College Essay Writing & Editing

We get it – college essays are important. Nowadays, your college essays are just as important as your extracurriculars. That is, college admissions officers rely on them to distinguish applicants like you from others. If done properly, you’ll stand out and help admissions officers remember you. Put plain and simple, if you don’t have strong essays, you won’t get accepted into your dream school.

At Barrett & Clarke Prep, we help our students write and revise their college essays to meet the standards of Ivy League schools. Our team helps students brainstorm their college essay idea, make drafts, and revise them. If the student already has a draft, we have a second program (B) for just that. Wherever the student is in the process, we’re here to help.

Program A: Starting From Scratch

Read Sample Essays that Worked

To start, one of our tutors will work with your child to analyze college essays that worked, as well as those that didn’t. Getting an idea of what makes a good college essay is crucial to writing one yourself.

Brainstorming An Idea

Whether it be for the personal statement or a supplemental essay, a great essay starts with a good idea. Our tutors will work with your child to generate lists of ideas/themes that are acceptable for a college essay. Then, they’ll work together to pick an authentic topic and theme out of that list, which will serve as the pedestal to the rest of the essay.

Crafting the First Draft

Now that a strong topic and theme for the essay has been developed, it’s time to get words down on paper. Our tutors will work with your child to write a preliminary draft to brainstorm ideas. This draft will likely exceed the word limit for the essay, but once again, the idea here is to simply get as many ideas down as possible, which will make it easier to edit the essay later on.

The Second-Fourth Drafts

Let’s face it – crafting the perfect essay takes a lot of revision. During this stage, our tutors will work on the essay piece by piece, building structure, syntax, and grammar.

Polishing up the essay

After the last draft is written by your child with the supervision of one of our tutors, the final essay will be reviewed and edited by the rest of the team, including several tutors from a variety of universities. Once reviewed, the essay is ready to be submitted.

Program B: Editing Already-Written Essays

Initial Thoughts and Feedback

When you first submit your essay(s), we will leave comments on the side of the page to explain the essays’ strengths and weaknesses. We’ll include thoughts on the overall essay, which will determine the extent to which it needs to be rewritten. This first step will dictate the trajectory of the essay’s transformation.

Implement the Feedback

Once the student has read and understood the comments from step 1, we will provide qualitative and quantitative feedback to help edit and revise those portions with the student.

Final Revisions and Feedback

Finally, the essay will be reviewed by the rest of the team, and it will be revised using cumulative feedback. The student will have the opportunity to understand the feedback and approve appropriate suggestions that will enhance the quality of the essay. Once through the approval, the tutors will finalize the edits. By the end of this phase, the student will be left with a piece of art that is ready to be submitted.

Personal Statement VS Supplemental Essays

1) The Personal Statement is the 650 word essay that is submitted to every college you apply to. It can be about anything, but there are seven prompts to guide you.

2) The supplemental essays are the school-specific essays that range anywhere from 50 - 600 words. Each school that you apply to will have anywhere from 1-5 supplemental essay questions to answer.

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