Writing a college application essay requires a set of skills that are not always taught in school, and certainly are not practiced regularly. It asks students to recognize their own growth through experience; choose a story that best reflects on who they are; identify details that best tell the story and those that should be left out; find an organization for the essay that conveys the story clearly while keeping readers’ attention; edit for structure, clarity and correctness; and know what to cut in order to write a piece that uses every available word but not one over. A coach can help students improve their skill in any and all of these areas of writing, turning them into an overall stronger writer as well as producing an essay for applications that’s more likely to shine.

The best time to start coaching is at the very beginning. For one thing, it will save you the frustration of trying to find a topic and draft a piece without any guidance. For another, you don’t want to invest time into an essay if you’re at all unsure about the topic. When you have a piece you’ve put a lot of time into, you might be reluctant to hear that it needs major changes. I have had many students insist they just needed a final read-through and help with “copy editing.” They were never correct. While most didn’t need an entirely new topic, they did need a lot of restructuring and adding of information and details. It’s really frustrating to feel like you’ve already done significant work on a piece and have to go back almost to what feels like the beginning. If you work with a coach from the start, you’ll save that wasted effort.

That said, it’s never too late to start if you’re unhappy with your essay, especially if you feel like you’re willing to make a lot of changes but don’t know what they should be.

I live in the greater Boston area, but coaching takes place exclusively online, allowing me to work with students all over the country (and even the world!). Online work is really effective for editing together, as students and I can be looking at the same document at the same time, seeing and discussing changes in real time.