Do You Edit College Essays?
That is a question I am often asked and yet I hesitate to answer. Maybe I should just get used to answering “Yes!” first, but I often feel the need to explain. What stops me from just saying yes? Well every person who might ask me knows plenty of folks who can simply check spelling and grammar. In fact, that may be all they do. Editing itself is not the highest skill I bring to the table. Not commas, not capitalization, not matching tenses or pronouns correctly. What is uniquely available from a professional college admissions consultant is context, the ability to look at the essay as an essential component of a larger process. By the time a student is writing essays, I have learned much about the young person who is about to commit themselves to paper. I know what is on the student’s transcript and in the student’s brag sheet. We have talked about the teacher recommendations the student will seek and why those teachers were chosen. There may have been an Interest Inventory comp...