with writing structure, we help students construct a narrative built to stand out.
Our counselors can’t write a student's essay for them, but they can use an Arsenal of tips and tricks to help students be the best writer they can be.
It’s all in the edit.
We love getting our students writing early because we believe in editing, and then editing again. We have our students do multiple drafts until their essays are truly stellar. Every student’s writing is edited not only by a counselor but our Founder. We think editing is an essential step of the process. Many boot camps think editing is just copy-editing, but we believe that it’s much more than that and we can use our editing steps to help shape a student's essay into the best draft it can be.
We are there when you need us.
We pride ourselves on being virtual. No matter where they live, we can connect students with a highly trained counselor that best fits your student's needs. Being able to connect with our students virtually lets us work around their schedule. This is most important during the busy summer pre-senior year. We love that we can connect with students during this critical time, whether they are on a 3 week trip to Mykonos or home from boarding school for the summer.
It might sound boastful to call ourselves the best, but it’s true. The summer before senior year goes fast, but it’s essential to start college essays during this time. Trust us, no matter how busy your summer is, your school year will be busier. But we are here to help. So make this summer a virtual essay writing Bootcamp. Our counselors will make sure that your essay is in fighting shape by the end of the summer. All you need to do is reach out.
For more information, contact us here.