Nicholas B.

T10 College Essay Coach | UChicago Alum | Common App & Supplements

I'm a college essay coach with College Essay Guy — one of the most widely used admissions resources in the U.S. — and a UChicago MA. I help students turn scattered ideas into personal statements and supplements that actually sound like them. Most students arrive with a topic that's too broad, too resume-like, or too familiar. My job is to find the story underneath: the values, tensions, and turning points that make an essay memorable rather than merely competent. Then I help build it into a structure that holds. Students I've worked with have been admitted to Stanford, Princeton, Brown, and other highly selective universities. WHAT I WORK ON Common App personal statements Supplemental essays, including school-specific "Why us" writing UC Personal Insight Questions Activity lists and honors sections Transfer essays Graduate and medical school statements of purpose Parent-student strategy consultations HOW I WORK We start with a conversation, not a document. I ask questions until we find material worth writing about, then we draft, cut, and sharpen — preserving your voice rather than replacing it with mine. I don't write essays for students. I coach them into essays they could defend in an interview. My graduate training is in how arguments and narratives get built, which is most of what a personal statement actually is. I've worked with U.S. and international students across high school, undergraduate, graduate, and professional school applications. I'm especially useful for two kinds of students: those who are intellectually curious or interdisciplinary and can't figure out how to make that legible on an application, and those whose drafts are technically fine but flat. Send me a draft or the three topics you're considering, and I'll tell you honestly which one has an essay in it.