Price: $200 (for six pages; $25 per additional page)
Most applicants are surprised to learn that when it comes to writing an outstanding personal statement, most of the work happens before you start trying to write the final draft. Typically, 70 percent or more of the work lies in simply getting your stories, in some form, down on paper. As anyone who’s actually tried to do it knows, it’s not “simple” at all. Finding the right stories and telling them the right way is hard work.
- Maybe you purchased our Consultation (smarty pants) and it helped you identify a “Hub” and five or six key topics, and you’re wondering where to go next;
- Maybe you downloaded our Drafting Jump-Start Questionnaire and you’re wondering what to do with all of your answers;
- Or maybe you’ve just had a bunch of ideas for your personal statement and you don’t know which to pick.
This is where Draft Coaching comes in. Just take those ideas and write about them! The messier the better! If you’re trying to make it “good,” you’re already doing it wrong. Set your computer to 12 point font, single-spaced, and feel free to make the margins as wide as you want and then just….write—a great big block of unfiltered, unedited, tangential, free-associating text. Again, do not try to make it “good.” If you do, guaranteed you will inadvertently cut out the best stuff.
There are really only two rules when it comes to good drafting, and those are the following:
- Don’t edit yourself;
- Tell stories.
Don’t edit yourself means that you should leave in every glorious little tangent and side note as you’re writing and not cut them out just because they’re “off topic.” Those little off-topic detours are often the best parts.
Tell stories means just what it says: tell a bunch of specific stories from your life. Don’t waste time writing about abstract concepts. If you want to spend two pages pontificating about the meaning of Freedom and Justice in the context of our modern socioeconomic disparities, that’s fine; we’re happy to read it and give you our thoughts. But it’s not going to move you closer to a first-rate personal statement the way a series of stories will. You will get the most bang for your buck from this service by just sitting at a computer and telling story after story after story and not worrying about “what they mean.”
And that’s it! You write up to six pages of that, and send it on over to us (along with some information about your scores and application). We will pour over everything you send, analyze it, and tell you which parts you should use and how you should use them in your personal statement. We’ll also tell you how you should go about further developing your ideas and stories so that they’re ready for prime time.
More than one client has called our service “the best writing class [they] ever had” and many others have called it “more like therapy.” When they say that, they’re talking about this part of the process. For most people, the help we provide here at this stage is even more valuable than the help we provide polishing the final draft. That’s why we urge applicants to start using our services here, or in the Consultation, and not wait until the final draft is finished.
You’re welcome to use this service as many times as you like. We should note that if you purchase our Full-Service Editing, you’ll be able to use this exact service over-and-over, as many times as you want, until your essay is finished. But for those on a budget, the Draft Coaching is a fantastic service for taking all your brilliant ideas and developing them into a single working draft.
If you’ve got your six pages (or more) and you’re ready to go, click below to purchase the service and submit your draft.