college essay mentor chris

College Essay Mentor

Admissions essay help from a published author.

Transform the Admissions Process

As a college essay consultant who specializes in helping self-motivated students gain admission to Ivy Plus universities, I want to transform the admissions experience. It is common for students to feel uncertain about college essays, which represent the last, best chance to differentiate themselves from other outstanding applicants. In a sequence of one-on-one meetings, I help students explore their personal values, identify meaningful themes, and write essays that will intrigue and impress admissions officers. As a personal guide for every draft of every essay, I create and manage a process that minimizes stress and maximizes success.

Get Exceptional Results

Students, parents and I share a goal: acceptances to top universities. Every year dozens of College Essay Mentor students defy low admissions rates and get accepted to the Ivy League, Stanford, MIT and other top schools. Credit belongs largely to my students' academic accomplishments and endeavors beyond the classroom. My contribution is to understand what "works" in the college admission context, to identify ideas that will make an impact and to elicit insights. I then to teach students how to craft essays that create compelling, personal portraits.

Total acceptances for College Essay Mentor students, 2020-2023

One-on-One Essay Packages

The hallmark of College Essay Mentor is providing guidance that is tailored to each student's the talents and goals. To provide full benefit of his knowledge and experience, Christopher Hunt works one-on-one with every one of his students, for every meeting, for every essay. His essay packages all include the personal essay, school-specific supplement essays, the activities list, and other counseling services.

College Essay Mentor Has Been Seen In

clock This article was published more than  6 years ago

‘Read me!’: Students race to craft forceful college essays as deadlines near

Find a telling anecdote about your 17 years on this planet. Examine your values, goals, achievements and perhaps even failures to gain insight into the essential you. Then weave it together in a punchy essay of 650 or fewer words that showcases your authentic teenage voice — not your mother’s or father’s — and helps you stand out among hordes of applicants to selective colleges.

That's not necessarily all. Be prepared to produce even more zippy prose for supplemental essays about your intellectual pursuits, personality quirks or compelling interest in a particular college that would be, without doubt, a perfect academic match.

Many high school seniors find essay writing the most agonizing step on the road to college, more stressful even than SAT or ACT testing. Pressure to excel in the verbal endgame of the college application process has intensified in recent years as students perceive that it's tougher than ever to get into prestigious schools. Some well-off families, hungry for any edge, are willing to pay as much as $16,000 for essay-writing guidance in what one consultant pitches as a four-day "application boot camp."

But most students are far more likely to rely on parents, teachers or counselors for free advice as hundreds of thousands nationwide race to meet a key deadline for college applications on Wednesday.

College admissions edge for the wealthy: Early decision

Malcolm Carter, 17, a senior who attended an essay workshop this month at Wheaton High School in Montgomery County, Md., said the process took him by surprise because it differs so much from analytical techniques learned over years as a student. The college essay, he learned, is nothing like the standard five-paragraph English class essay that analyzes a text.

“I thought I was a good writer at first,” Carter said. “I thought, ‘I got this.’ But it’s just not the same type of writing.”

Carter, who is thinking about engineering schools, said he started one draft but aborted it. “Didn’t think it was my best.” Then he got 200 words into another. “Deleted the whole thing.” Then he produced 500 words about a time when his father returned from a tour of Army duty in Iraq.

Will the latest draft stand? “I hope so,” he said with a grin.

Admission deans want applicants to do their best and make sure they get a second set of eyes on their words. But they also urge them to relax.

“Sometimes, the fear or the stress out there is that the student thinks the essay is passed around a table of imposing figures, and they read that essay and put it down and take a yea or nay vote, and that determines the student’s outcome,” said Tim Wolfe, associate provost for enrollment and dean of admission at the College of William & Mary. “That is not at all the case.”

Wolfe called the essay one more way to learn something about an applicant. “I’ve seen rough essays that still powerfully convey a student’s personality and experiences,” he said. “And on the flip side, I’ve seen pristine, polished essays that don’t communicate much about the students and are forgotten a minute or two after reading them.”

William & Mary, like many schools, assigns at least two readers for each application. Sometimes, essays get another look when an admissions committee is deliberating.

Most experts say a great essay cannot compensate for a mediocre academic record. But it can play a significant role in shaping perceptions of an applicant and might tip the balance in a borderline case.

Top colleges put thousands of applicants in wait-list limbo

Essays and essay excerpts from students who have won admission circulate widely on the Internet, but it's impossible to know how much weight those words carried in the final decision. One student took a daring approach to a Stanford University essay this year. He wrote, simply, "#BlackLivesMatter" 100 times. And he got in.

Advice about essays abounds, some of it obvious: Show, don’t tell. Don’t rehash your résumé. Avoid cliches and pretentious words. Proofread. “That means actually having a living, breathing person — not just a spell-checker — actually read your essay,” Wolfe said.

But make sure that person doesn’t cross the line between useful feedback and meddlesome revision, or worse. (Looking at you, moms and dads.)

“It’s very obvious to us when an essay has been written by a 40-year-old and not a 17-year-old,” said Angel B. Pérez, vice president of enrollment and student success at Trinity College. “I’m not looking for a Pulitzer Prize-winning piece. And I get pretty skeptical when I see it.”

Some affluent parents buy help for their children from consultants who market their services through such brands as College Essay Guy, Essay Hell and Your Best College Essay.

Michele Hernández, co-founder of Top Tier Admissions, based in Vermont and Massachusetts, said her team charges $16,000 for a four-day boot camp in August to help clients develop all pieces of their applications, from essays to extracurricular activity lists. Or a family can pay $2,500 for five hours of one-on-one essay tutoring. Like other consultants, Hernández said she does pro-bono work. But she acknowledged there are troubling questions about the influence of wealth in college admissions.

“The equity problem is serious,” Hernández said. “College consultants are not the problem. It starts way lower down” — at kindergarten or earlier, she added.

Christopher Hunt, with a business in Colorado called College Essay Mentor, charges $3,000 for an "all-college-all-essays package" with as much guidance as clients want or need, from brainstorming to final drafts. He said the industry is growing because of a cycle rooted in anxiety. As the volume of applications grows, now topping 40,000 a year at Stanford and 100,000 at the University of California at Los Angeles , admission rates fall. That, in turn, fuels worries of prospective applicants from around the world.

Stanford dean: Ultra-low admit rate not something to boast about

“Most of my inquiries come from students,” Hunt said. “They are at ground zero of the college craze, aware of the competition, and know what they need to compete.”

At Wheaton High, it cost nothing for students to drop in on a college essay workshop offered during the lunch hour a couple of weeks before the Nov. 1 early application deadline. Cynthia Hammond Davis, the college and career information coordinator, provided pizza, and Leslie Atkin, an English composition assistant, provided tips in a room bedecked with college pennants.

Her first piece of advice: Don’t bore the reader. “It should be as much fun as telling your best friend a story,” she said. “You’re going to be animated about it.” Atkin also sketched a four-step framework for writing: Depict an event, discuss how that anecdote illuminates key character traits, define a pivotal moment and reflect on the outcome. “Wrap it up with a nice package and a bow,” she said. “They don’t have to be razzle-dazzle. But they need to say, ‘Read me!’ ”

As an example, Hammond Davis distributed an essay written by a 2017 Wheaton High graduate now at Rice University. In it, Anene “Daniel” Uwanamodo likened himself to a trampoline — a student leader who helps serve as a launchpad for others. “Regardless of race, gender or background, trampolines will offer their uplifting influence to any who request it,” he wrote.

Soaking this in were students aiming for the University of Maryland at College Park, Towson, Howard and Johns Hopkins universities, Virginia Tech, the University of Chicago and a special scholars program at Montgomery College. One planned to write about a terrifying car accident, another about her mother’s death and a third about how varsity basketball shaped him.

Sahil Sahni, 17, said his main essay responds to a prompt on the Common Application, an online portal to apply to hundreds of colleges: “Discuss an accomplishment, event or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.”

Sahni showed The Washington Post two drafts — his initial version in July, and his latest after feedback from Hammond Davis. (It’s probably best not to quote the essay before admission officers read it.) During the writing, he said, he often jotted phrases on sticky notes when inspiration occurred. If no notepads were handy, he would ink a keyword on his arm “to stimulate the ideas.”

Sahni summarized the essay as a meditation on the consequences of lost keys, “how the unknown is okay, and how you can overcome it.” He said composing three or four high-stakes essays also had a consequence: “Every day you learn something new about yourself.”

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What You Can Learn from the Essays of Yale Quadruplets

• expert advice
• college application essays
• application strategy

If you’ve been following college admissions news for the Class of 2021, you’ll no doubt have heard about the Wade Quadruplets. 

All four of them were accepted to both Harvard University and Yale University. How did they do it? Christopher Hunt from College Essay Mentor shares his experience working with the brothers and what you can learn from their essays. 

Quadruplets? All four accepted to both Yale and Harvard? Surely Aaron, Nick, Nigel and Zach Wade are a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon, a sort of Haley’s Comet in the world of college admissions. As the college essay coach who worked with the Wade brothers, who are all chose Yale, I am confident that the odds of my witnessing similar success are low. Extremely low.

I am also confident that while “quadruplet” grabs the attention of most any reader, none of the Wades was accepted to any college simply because he was part of a four-pack. Each brother had the high grades and the test scores to be a strong candidate at any school in the country. Each also had multiple, demonstrated interests outside of the classroom. In other words, the Wades were like thousands upon thousands of outstanding students from whom admissions officers must form college classes. How to explain their extravagant admissions?

The Wades all understood the importance of an outstanding personal statement. Eager to stand out, they labored over their Common Application essays. Each one fretted over the choice of topic, wrote a passable first draft, and abided by a truth enunciated by Ernest Hemingway: “The only kind of writing is rewriting.” Multiple versions and hours of effort brought each one to 650 words that distinguished him not only from his brothers but also from any other applicant.

What might future applicants learn from the Wades? Anyone who takes the time to consider their essays, which are  posted on the New York Times website , will find four shining examples of three simple principles.

Identify a True Trait

Some would say that the Wades had it easy. “My Life as a Quadruplet” was a no-brainer topic for a college essay. Right? Not so fast. During our early conversations, four brothers applying to many of the same schools raised the reasonable concern that admissions officers who read all four essays would tire of “yet another” essay about the quadruplet conundrum. I agreed. The “quad thing,” I said, was intriguing but insufficient.

I asked each brother to dig deeper. Janine Robinson, the author of  “Escape Essay Hell!” advises students to begin the college essay process by identifying a “defining quality.” I do the same, preferring the term “true trait,” which I define as a force that guides your life. Like any applicant seeking to make an impression on admissions officers, each of the Wades needed to narrow the theme of his essay to a characteristic which represented his personal values.

The Wades’ stories had common roots. “We were four boys who shared one face,” wrote Aaron. A similar sense of forced anonymity inspired each student to become more than “one of the quads.” So each brother wrote about his search for individuality, a trait that is true for many high school students.

Tell a Story

Another reliable rule is to choose the essay structure most likely to have an emotional impact. Far too many students write expanded versions of their resumes. Others try to make their case with a five-paragraph essay, an argument framework that is less likely to provide a sense of a student’s personality. But it is the narrative structure, a form familiar to anyone who reads novels or watches movies, that creates space for the personal details that feed admissions officers’ core desire to get past the numbers and see applicants as people.  Asked how students should approach college essays, Jeff Brenzel, a former Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Yale, said, “Keep it simple. Tell a story.”

Nigel Wade traced the path from the day his father brought home a human anatomy book to the birth of his decision to become a doctor. Zach Wade wrote about creating an identity as a discus thrower on the track team at Lakota East High School. Nick’s story traced his path from an interest in Arabic to a scholarship to study for a summer in Morocco. Aaron wrote about finding himself the night he danced and sang Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke” to a standing ovation at his school’s talent show. Tapping material available to typical high school seniors, each brother crafted an essay with an intriguing beginning, a meaningful middle, and an emotional ending.

Trust Your Voice

A third essential of college essays, a distinctive voice, befuddles students, who wonder what admissions officers “want.” Students search for a style they believe with please the people with the power to admit or deny. Writing multiple drafts takes them even further from language that flows. Sentences written on a sunny Monday may not sync with those scribbled Sunday at midnight, leaving essays with an uneven quality.  

To the Wade brothers I offered a simple solution: read your essay aloud. When spoken, anything written to impress will sound awkward. Words pulled from the thesaurus will sound out of place. Noting the spots where the language loses flow, and inserting phrases that roll off of your tongue, is the best way I know to infuse an essay with the kind of distinctive voice that tempts colleges to say “admit.”

Take some time to read their essays on the New York Times website. You can learn something from their essays and maybe even be inspired to write your own. For more application samples, browse through our database !

About The Author

Christopher Hunt is a college essay coach whose home base is CollegeEssayMentor . He earned a B.A. from Dartmouth and a M.Sc. from London School of Economics before launching a career in writing. As a journalist, he worked at The Economist and the Asian Wall Street Journal. As an author, he published a pair of first-person travelogues: Sparring With Charlie and Waiting For Fidel. Christopher’s work as an essay coach taps his experience as an interviewer and a storyteller, and his intrinsic love for teaching writing. His one-of-kind process for guiding students from blank page to final draft has helped students gain admission to every on of the Ivies, Stanford, MIT, and more!

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• 1. Webinar Series: College Application Prep for High School Juniors
• 2. College Application Lessons from 2020-2021: Strategizing through Covid Changes (Part 2)
• 3. College Admissions Lessons from 2020-2021: Strategizing through Covid Changes (Part 1)

• 5. COVID-19 and Your College Essay: Should You Write About It?
• 6. College Search: How to Find Your Best College Fit
• 7. College Tours 101: Everything You Need to Know
• 8. Waitlisted? 5 Ways to Move from the College Waitlist to Acceptance
• 9. When (and why) should you send additional materials to colleges you’re interested in?
• 10. How to Make Your College Essay Stand Out
• 1. How to Write College Essays to Boost your Chances Part 2: Focusing the Priority
• 2. How to Write College Essays to Boost your Chances Part 1: Biggest Essay Mistakes
• 3. College Application Lessons from 2020-2021: Strategizing through Covid Changes (Part 2)
• 5. Winners of the AdmitSee 2020 College Scholarship
• 6. COVID-19 and Your College Essay: Should You Write About It?
• 7. Education, Access and Systemic Racism
• 8. Applying to BS/MD Direct Medical Programs: Why Early Med School Admission Might be Right for You
• 9. How to Get Off the College Waitlist (5 Go-To Strategies)
• 10. College admissions prep during the Coronavirus

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link="https://youtu.be/5L_QF7gyWiU?rel=0" el_width="80" align="center"][vc_column_text] Check out this interview with Stacy Hernandez of The Best U and College Essay Specialist, Chris Hunt of College Essay Mentor , to learn important pieces of the Common Application essay that you will want to know in order to start writing. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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14 Best College Essay Services for 2024 (40 Services Reviewed)

Research conducted by Emily Kierkegaard , PhD, and expert-reviewed by Kevin Wong, PrepMaven Co-founder

Not sure which college application essay coaching and editing service is the best? We compared the top 40 services, created in-depth reviews for 14 of them, and narrowed it down to the 4 best that will help guide you through the process of writing amazing college application essays.

What is the Best College Essay Service?

• PrepMaven  – best college application essay service overall
• College Essay Mentor  – best for individual consultants
• The College Essay Guy  – best for unlimited essay assistance
• College Vine  – best of the big platforms

The best of the rest:

Individual essay consultants:

• College Essay Editor  – small editing team
• Allison Karpf  – former English teacher helping students
• Your College Vision  – former journalist with more affordable rates
• The College Guru  – good on paper but unresponsive
• Sofia Zapiola – budget-friendly application assistance

Mid-size teams:

• Lotus Learning  – focus on health sciences

Large platforms:

• Study Point  – larger platform with mystery editors
• Ivy Select  – larger platform with mystery editors
• Empowerly  – larger platform with mystery editors
• BeMo  – expensive and aggressive with wrong expertise

Schedule a college essay consultation

Best College Application Essay Services in 2024

#1 – prepmaven.

Our Verdict — Best College Essay Assistance Overall Price: $79–349/hour (minimum $510 package) PrepMaven’s one-on-one college essay assistance is the best option overall. Founded by brothers and Princeton grads Greg and Kevin, almost all of PrepMaven’s essay coaches have Ivy-League experience, primarily from Princeton and Harvard. All essay coaches also undergo a thorough training program in PrepMaven’s methods, developed by professional writers with deep understanding of the college admissions process, for helping students to discover the most compelling stories for their essays. Unlike other services, PrepMaven offers college essay assistance at several different price points. At the most accessible rate, students can work with current Ivy-League undergraduates who specialize in writing and have recently aced the college application process. At higher rates, students can work with coaches who are both Ivy-League grads and professional writers (screenwriters, journalists, editors) with many years of experience helping students to craft compelling essays. Interested students can even work directly with founders Greg and Kevin, who have over 15 years of experience helping students through the entire essay-writing process. PrepMaven’s services combine many of the best features of other good options into one, and it’s hard to beat their experience.

Sign up for PrepMaven’s college essay help now

Any student wanting college essay help, at any point in the process, with a range of budgets.

At a glance:

• Cost: $79–349/hour (minimum $510 package)
• Writing coach qualifications: Princeton graduates and professional writers (or current Princeton students); all trained

What we like:

• Ivy League experience —most of their writing coaches are Princeton grads or current students, with some from Harvard and other Ivies
• Different pricing options to meet different families’ circumstances
• More flexible and greater capacity to take on new students compared to individual consultants

Sign up for PrepMaven’s college essay help

#2 – College Essay Mentor

Our Verdict — Best of the Individual Consultants Price: unknown but high Some college essay consulting services consist of just one expert. Of these individual essay consultants, Chris Hunt at College Essay Mentor is our favorite. He combines writing experience as a journalist for the Economist and the Wall Street Journal with personal experience as a graduate of Dartmouth. However, he only works with a small number of students each year, and students need to apply to work with him — he only accepts students with top grades and test scores who are already strong applicants for top schools. Chris offers the option for one-time written feedback, but this only gives big-picture generalizations. (And written-only feedback is always limited.) In order for help with the essay process, students need to purchase a complete essay package.

Students with top grades and test scores who want to work with a one-person business, who have a sizable budget, and who are ready to get started early.

• Cost: $210 for a one-time written essay feedback (big picture only), then $110 per draft feedback; pricing for essay process packages unknown
• Essay coach qualifications: professional journalist, Dartmouth grad
• Professional writing experience as a journalist
• Extensive experience working with college applicants
• Partners with Debra Felix, former Director of Admissions at Columbia, for full application review

What we don’t like:

• One-on-one work is limited to very high-achieving students, who need to apply with a resume : “I limit my one-on-one work to students who I believe will be strong applicants to elite universities. As a rule, this means having high grades in challenging classes, a test score of ACT 34+ or SAT 1500+, and substantial activities outside of the classroom.”
• Works with a limited number of students (60 per year), so often no availability
• All-or-nothing packages don’t allow students to work with Chris for just a few hours or for part of the essay-writing process
• Secretive about pricing (he’ll only give pricing details once he’s reviewed the student’s resume and agreed to work with them), but we expect the minimum cost of working one-on-one to be several thousand dollars

#3 – The College Essay Guy

Our Verdict — Best for Unlimited Essay Assistance Price: $4900 for application to 3 schools, $8050 for application for 10 schools We’re fans of Ethan Sawyer, the original “college essay guy”— his book, College Essay Essentials , is a great guide to the essay-writing process. Ethan doesn’t work directly with many students these days, but he now has a team of consultants who help students follow his principles. Their assistance is really all-or-nothing — they prefer to work with students from the very beginning of the process, and their minimum package is $4900, which includes assistance with essays for three schools. If students are applying to ten schools (a more realistic number for students aiming at competitive colleges), the fee is a hefty $7400.

Students who want unlimited help through the entire process, who have a sizable budget.

• Cost: $4900 (supplemental essays for 3 schools) – $7400 (supplemental essays for 10 schools)
• Essay coach qualifications: mix of Ivy grads and former teachers, some writers/screenwriters; all trained
• Great free resources about the essay-writing process
• Their Matchlighters Scholars Program gives back to the community by providing admissions consulting for select qualifying students
• All-or-nothing packages have a high minimum fee and don’t work for students who want just a few hours of feedback or help with just part of the process

#4 – College Vine

Our Verdict — Best of the Big Platforms Price: $140–180/hour There are plenty of large platforms with large stables of part-time tutors and coaches available to work with students. Of these big platforms, we think CollegeVine has the best offerings. Compared to other large companies, CollegeVine provides more information about their tutors, and students can pick individual tutors to work with from their roster. However, this model is really just a way of finding individual tutors to hire. Tutors don’t receive any training and don’t share a common approach, so it’s a mixed bag. Their rates are fairly high for part-time tutors who don’t have specific expertise and training in college essay consulting. Because CollegeVine is really just a marketplace where individual tutors can find students, the quality and price will vary widely.

Students who want to work with a big company, or those who want a quick session or two to go over their essays.

• Cost: Typically $140–180/hour
• Essay coach qualifications: no specific qualifications, but a few are Ivy League graduates
• Possible to select individual editors to work with from their roster.
• Easy to schedule ad-hoc sessions with a tutor through the website.
• No training or common approach for tutors
• Editors are part-time , with no option to work with full-time college admissions experts
• Relatively expensive for this level of expertise

College Essay Editing Alternatives (that Didn’t Make the Cut)

Individual essay consultants, #5 – college essay editor.

Our Verdict — Small Editing Team Price: Roughly $5,950 for applications to 10 schools College Essay Editor comprises two graduates of Stanford. This means that they have personal experience applying to highly competitive schools. One member of the team also has a college counseling certification, which is a good background for college essays. Based on their website, they appear to focus on the editing and proofreading phase of the essay-writing process. This can be helpful to students, but we recommend working with a service who can help students to uncover their values and brainstorm really great material that allows them to really shine—and if this doesn’t happen at the beginning of the process, it’s much harder to add in later on.

• Cost: $195/1000 words for proofreading, $495/1000 words for 3 rounds of editing and proofreading, or $595/1000 words for unlimited rounds of editing and proofreading; for the purposes of comparison, complete applications to 10 competitive colleges would be around 9,650 words, or $5950.
• Writing coach qualifications: Stanford graduates, one of whom has college counseling certification
• Editors are graduates of Stanford University , and one is a member of NACAC, the national association of college counselors
• They focus on editing and proofreading only , not on the crucial earlier steps of brainstorming and strategy
• Small team with very limited availability
• All asynchronous editing so you won’t be able to cultivate a real relationship with your essay coach.

#6 – Allison Karpf

Our Verdict — Former English Teacher Helping Students Price: $385/hour or $3850 package for application to one school Another option for students looking to hire an individual consultant is Allison Karpf. Allison is a former high school English teacher and a graduate of UC Berkeley who also holds a Masters of Education from Stanford. Her rates are definitely on the higher side, especially for someone who doesn’t have a professional writing background, but she does have extensive experience working with students to craft their essays.

• Cost:  $385/hour or $3850 unlimited counseling (includes supplemental essays for one college)
• Essay coach qualifications: former high school English teacher; Berkeley grad, Stanford MEd
• Lots of experience helping students improve their college essays
• Very quick to respond to client requests
• No professional writing experience or Ivy-Plus undergraduate experience
• High rates relative to other options
• Limited availability , since she works alone

#7 – Your College Vision

Our Verdict: Former Journalist with More Affordable Rates Price: $180/hour, or packages starting from $3500 Laurie Lande is another individual consultant who helps students through the essay-writing process. She comes recommended by other consultants like Chris from College Essay Mentor . Laurie did not herself attend a highly competitive school, so she doesn’t have that personal experience of going through the selective admissions process, but she does have a professional writing background as a journalist for the Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong.

• Cost: $180/hour or packages starting at $3500
• Essay coach qualifications: journalism background
• Affordable pricing , relative to other options
• Not a graduate of a highly selective school

#8 – The College Guru

Our Verdict — Good on Paper but Unresponsive Price: unknown Yet another individual essay consultant is Geanine Thompson from The College Guru. Geanine attended Dartmouth as an undergraduate and also holds an MBA from Duke. She also has a professional writing background as an assistant book editor at Berkley Publishing Group. Like Greg and Kevin at PrepMaven , she combines experience in the business world and at Wall Street firms with experience in education.

• Cost: unknown
• Essay coach qualifications: former assistant book editor; Dartmouth grad, Duke MBA
• Dartmouth graduate and former book editor
• Not responsive to emails and client requests

#9 – Sofia Zapiola

Our Verdict — A budget-friendly, personal essay editor. Price: $80/hour Yet another individual essay consultant is Sofia Zapiola, who offers a mix of essay editing and college application counseling services.

• Cost: $80/hour
• Essay coach qualifications: M.A. from Harvard; certificate in College Counseling from UC San Diego.
• Individual approach, budget-friendly rates, commitment to working within families’ budgets.
• Very few testimonials, so it’s difficult to evaluate how effective she is.

Mid-size Teams

#10 – lotus learning.

Our Verdict — Expensive for Tutor Background Price: $165/hour Founded by a Harvard grad who is a former teacher and veteran of the publishing industry, Lotus learning offers college essay help in the Boston area. They have a small team of tutors, mostly recent grads from good but not Ivy-Plus colleges, and mostly with focus in health sciences.

• Cost: $165/hour (minimum 8 hours)
• Essay coach qualifications: tutors are recent grads, but not Ivy-Plus schools
• Reasonable pricing with flexible packages
• Essay editors aren’t graduates of Ivy-Plus schools and don’t have professional writing experience

Large platforms

#11 – study point.

Our Verdict — Larger Platform with Mystery Editors Price: Rates Between $60 and $120/hr Study Point is a larger essay editing service. They claim to have several decades of experience helping students to craft their college essays, but they do not give information about who their essay coaches are and what qualifications they might have.

• Cost: $60-120/hr, depending on tutor experience
• Essay coach qualifications: unknown
• Larger company with several decades of experience
• Unclear who the essay coaches are
• Lack of statistics about their results

#12 – Ivy Select

Our Verdict — Larger Platform with Mystery Editors Price: unknown Ivy Select makes a lot of big promises on their website about having the best college essay consultants in the business, but they offer no information on who these consultants are, or on their backgrounds. They also brag that each consultant “only” works 20 students in one application cycle, but in our experience, that’s quite high.

• Long list of impressive (but anonymous) testimonials
• Only work with “top students”
• No information on their website about who the editors are
• Each essay coach works with up to 20 students at one time

#13 – Empowerly

Our Verdict — Larger Platform with Mystery Editors Price: High, from $6000/year Empowerly has over 60 college counselors who each work with an average of 5 students per year, in order to have more time to devote to each student. Their counselors come from “different educational backgrounds,” and while they do not provide specific biographical details we can assume that most of their essay coaches did not attend highly selective schools.

• Cost: typically from $6000/year
• Essay coach qualifications: college counselors
• Counselors work with just a few students per year
• You have to upgrade to “Empowerly Elite” to guarantee a counselor with a more selective educational background
• No professional writing experience

#14 – Prepory

Our Verdict — Expensive but with Good Expertise Price: $325/hr Prepory is a college application and career counseling service that offers a comprehensive program for college applications at any stage of the process (including as early as 9th grade). They make a lot of impressive claims about the expertise of their coaches, but it’s quite difficult to actual find much information about their essay coach qualifications.

• Cost: $325/hr
• They have a comprehensive college application program that begins as early as 9th grade.
• Limited information about essay coaches
• High prices

Top 40 College Essay Services Considered

• College Essay Editor
• The College Essay Guy
• College Vine
• College Essay Mentor
• Study Point
• Allison Karpf
• The College Guru
• Lotus Learning
• Summit Prep
• Sofia Zapiola
• Ivy Global / New Summits
• College Essay Solutions
• Your College Vision
• Essay Edge*
• ServicEscape*
• PapersForge*
• QuickWriter*
• JustEditMyEssay*
• JustDoMyEsssay*
• ExpertWriting*
• SpeedyPaper*
• GradeMiners*

* A number of services will edit essays directly for students, or even write portions of the essay for students. We do not condone this. Admissions officers can tell when essays have been written or edited by adults and this can have severe consequences. We have excluded these services from our reviews.

Why are college application essays important?

Can a great college essay alone get you into Harvard?

No. You’ll need your grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities (as well as letters of recommendation and interview) to be outstanding.

But can a mediocre essay be the reason you didn’t get into Harvard?

Yes. There are thousands of amazingly-qualified students who graduate from high school each year. Great grades and test scores might be a prerequisite for admission to a competitive college, but they alone aren’t enough.

College essays are a key component of a student’s application . When done well, they transform a collection of numbers—GPA, class rank, SAT or ACT scores , number of AP classes taken, AP scores—into a glimpse of a real, individual person.

Essays do many things. Good college essays can highlight extracurricular achievements which otherwise would be overlooked in a sterile list. Strong essays often indicate the student’s future plans —how they plan to leave a mark on their college campus and on the world. They can shine a light on unique challenges that a student may have had to face on their journey.

College admissions officers only have a few minutes to spend on each application. College essays need to be original, interesting, and memorable . They need to grab the attention of the admissions officer and persuade them that this is the student out of hundreds or thousands of other similarly-qualified applicants who should be admitted.

College admissions essays are usually unlike any other kind of writing that students have done before. They’re a combination of memoir and marketing pitch, and they need to be creative but also highly strategic. That’s a tough assignment!

What’s more, students are left to figure this assignment out on their own. A thoughtful and generous high school English teacher may provide guidance or offer to read essays and give feedback, but these teachers are responsible for many students, and they’re (usually) not experts in admissions strategies.

There’s another reason college essays are especially important from 2024 on. After the recent Supreme Court decision, the application essay has become one of the main ways that you can communicate how your racial identity has affected your life.

In fact, the New York Times published an article about how important it can be for students to discuss race in their college application essays!

Why work with a college essay service?

You may want to consider a college essay service if:

• You have no idea where to start in order to write your college application essays
• You feel overwhelmed by all of the different ideas you have and don’t know what would be the most strategic for college admissions—and what topics to definitely avoid for college essays
• You don’t know how to craft a compelling stor y
• You’re not sure how to edit and refine what you’ve written
• You have a hard time keeping yourself on track and want an external structure to hold you accountable
• You’re tired of conflict between students and parents about college essays
• You’re aiming at a competitive college (not just the Ivy League!) and know that you need your essays to be outstanding
• Your grades, test scores, and extracurriculars aren’t exceptional, so you need your essay to make your essay stand out from the pack
• You’re unfamiliar with the US college admissions process (a common situation for international students and first-generation families in the US)

Any of these are strong reasons to consider working with a college essay service!

It’s also worth remembering that a lot of the free advice on college’s website isn’t always very clear. For example, NYU’s admissions Senior Assistant Director of Admissions says that “There is no right or wrong way to answer as long as your answer is genuine to you.”

While that’s true, that doesn’t offer much guidance on how to actually write the essay!

Though many college applicants might not mention it, more and more students are using professional college application consultants. Research at the University of Chicago has shown that over a quarter of high-achieving seniors employed private specialists to help with the college application process.

In fact, according to NPR , some companies are even offering college admissions counseling to their top employees as an incentive–that’s just how important professional help can be in the current landscape of college admissions.

It’s important to note that a good college essay service will not write your college application essays for you . This is unethical and illegal. That’s not just coming from us: take it from a school like Princeton, whose website insists on the importance of writing your own application essays.

A good college essay service will guide you through each step of the process , teaching you how to self-reflect and write well while sharing insider insight about admissions strategy .

What makes a good college essay service?

We strongly believe that students need to write their own college essays , and we do not condone plagiarism or “buying” a college essay.

However, writing college application essays requires a completely new set of skills that is rarely taught in high school!

Writing a personal essay is much more creative than simply writing a good paper for English class. It requires a compelling narrative and a great deal of writing craft . A good essay service will teach how to do this kind of writing.

There are many college essay services that will provide only written feedback to students, usually in the form of comments added to an essay draft. (Remember, it’s important that students write their own essays, so avoid any college essay service that will make edits directly to an essay document .)

Written comments can be an effective component of good essay coaching. However, writing college essays is a deeply personal process , and it’s incredibly difficult to guide a student through the process of self-reflection, brainstorming, and planning purely through written comments.

In addition, a great college essay coach will teach students how to do this entire process of brainstorming, planning, outlining, writing, and revising . It’s difficult to learn why an essay coach is advising certain changes through written comments alone.

For these reasons, look for a college essay service with live, one-on-one services , not just written feedback. These days, it’s easy to work with the best college essay consultants in the country over Zoom!

Students need to reflect on their goals, their passions, and what drives them to be the person they are. This requires a great deal of self-awareness and self-analysis . An experienced college essay coach can help draw these ideas out of students through tested introspection techniques and brainstorming exercises .

On top of all of that, students need to be cognizant of which traits and accomplishments will be most appealing to colleges , and which stories will be cliche and boring. Personal statements and supplementary essays need to fit together to tell a cohesive story, and they need to work together with the rest of the student’s application (extracurriculars, grades, and other accomplishments).

In other words, there’s a great deal of strategy here! An experienced college essay service can help students decide how to present themselves in the best possible light .

Furthermore, most students don’t know how to edit effectively . A really top-notch college essay service will also teach students how to edit their own writing —how to reorder sections for better flow, cut unnecessary words to meet a word count, eliminate passive verbs, and make their writing vivid and exciting. Our students are routinely amazed by how transformative this step can be, and how much they learn by doing it together with the essay coach.

Finally, the best college essay services can also help students to make a writing plan and keep them on track , so that parents don’t have to be involved directly.

Ready to work on your college essays? Schedule a free 15- to 30-minute consultation with Jessica or one of our founders.

Best overall: PrepMaven’s tutors offer the highest quality at the best price. With three tiers of tutors, they make it easy to work with an Ivy League undergraduate for as little as $79/hr. Or, families can work with education professionals or Ivy League graduates from $150/hr. PrepMaven’s track record means that you can be sure every hour is being spent productively, so that you can expect real results from the work.

Best for individual consultants: College Essay Mentor. In theory, College Essay Mentor would offer an unparalleled level of individual attention and guidance: his website boasts of some very impressive results. You might find it hard to actually schedule with him, however, since he’s very selective about his clients.

Best for unlimited essay assistance: The College Essay Guy might not offer that personalized attention you get from live, face to face essay coaching, but they do offer unlimited essay editing for up to 10 schools (if you’re comfortable paying a hefty package price).

Best of the big platforms: College Vine will always be a bit of a gamble. Because it’s a tutor marketplace, your results (and costs) will really depend on how lucky you get with your consultant. From our research, however, many of their essay coaches look to have solid track records.

Ready to work on college essays with one of our experienced writing coaches? Schedule a free test prep consultation with Jessica (Director of Tutoring) or one of our founders to see what would be the best fit for your family.

It’s always best to start early and not wait until the last minute to write your college essays! Remember that essays can be used to earn scholarships as well as college admission, so a few months of writing now can pay off with up to $300,000 in tuition saved later. 

We work with students at all stages of the writing process, from I-have-no-idea-what-to-write to final edits. To start working with an Ivy-League writing coach today, set up a quick free consultation with our team.

Schedule a free college essay consultation

Top College Essay Posts

• 14 Best College Essay Services for 2023 (40 Services Reviewed)
• Qualities of a Successful College Essay
• 11 College Essays That Worked
• How to Answer the UC Personal Insight Questions
• How Colleges Read your College Applications (A 4-Step Process)
• How to Write the Princeton Supplemental Essays
• The Diamond Strategy: How We Help Students Write College Essays that Get Them Into Princeton (And Other Ivy League Schools)
• What is the College Essay? Your Complete Guide for 202 4
• College Essay Brainstorming: Where to Start
• How to Write the Harvard Supplemental Essays
• How to Format Your College Essay

Emily graduated  summa cum laude  from Princeton University and holds an MA from the University of Notre Dame. She was a National Merit Scholar and has won numerous academic prizes and fellowships. A veteran of the publishing industry, she has helped professors at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton revise their books and articles. Over the last decade, Emily has successfully mentored hundreds of students in all aspects of the college admissions process, including the SAT, ACT, and college application essay. 

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Great Ideas From Readers

Flipping the Script on the College Essay With Help From The New York Times

How one teacher uses personal narratives to help high school seniors write application essays that are “powerful, meaningful and clear”

By Sharon Murchie

As we kick off a third year of our student narrative writing contest , we bring you an idea from Sharon Murchie, a 10th and 12th grade English teacher at Okemos High School in Okemos, Mich. , for how to use personal essays from The Times to help students write meaningful and authentic college application essays.

Year after year, Ms. Murchie, who was also a member of the 2020-21 cohort of The New York Times Teaching Project , watched her high school seniors freeze in the “proverbial headlights of the college essay.” So she decided to “flip the script” by having them write their essays first, before ever seeing the application prompts. Below, she tells us about her “Common App Essay Boot Camp,” featuring Times mentor texts and The Learning Network’s personal narrative writing unit .

If you have a teaching idea to share, tell us about it here , or browse our full collection of Reader Ideas .

— The Learning Network

Writing the college application essay is both a rite of passage for high school seniors and a stumbling block for many of them.

Every year, my incoming seniors are panicked about the essay that they have to submit for the Common App, the nation’s most used application. For some reason, their 17- and 18-year-old brains have suddenly decided that everything they have ever learned about writing with voice and “show, don’t tell” and addressing their audience should fly out the window when faced with the terrifying unknown: The College Entrance Committee. They often try to sound like anyone other than themselves, resorting to the thesaurus and picking the biggest word instead of believing in their own voices. They can’t envision an audience that is shrouded in mystery out there, somewhere, the panel of judgment, the gatekeepers to the rest of their lives.

The resulting essays that they panic-write are often dull, formulaic, filled with clichés, and attempting to sound wise beyond their 18 years of life. They write tortured sentences like “I look back, now cognizant of the piteous ineptitude of my 13-year-old self” and “I try to remember what life was once like before the new normal, the unprecedented time of Covid.”

I’ve tried to stress to them for years that the Common App essay is just a short personal narrative written to a fairly open-ended prompt, but so many students feel they have nothing meaningful to write about. I needed to flip this experience upside down for them, and have students write their stories first, before they looked at the actual prompts and started to sweat.

Thus, the Common App Essay Boot Camp, featuring The New York Times, was born.

I started with the Learning Network’s unit on narrative writing , which is rich with prompts and mentor texts. The resources provide scaffolding for students to draft short but vivid personal essays about seemingly insignificant moments in their lives: a grudge they held, a lie they told, a risk they took, a sunrise they saw. Each mentor text lesson teaches a different key element of narrative writing, provides examples of the skill in Times narrative essays, and then challenges students to use it in their own writing. Students are encouraged to write what they know, honor their own voices, and tell their unique stories.

I wanted to use a similar approach, but adapt it for high school seniors who are writing their college application essays. So I created a unit where students would write personal narratives, inspired by Times mentor texts that would be applicable to the Common App prompts. Then, I would reveal the prompts and they would already have drafts that they could work with and modify for their college application.

Finding Inspiration in Times Narrative Essays

To find personal narratives for students to emulate, I combed through the Lives column , which ran in The Times for over 20 years and invited writers to tell short, powerful stories about meaningful life experiences. I also searched through the college application essays on money, work and social class that The Times publishes every year.

From those, I chose just four essays to use as mentor texts that could easily align with the Common App prompts.

Each week, we read a New York Times essay as a mentor text, annotated it for specific “writer’s moves,” discussed it, and then wrote our own essays, mirroring some of the craft moves that the authors had made in the mentor texts. Then, we worked through a writing workshop feedback and revision process, where students noted evidence in each other’s essays of the specific writing moves that had been the focus that week. Finally, students submitted their polished essays for a grade or class credit.

Week 1: Sensory Description

We started with sensory description, using the mentor text “ This Cold House ” by Elizabeth Gilbert. The author’s moves we focused on this week were word choice and use of sensory details in order to engage the reader in the moment. Students then wrote about a favorite memory from their lives with as much of this kind of detail as possible.

Week 2: Identity

We moved into personal reflection using the mentor text “ I Live on the Edge ” by Tillena Trebon. The author’s moves we focused on were word choice, syntax and voice. I invited students to discuss how the author organizes her writing and all of the different “edges” she lives on. Then, they wrote about two worlds that they balance between.

I want students to see that they have a story, no matter how “normal” or “uneventful” they think their lives might be. Every student straddles multiple identities, and most college applications ask students to write about some aspect of their identities.

Week 3: Memorable Moments

I followed The Learning Network Writing Curriculum’s suggestion to write narratives that tell a short, memorable story , using the mentor text “ My Secret Pepsi Plot ” by Boris Fishmann. We discussed how the author moves back and forth between a “little kid understanding” and an “adult understanding” throughout the text, and how he reveals significant things about himself through this insignificant moment of taking returnables back to the store.

Students wrote about an insignificant moment in their own lives that said something significant about them or their background. I challenged them to try to stay in the moment, at the age that moment occurred, to make it really come to life.

Week 4: Direct and Indirect Explanation

We ended with “ A Slacker of Jakarta ” by Eka Kurniawan and discussed the concepts of author’s context, implicit and explicit evidence, and the different lenses through which we view ourselves. Mr. Kurniawan discusses his relationship with his mother throughout the piece, but sometimes that relationship is revealed through an action, instead of a direct explanation. Mr. Kurniawan also calls himself a “slacker,” and this led to rich discussions in the classroom about lenses and whose eyes he was judging himself through.

For their final personal narrative, students wrote about a piece of advice they had been given that they may or may not have followed. I’ve found that everyone has a “piece of advice story.” (When I was 18, for example, my mom earnestly insisted when I got my nose pierced that I’d never get a real job.) I reminded my students to tell the story, including the context, of that piece of advice, and to reveal the relationship between themselves and the advice-giver in both explicit and implicit ways.

Writing to the Common App Essay Prompts

After completing this cycle for four weeks (and promising students that we really were working on their college essays this whole time), I introduced students to the Common App essay prompts . Here they are for the 2021-22 school year:

Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?

Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?

Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

Instead of trying to write a new essay to specifically address one of the prompts, students could use one of the personal narratives they’d already written and turn it into an amazing application essay.

First, I had them identify key words in each prompt, and then consider which of their four essays might fit each prompt. Next, working with their writing groups, they chose their favorite essay and prompt combination and discussed what, if anything, would need to be altered. Finally, students revised their pieces to ensure that the key words they had identified from the prompt appeared somewhere within their essays, and that their essays were within the recommended 650-word limit .

Three Student Essays, One Generative Exercise

To show you how this works, here are three essays written by students. They all chose the narratives they wrote in response to Tillena Trebon’s mentor text “ I Live on the Edge ” about balancing between two worlds. But they revised their essays to respond to three different Common App essay prompts.

Naseeb Oluwafisiayomi Bello chose the first Common App prompt: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

Naseeb writes about how growing up straddling two cultures shaped his identity as someone who is Black, African and American. Naseeb’s essay begins:

I was made in one country and born in another. I am the end of an original generation and still the start of a new one. My parents left with history and my life begins with mystery. It was planned that I would become the nexus of both. I live in a home mostly dominated by one culture and leave the home exposed to a new one. I ask my mom “What’s for dinner?” expecting the same flavors. I suggest dinner ideas hoping to taste the melting pot. The distinct aroma of my home reminds me of the scent in the home of my parents in Nigeria. When we cook, we open the doors and windows, initiating the invasion of the air outside. The aroma of my house melts into the outside.

Read the rest of Naseeb’s essay .

Harshil Chidura decided to respond to the fifth prompt: Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

Harshil’s essay tackles that phase between childhood and adulthood, and how treasuring his younger self has helped him confront a daunting future. Harshil writes:

I still feel like someone who watches Minecraft “Let’s Play” episodes in his free time, who plays football in his backyard, and whose greatest source of excitement is a GameStop gift card on his birthday. I still feel like I should be nervous about starting the fifth grade, eating Popsicles after a long day of playing outside with super soakers, and celebrating my half birthday. And yet, it has been years since I have done any one of those things, nor am I particularly interested in them now. My interests and hobbies have matured along with me and the rest of my peers. But still, I feel like no time has passed at all.

Read Harshil’s full essay.

Zachary Flink responded to the last prompt: Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

Zachary writes about feeling like there are two versions of himself. His essay begins:

I live each day as two different people. The daily swallowing of a pill takes out my brain and replaces it with another. This statement seems so ridiculous. A tiny 50 milligram pill doesn’t seem like it has the power to change who you are for seven hours. From 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., I live life as an overly determined robot.

Read the rest of Zachary’s essay.

For the summative unit assessment, I had students follow the model of The Learning Network’s Annotated by the Author series, in which student writers reveal their writing process through annotations and a short video interview. I asked students to create their own videos in Flipgrid , explaining which essay they chose for their Common App and why, and outlining the author choices and moves they made.

Here are videos from three students:

Seoah An talks about how she used word choice and sentence structure to highlight her feelings of alienation and cultural difference in her essay “The Name Game.”

Teagan Hemmerly discusses how she deployed sensory details to show the pressure she feels to be perfect.

Shreya Ravipati tells viewers why she chose a “nonsensical topic” — everything bagels — to show her personal growth.

Rising seniors are often trapped in the quicksand of thinking they know it all, and yet knowing they know nothing. Giving them personal essay mentor texts from The Times, and using the Learning Network’s narrative-writing framework, helps them see that they really do have a story worth telling, and that their own voices can be powerful, meaningful and clear.

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Christopher Rim: Motivating the Next Generation

Mary Hubbard |  January 1, 2020

A 4.0 GPA and perfect standardized test scores won’t get your kid from Horace Mann into Harvard. Christopher Rim had neither, yet was the only student from over a dozen at his high school that was accepted to Yale. “Don’t waste your time,” Christopher’s high school guidance counselor replied when he declared he was applying to the elite New Haven school. Christopher knew he lacked the perfect numbers Ivy League schools reputably desired, but he also knew that his unique extracurricular activities made him stand out among his peers. Perhaps Yale recognized Christopher’s entrepreneurial spirit, which led him to start a tutoring company in 8th grade, a global non-profit organization in high school, and, after Yale, Command Education – the nation’s leading educational consulting company.

How It All Started

The ambitious spirit that helped land now twenty-four-year-old Christopher in the Ivy League was apparent early on. In the eighth grade, Christopher placed out of mathematics and into a class where he was asked to work on a year-long project building a website. He decided to create a website for a math tutoring company. While his friends bagged groceries at Englewood’s local grocery store, fourteen-year-old Christopher grew his first business. That winter, the Westfield Garden State Plaza Mall was so impressed that they offered Christopher free ad space on the billboard in front of the mall’s Sephora.

Three years later, a family friend committed suicide as a result of severe bullying, and Christopher knew he had to take action. He started It Ends Today, a global non-profit organization with the aim of educating students on the harmful effects of bullying, and the ways in which students and teachers alike can improve school climate and culture. The organization made an impact on both a local and national level, expanding into over a dozen chapters across the U.S.

What Top Colleges Are Looking For

By the time Christopher applied to Yale, college admissions had evolved from admitting legacy students in the 1950s and stereotypically well-rounded students in the 1990s to recognizing passion and impact in the early 21st century. Schools were no longer looking for well-rounded students. They now searched for students with a singular focus, a “hook”, who would add unique value to their college communities.

The fall after he was admitted to Yale, underclassmen from Christopher’s high school asked for his assistance with their applications, and he obliged. Unbeknownst to Christopher, Command Education’s foundation was laid. The first student that he helped was admitted to MIT, the second student to Stanford. These acceptances built Christopher’s credibility among New Jersey and New York parent groups. During his sophomore year, Christopher successfully guided thirty students through the college admissions process.

By the time he graduated from Yale, Christopher noticed that students applying from elite private schools like Horace Mann or boarding schools like Deerfield were struggling with college admissions. One distressed private school parent came to Christopher this year to register their younger son. The year before, her high achieving daughter, who had near perfect GPA and perfect SAT and SAT II Subject Tests, was deferred and ultimately rejected from all of her top reaches. In the face of brutal competition, the students who tended to be offered the coveted spots at Ivy League and other top tier schools were athletic recruits, children of double legacy families, or minority students. Christopher wanted to help the students who fell between the cracks to stand out amongst their peers. He knew that the key to receiving admission to college was no longer just earning perfect grades and test scores, but making an impact within a student’s school and community.

Emotional Intelligence at Yale

Christopher’s mentoring philosophy was heavily informed by his college studies. At Yale, Christopher studied psychology under Dr. Marc Brackett, Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. As a research assistant, Christopher helped conduct a school climate survey of 44,000 high school students. The survey found that 75% of the words that students used to describe how they felt at school were negative. The most common words used were “tired,” “stressed,” and “bored.”

If this is how students felt at school, then Christopher knew they weren’t maximizing their potential. Christopher wanted his work with students to help them feel just the opposite. He knew acting on his passions as a high school student had led to his happiness and success, and wanted to help his students find their own interests. So, Christopher developed a highly individualized mentoring style by spending time exploring and developing each student’s unique passions and ambitions.

Today, this philosophy lies at the core of Command Education’s mentoring. Christopher says mentoring relationships are successful because students can relate to their hand-picked, near-peer mentors, who themselves are recent graduates of Ivy League and top tier colleges. Each mentor brings with them the unique experiences that got them admitted to their top schools. Though students receive one primary mentor, Christopher explains that the twelve mentors are always available for each student. If a student’s project may benefit from a second mentor with a different expertise, that mentor will be brought on to collaborate. Student writing is often edited by two sets of eyes and senior college application work is always reviewed by two mentors. So, each student has a full team helping them succeed.

Beyond College Consulting

Command’s team of mentors spend time getting to know their students to provide an individualized mentoring experience. In a process Christopher calls “finding a hook,” mentors work with students to identify and develop their passions, which they are encouraged to explore in the classroom and community. They guide their students to focus and excel academically, boost their confidence, and excite them about potential lifelong passions. Work with students often includes helping them to pick courses and decide where to volunteer, research, or intern. They help students develop, their passions through summer programs, like researching their interests with professors, graduate students or postdoctoral fellows at local universities and attending programs tailored to their interests.

Mentors and students meet regularly, discussing big picture hopes and dreams, upcoming summer plans, and plan long-term standardized test schedules and college visits. They also discuss day to day matters like study habits and grades, the importance of time management, stress management, and a healthy balance of work and fun. One student Kevin, who asked not to use his last name, said of his Command experience, “My mentor coached me to improve my writing skills immensely & provided me with sincere emotional support during stressful periods. By far the best form of counseling I’ve had in my life!”

In exploring their passions, students also work with Command’s full-service in-house marketing team, which includes designers and a web developer. This team helps students expand their projects by building a website, developing branding and social media strategy, and recruiting press for student accomplishments. The team has helped students develop websites, magazines, publications, brochures, and much more.

A Formidable Team

Command has grown since Christopher founded it in his Yale dorm room in 2015, and is now comprised of three partners and twelve mentors. Christopher met Wafa Muflahi when they were both students at Yale. She was a gifted writer and easy to talk to, so Christopher knew Wafa would put high school students at ease and asked her to come on board as his partner. In 2017, Christopher met Roberta Seiler, start-up consultant, and two became three. By then, Command found its headquarters in Midtown East, above the men’s Bergdorf Goodman on 5th Avenue. Command now occupies Jimmy Choo’s former headquarters, an 8,000 square foot office at 750 Lexington Avenue.

At Command, there’s a mentor every student can relate and look up to. There’s a former US Open record holder and two-time Olympic Trials competitor for the student athlete navigating the complex recruitment process, a medical journal-published author with international experience in healthcare policy, infectious diseases, and drug development for the future doctor or scientist, an amici curia brief contributor of the Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges for the ambitious writer or future lawyer, and Congressional Award Gold Medalists and Donald Kennedy Public Service Fellow for the avid philanthropist.

How Command Education Works

Command Education only takes 24 students per grade level at any given time to ensure that students are getting the individualized attention they need. Presently, students can work with mentors in many different ways. Most commonly, they choose to work through hourly 1:1 mentoring or through a package that includes unlimited hours, meaning that they can meet with their mentors as frequently as they need. Such mentoring options are separated into various packages. Designed for high school freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, The Premier Roadmap Package™ is a 12-month package that includes extracurricular and leadership development, non-profit development, resume and cover letter assistance, standardized testing timeline, assistance with applications for contests and awards, and course selection. Services include feedback via videocall, text and email, edits and suggestions on essays and other documents. For seniors, Command offers the Premier Senior Package™ designed to take high school seniors through the college application process, from choosing the perfect schools to writing the most compelling college essays and acing the college alumni interviews.

Command offers specialized options, too, like CommandMed™ and CommandCreative™. Command Med™ is a specialized program designed to offer individualized assistance to high school students interested in applying to combined Bachelor’s/Doctorate of Medicine (BS/MD) programs as well as Bachelor’s/Doctorate of Dental Studies (BS/DDS) programs. Command Creative™ offers guidance and individualized assistance to high school students interested in fiction, poetry, playwriting, screenwriting, or creative non-fiction. The program is catered to each specific student’s needs, from help developing ideas and editing portfolios, to writing query letters and applying for jobs in the industry of their choice, to getting published and winning competitions.

In addition to these various packages, Command has developed a tutoring service. If a student is struggling with a class or with a standardized tests, their mentor will refer them to Command’s tutoring team. Though Command emphasizes passions and projects, they don’t underestimate the importance of excellent SAT or ACT scores, and the demonstration of expertise in a specific subject through high SAT II scores. Students will work with a team of tutors, receive individualized tutoring and improve their grades. Mirroring the team of mentors, students often have more than one specialized tutor: one for each specific SAT or ACT section, SAT Subject Test or class.

Christopher believes his most successful students are those who start their work with mentors at a young age, as early as eighth or ninth grade. He explains a domino effect: students identify their passions early and explore them through classwork and extracurricular activities. Passions shift and change as students grow, allowing them to determine where they truly lie, and to think about their future ambitions. Long-term work with mentors allows students to excel in their passions over time. These are the students who make an impact in their schools and communities. Of course, many students begin their work with Command Education later in their high school careers. This just means mentors and students must accomplish a great deal in a shorter period of time.

THE 5-DAY APPLICATION BOOSTER® CAMP

Many students begin their work with Command the summer before their senior years of high school in preparation for the college application process, attending Command’s week-long Application Booster® Camp. Students fly from all over the world to Command’s NYC headquarters to attend this program, which sells out every year.

At Application Booster® Camp, students work one-on-one with mentors to write their Common Application essays. The benefits of attending the camp are numerous; those who attend finish the Common Application personal statement—the most time consuming portion of college applications—before the start of their senior years. This allows students to focus on the remaining standardized tests they may have to take and earn high grades on their senior year courses, which they send to colleges that winter. Lastly, parents write that checking this off of the to-do list relieves stress on their end as well.

At the Application Booster® Camp, students receive continuous rounds of feedback daily from their mentors, allowing them to accomplish in a week what can take months to finish alone. One student, Amy, who preferred not to use her last name, said that “the best part of Camp was watching the transformation my essays went through to earn me acceptance to Dartmouth. My essay’s first drafts were plain and nondescript, but my instructors showed me what would catch the eye of an admission officer. At the end of Camp, I had become a much better writer.” She was admitted to Dartmouth later that year.

Command’s team of experienced mentors is aware that the personal writing required for college essays can be difficult for students to approach. As such, they take care to walk students through the introspection required for a successful application. David, who asked not to use his last name, was admitted to Harvard after his work with Command. He said, “The guidance I received at Camp writing my Harvard supplement helped me understand the nuance required in crafting a concise, authentic essay. Dan’s commitment to individualized instruction really helped me grow as a writer.”

Success Stories

Between individualized tutoring and 1:1 mentoring, the majority of Command’s students have gone on to achieve their dreams and so much more.

One NYC-based student’s passions lay in environmental sciences and debate. In addition to studying for the SAT, she spent her summers between debate camps and a Black Rock Forest internship in upstate New York. In school, she spearheaded eco-friendly initiatives, raising money through a metal straw sale. Recognizing the importance of discussing issues she was passionate about, she founded a zine at her school with the aim to provide a platform for students to voice issues that were important to them, such as college, social issues and academic pressures. Command’s in-house designer collaborated with the student on both the zine logo and designed the zine itself. This student received an offer of admission from Dartmouth University.

Another student was fascinated by linguistics and philosophy. She spent her summers researching emotional intelligence and language with a Columbia professor. At school, she started a bilingual poetry magazine, for which Command’s in-house designer also completed the design work. She’s received a letter of admission from Columbia University.

By the time students apply for college, Command’s team have helped students to shape unique and interesting resumes and strong transcripts. The process works —  94% of Command’s students are accepted to one or more of their top three schools.

Parents are known to fork over $2,500/hr to work with Command Education’s Senior Mentors and up to $5,000/hr to work with the CEO, Christopher Rim, himself or his Partner, Wafa Muflahi. Yet despite the high price tag, families find the growth they see their students achieve worth every penny. Christopher shared the elated messages he has received from parents and students saved on his phone. “Selecting Christopher and his team to help my daughter apply to the perfect college has been one of the best investments I have made. I want to pass on the good news that my daughter will be joining Wharton. We are over the moon!” wrote the parent of one University of Pennsylvania admit.

Command mentors often receive thrilled messages from their students. At the end of a Premier Roadmap Package®, students have completed countless hours of hard work with their mentors, and more often than not, it pays off. Another email to Christopher shared from the parent of a Stanford admit read, “We were and still are in shock. I honestly can’t thank you enough for everything you and your team did to support [our daughter]. Your guidance is what nailed it.” This is just one example of the many thrilled notes Christopher and his team receive.

Looking forward, Christopher and his team are looking to expand globally. Though they currently work with students from all around the globe, formal expansion into Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Dubai, and the United Kingdom are in the works.

Originally published in Resident Magazine on Jan 1, 2020.

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