Most students know what happened to them.
Very few know what those moments meant.
That’s where we begin.
Not a bigger vocabulary. Not a better résumé line. The real story sitting underneath the one you were about to tell instead. Fair warning: this is actually fun. Most sessions, I ask one odd question and watch you surprise yourself with the answer.
You already know what happened to you. My job is finding out what it actually means.
You think your essay has to be about hitting the shot that won sectionals.
It’s actually about freshman year, when a varsity spot opened up and you almost turned it down because taking it meant taking the place of a senior who’d been waiting three years for that opportunity. He had enough social capital to make sure you never walked through another party door again.
Instead, he found you before the roster was posted.
He told you to take it.
Not because he was trying to be noble. Because he already knew what came next. He was headed to study political science, then law school. He wanted to spend his senior season with the team that gave him the best chance to compete, then go to college and have a blast playing intramurals with his friends. He wasn’t clinging to a dream that no longer fit.
Then he said something you’ll never forget.
“I’d rather watch someone else begin their dream than pretend mine is still the same.”
That’s the story. Not the box score. Not the trophy. The moment that quietly reveals your character when no one expects it.
That’s what admissions officers remember.
Students spend years building a résumé. Colleges spend minutes reading it.
The essay is one of the only places an admissions officer meets the actual human being behind the achievements. That’s why this doesn’t begin with writing. It begins with listening.
The best essays aren’t manufactured. They’re uncovered. They’re spoken long before they’re ever written down. My job isn’t to put words into a student’s mouth. It’s to help them recognize the ones that were already there.
That’s also why the name is the promise, not just a name. The question every parent quietly has is: is someone else writing my kid’s essay? In Your Words answers it directly. I’m not giving your student my words. I’m helping them find theirs.
Here’s the part nobody likes to say out loud. An essay cannot turn you into something you aren’t. The most beautifully crafted essay in the world is not getting a 3.2 into Harvard. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
What the essay can do is show the humanness a transcript never will. The actual you. And sometimes, when we find the real story, it does something more than that: it becomes the meet-cute. The moment a school reads about a kid who already sounds like their culture, their values, the thing they’re building, and thinks: this one. That’s not craft. That’s a real story meeting the right reader at the right moment.
Here’s the truth, though: I actually love this part of the work. Every family that sits down with me hands me a different story, and I get a little delighted every single time we find the real one. That part never gets old.
Five steps. The essay never comes first.
Discover
We begin with who you are on paper: grades, activities, schools, goals. Not because your essay comes from your résumé, but because it gives us a place to start.
Listen
This is where everything changes. With your family, we talk honestly about your experiences, your relationships, and the moments you assume matter. Sometimes they do. More often, they point us toward something even better.
Uncover
You’ll receive a personalized set of short prompts built just for you. No five-page essays, no pressure, just honest answers. This is where the unexpected story starts to surface.
Build
Together, we identify the moments worth exploring and shape an essay around them. Not around accomplishments. Around meaning.
Refine
Write independently, revise together, or collaborate start to finish, whichever you choose, we make sure the finished essay sounds exactly like it should. In your words.
College admissions and storytelling. Same craft, told in your words.
Whatever the room, the job’s the same: find the thread that’s actually true, then build the sentence that makes someone lean in.
College Admissions
- Personal statement (Common App)
- Supplemental essays, with school-fit research
- Honors society applications
- Speeches, valedictorian, scholarship interviews
Storytelling & Life Stories
- Personal essays and life stories
- Press releases, articles
- Interview coaching and written Q&A
- Personal brand building and social media
Idea generation first. Editing is its own thing.
My real value is finding the idea and the structure with you, that’s Concept, the foundation every tier builds on. Every package below tells you exactly what it includes, how long it takes, and what you walk away with. Already have a draft? The Edit is a separate, standalone service.
- Parent + student session (90 min) to land on the real story
- Solo student session (90 min), often enough time to get real pages drafted live
- You leave with a structure and a real head start, not just an outline
Timeline: Usually wrapped in 1–2 weeks.
You’ll have: A structure and a genuine head start on the draft.
- Everything in Concept, plus:
- Drafting done together, not handed off
- 2 rounds of revision once a draft exists
Timeline: Usually wrapped in 3–4 weeks.
You’ll have: A finished, submission-ready essay.
- Everything in Concept + Essay, plus:
- School research woven in: values, mission, fit
- 3 additional 60-minute sessions, one per supplemental, to build each one’s structure
Timeline: Usually 4–6 weeks, paced to your deadlines.
You’ll have: A complete, submission-ready application set.
- Structural notes: what’s working, what’s not, what’s missing
- Grammar, tone, and style edits, line by line
- 48-hour turnaround per round, up to 2 rounds
Timeline: 48 hours per round.
You’ll have: A sharper, submission-ready version of what you already wrote.
Not sure which fits? Start with a discovery call.$115, virtual or in person. Comes off the price if you book a package afterward.
Book a discovery callFair questions. Straight answers.
No hedging, no “reach out to learn more.” If you’re still deciding, this should cover it.
Who is this actually for?
Someone willing to sit down and actually answer a question instead of skimming past it. If what you want is an essay handed back in 48 hours with zero conversation, plenty of services do that well, this isn’t one of them. This works if you’re willing to trust a process that starts with talking, not typing, even when it feels slower than it should.
Do you write the essay for me?
No. I ask a lot of questions, notice the thing you weren’t planning to say, and help you build it into something specific and true. If you want it to sound like an admissions consultant wrote it, I’m not your best match.
What if I don’t think I have an interesting story?
Everyone believes this before we start. Almost no one believes it after step two. The story is rarely the one you assumed it was.
How long does this actually take?
Concept: 1–2 weeks. Concept + Essay: 3–4 weeks. Full Story: 4–6 weeks. Start earlier than feels necessary. It always takes exactly as long as you give it.
Can parents be part of this?
Yes, it’s built in. Concept starts with a parent session before the student session, on purpose. Parents usually clock the real moment before the student does.
I’m on a tight deadline. Is that a problem?
Tell me upfront. I’ll be straight with you about whether we can actually make it work, instead of promising and scrambling later.
Do you guarantee admission?
No one honest does. What I can guarantee is that the essay will actually sound like you and say something real. That’s the part I control.
Concept vs. The Edit, which do I need?
Concept builds the idea and structure from nothing. The Edit assumes a full draft already exists and needs a sharper pass. Not sure? The discovery call figures it out, and its cost comes off whichever you book.
It started with one paragraph.
In eleventh grade, my English teacher spent an entire year on one paragraph: the opening line of an essay. Not the essay. The opening. At the time I just thought she was a little obsessed. I’ve never forgotten a word of it.
That lesson followed me into law school, where it turned out to have a second life. An argument works the same way an essay does: make your point early, then earn it, in a way that doesn’t just make a reader follow you, it makes them feel something. Nobody wins a case on facts alone, and nobody gets read twice on résumé lines alone either.
I’ve been chasing that feeling in writing ever since. For the law. For Huffington Post and MindBodyGreen. For a pile of blogs I randomly felt compelled to submit to over twenty years, never because someone assigned it, always because it mattered to me.
The first college essay I ever touched wasn’t mine. It was my brother’s, applying to Villanova, back in 2005. I’m not particularly proud of the essay. I’m proud that I packed it with words he didn’t know, which is still a running joke in my family two decades later. I genuinely thought sounding smart was the whole game.
Twenty years and a lot of essays later, I know better. It was never about sounding smart. It’s about a person leaping off the page, so an admissions officer isn’t reading an application, they’re meeting someone. Who are you actually talking to? Where do you actually fit? Getting into college was never just about deciding you like a school. It’s about a place recognizing you belong there.
None of this started as a methodology, if I’m honest. It came from being naturally curious, the same instinct that had me writing things nobody assigned me for twenty years straight. I didn’t sit down and design a system. It turned out the way I’ve always talked to people, ask a question, then ask the question underneath that question, was the thing that actually worked.
Admissions isn’t a math problem. It’s a dating app. The best colleges aren’t just swiping right on the highest GPA or the longest résumé. They’re looking for a genuine fit. The question isn’t simply, are you impressive? It’s, are you our kind of person?
That’s where I come in. I don’t invent a new version of you. I make sure the real you is impossible to overlook by the schools where you’ll actually belong.
In Your Words 