When we start working together, my immediate goal is to get to know you better than almost anyone in your life.
Stage 1: Deep Brainstorming
I’ll have you write your life story, almost like a journal. You’ll free-write several pages about your life from when you were young until now.
For you, this process organizes your experiences on paper and enables you to see patterns and narratives in them. For me, it does the same while also enabling me to get to know you really well.
After completing the life story, you’ll fill out a questionnaire that has more targeted questions. Some are short answers; others are open-ended. This part of the brainstorming process is more structured; the life story is unstructured.
These two major brainstorming steps work in synergy. After you finish both documents, I’ll review them closely and comment asking for clarification in some places, maybe elaboration in others.
I might even ask questions simply because I’m curious about something. This sometimes leads to interesting off-topic conversations and other times to good ideas for essays. The key here is that I often pry and am nosy, so you should be prepared to be an open book if you work with me.
Stage 2: Strategic Framing
At this point, ideally we both have ideas for your essays, or at least one of us does, and we’ll start discussing and refining them.
Once we’ve refined them, I’ll have you write a barebones outline. By barebones, I mean topic sentences for each section of the essay. The goal here is twofold: 1) ensure you have some structure for your essays without being pigeonholed by your outline, and 2) make sure we’re on the same page.
With the latter, it would be counterproductive for us to first realize we’re not on the same page after you’ve written a full draft. With the outline, we can make sure we’re on the same page before you begin writing your essays.
Stage 3: Unlimited Drafting & Real Feedback
It’s time for you to draft the first version of your essay. You’ll upload to the Google Drive folder I create for you and save it as version 1. I will then save it as version 2 and begin providing feedback through comments and tracked changes. I also often use audio messages as a means of providing feedback when it’s efficient.
Every time one of us works on a new draft, we save it as a new version. The reason for this is so that we always have access to our prior work. For example, if we delete something in version 5 but then realize at version 10 that the deleted material would actually make sense, we can easily add it back in.
We will continue going back and forth through this process for as many drafts as needed. I don’t have a limit on number of drafts; some people require only a handful while others require several dozen.
Stage 4: Final Polish & Narrative Cohesion
Once we finish each essay, we’ll each do a final review for typos and continuity issues. We’ll also check to ensure the overall narrative is cohesive between personal statement, resume, diversity statement (if applicable), and additional essays.
That’s it! We will definitely discuss the process more on a consultation.