Students placed at Harvard, MIT, Columbia, Brown, Cornell, UPenn.
An admissions practice built on personal statements and supplemental essays, SAT verbal instruction, and research mentorship. The work is critical feedback, not editing — close reading and honest response across drafts, so students polish their own prose and let their voice come through.
Caedmon, an unlettered cowherd in the abbey of Whitby, fell asleep one night and woke able to sing. The first English poet, Bede tells us, began by being given the words for what he already knew.
— After Bede, Ecclesiastical History, IV.24Admissions outcomes secured by students supported on essays, SAT verbal, or full admissions counseling — across engagements with Crimson Education, Lenox Education, INDIGO, LogoLife, and others.
Personal statements and supplemental essays for the most selective US universities. Multi-draft work over the application cycle, with the editorial eye of someone who has spent twenty years reading prose that is trying to do something honest.
Reading comprehension and rhetorical analysis taught from inside the disciplines they are drawing on. Group sessions and 1-on-1 work. Strongest with students aiming for 750+ on the verbal section.
Long-form research mentorship in the social sciences and humanities — from topic selection through a publishable paper. Outcomes include acceptance to the International Journal of High School Research and the Convergence Journal, with placements at peer-reviewed undergraduate venues.
Coaching for the most competitive humanities and social science essay prizes. Recent students have won the Harvard International Review Academic Writing Contest and earned commendation and high commendation in the John Locke Institute Global Essay Prize. Work covers topic selection, argument architecture, and the editorial passes that move an essay from competent to placing.
One-on-one tutoring in humanities and social science subjects at the IB, A-Level, AP, and university preparatory levels. Particular strengths in writing instruction, Theory of Knowledge, philosophy, religious studies, and history of ideas.
The personal statement is the only place in an application where a student speaks in the first person. The work, in this reading, is almost never about finding new content — it is about hearing the content the student already has, and helping them say it without the protective armor of cliché.
That requires a reader who has spent years close-reading other people's first-person prose. Three graduate degrees in religion and philosophy were, among other things, training in exactly that.
The strongest work happens with applicants whose academic interests are genuine but who haven't yet found language for them — students drawn to philosophy of mind, economics of inequality, the history of science, comparative literature, religious studies, public policy, mathematics for its own sake. The kind of student who reads.
This practice is less useful to applicants who want a counselor to manufacture a profile. The students it does best work with already have a self to articulate.
PhD, Religion · Philosophy of Religion
Boston University
Master of Divinity
Harvard Divinity School
MA, Social Sciences
University of Chicago
BA, Government & Anthropology
Franklin & Marshall College
A first call is thirty minutes and costs nothing. Expect questions about what year you're in, what you're reading, where you think you might apply, and what the essay is trying to do. From there we'll know whether to work together.