The average American student attends school 180 days each year. 

Multiply that by 12 years and, by the time you graduate, you get 2,160 compulsory school days. You would think after all that reading, writing, studying, test-taking, and amassing of extracurricular and civic engagements that writing a college admissions essay would be a breeze. For many, however, that could not be further from the truth.

As the author of several acclaimed personal narratives and memoirs, including the groundbreaking and National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) funded solo performance “Sitting in Circles with Rich White Girls: Memoirs of a Bulimic Black Boy,” I have spent the last eight years leading writing workshops at over 70 colleges and universities. I can attest that even current college/university students regard writing their college admissions essay as one of their most stressful and daunting experiences to date.

Somewhere around seventh grade, schools of the United States tend to shift from an emphasis on narrative and descriptive writing to expository and persuasive writing. As the vast majority of college/university admissions departments favor narrative and descriptive essays, this creates an unfortunate situation for many college applicants. Even advanced high school writers may find the college admissions essay difficult to write.

As the creator of the workshops “Bearing Witness: The Art of Narrative and Memoir Writing” and “Beyond the Box: The Art of Exploring and Writing About Identity” I am uniquely skilled at helping students write heartfelt, authentic, and compelling admission essays. Honoring each student’s role as both participant and witness in not only their own life but also the lives of others, I work with students to unearth, awaken, and harness their stories and inner storyteller, which are so often dormant in all of us. We then turn these stories into the kind of essays that transport admissions officers to a time and place showered in such vivid detail it is as if they have been personally invited into the past to experience the writer’s life first hand.

For more information, please take a look at our Services, Tips, Bio, and Writing Samples. I look forward to collaborating with you so that you can bring your entire self, past and present, to the process of bearing witness to your identity and addressing those enduring questions at the heart of all college admissions essays: “Who are you?” “How will you benefit by being admitted?” “How will the university benefit by admitting you?”

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