College Application Essays
Personal sessions with a tutor will reduce the intimidation factor for your child and enable them to write compelling essays.
Outstanding Essays
College application essays are in a class by themselves.
Your child must convey who they are, what's important to them, and why they’ll be a vital member of the college community to an anonymous admissions officer. And this officer will read essay after essay from other students just as eager to stand out and earn a spot in the new class.
With Nurturing Wisdom, you get the support of a whole team! Your tutoring director will match your child with a tutor they’ll connect with and trust. This is incredibly important for work on college application essays, which can be highly personal. Each tutor is also supported by a coach who, if requested, can give additional feedback on your child's essays.
What do tutoring sessions include?
Your child will meet with their tutor in-person or online for 1:1 sessions, and they’ll also communicate via Google Docs. Depending on their needs, your child may work on any of the following areas:
Brainstorming and Choosing Topics
Your tutor knows what questions to ask to get your child thinking about their life experiences in a way that will resonate with college admissions officers. Once several ideas are on the table, your child and their tutor will have a conversation about how the ideas tie into the essay prompt.
Writing and Revising Essays
This is where the hard work comes in! Your tutor will help your child define themes, add rich detail, maintain tone, and edit for clarity. What your tutor will not do is write your child’s essays for them! College admissions officers want to learn about your child in their own words, through their own lens.
Writing Skills
For students who are weak or reluctant writers, tutors provide mini-lessons to improve grammar, sentence structure, and paragraph organization. Then they support them as they apply these skills.
School Research
Some supplemental essays (see below) ask that students explain why they want to attend that school. Your tutor can guide your child through school research so that they’ll be able to capture precisely and personally what appeals to them and why it’s an ideal match.
Final Editing
The final step of the essay writing process is a detailed edit to ensure that the essays are polished and free of grammar and punctuation errors.
How many sessions will your child have to meet?
Each student's needs vary depending on their writing ability, the number of essays their colleges require, and time until their deadline. So we customize our tutoring recommendations for each student. That can range from two or three sessions to fifteen or more.
If you're interested in a package rather than an open-ended approach, check out our Common App Essay package!
How many application essays will your child have to write?
It depends on what schools they apply to! They'll likely encounter a few different types of essay requirements.
Here’s what to expect:
Common App
The Common App allows students to complete a single application that can then be submitted to any schools that are Common App members. One element of the application is an essay. The Common App essay prompts largely remain the same from year to year. If revisions are made, the new prompts are typically released in the winter or spring, which means students can start working on this essay during the summer before their senior year. We offer a six-hour Common App Essay package to help students accomplish this task effectively and efficiently!
Coalition Application
The Coalition Application is similar to the Common App, but with a much smaller membership of schools. Some colleges will accept either app.
Supplemental
Some colleges that take the Common App or Coalition App also require additional school-specific essays. These responses range from one sentence to full-length essays and help the school learn more about your child. Supplemental prompts are usually released in August or September.
Independent Application
Not all colleges are members of the Common or Coalition Apps. Some have their own application, and others belong to another group (e.g. the University of California system). These schools frequently require one or more essays as part of their applications. The prompts are generally released in August or September.
When should you start?
We're happy to work with students at any point on their essays! Many students begin working on their Common App essay the summer before their senior year, and their supplemental essays in the late summer or early fall.
We like starting during the summer because it gives us the time (apart from school responsibilities) these essays deserve:
- It's not unusual for students to scrap original ideas once they start to elaborate. We want them to have time to try out some ideas and land on the one they feel best represents them.
- This kind of writing and tutoring involves some vulnerability. A student and their tutor need time to build comfort and trust.
- The writing process is more than just writing! From brainstorming to organizing, revising to polishing, students have a good deal of work to do.
