College Essay Tutoring

Individualized College Essay Help

Writing a compelling college admission essay can be daunting. It challenges you to distill your life’s experiences into a few hundred words – each sprinkled like fairy dust to appeal to and resonate with admissions officers. It’s not just an exercise in self-reflection. It is about succinctly communicating your value while being authentic and insightful.

There is a lot at stake, but this is also a fantastic opportunity to carefully consider what you have done, what you believe, and what matters to you so you can tell a meaningful story. With college essay tutoring, you get a skilled and objective strategic partner throughout this process. Together, we will mine your experiences and produce diamonds in the form of essays – revealing who you are and demonstrating the distinct contribution you will make to the college of your choice.

Benefits to Expect from Personalized Coaching

Our skilled college essay tutors are invaluable in guiding you through the nuances of this complex task.

Through our personalized coaching, we help you with the following:

Focused Storytelling

Through probing questions and thoughtful discussion, we help you articulate the experiences and insights that truly define you. You identify the most meaningful parts of your story and learn how to share them effectively.

Structural Clarity

A compelling narrative requires a clear structure that builds toward a fitting conclusion. Our tutors help you organize your thoughts to develop a well-crafted and memorable story.

Authentic Voice

We work with you to enhance your natural writing style, ensuring your essay sounds like you at your best. Writing a great college essay is about polishing your natural voice, not replacing it.

Pitfall Avoidance

Our experienced essay tutors have provided constructive feedback on thousands of student essays. We will alert you to errors and clichés that could undermine your essay’s impact.

Stress Reduction

We understand the college application process. Our expert guidance alleviates the stress of essay writing, making it more manageable and less overwhelming, freeing you to write openly and creatively.

Confidence Building

Besides writing a more potent essay, you will gain greater assurance in your voice and story. You will also build invaluable critical thinking and self-expression skills for your educational journey and beyond.

Each student brings a unique perspective to their essays, which is why tailored coaching is so effective. Our college essay tutors get to know you and work to develop a deep understanding of your personal experiences and writing style to ensure that your essays genuinely reflect your voice and experiences.

Our Process

We can help you work on your college essays one-on-one in Portland or online, or you can attend one of the college essay writing workshops we hold online each summer. In either case, we guide you through a proven process.

Planning: We lead you through a series of brainstorming exercises to inventory your experiences and qualities. You compose a timeline of the meaningful events, write about your essence objects–prized possessions that symbolize essential parts of your story—and identify your values. This enables you to write with narrative detail and insight to show how your background impacted who you are today.

Drafting: You create an outline of concrete steps to clarify your writing intentions. Then, you write your imperfect first draft. We provide feedback and help you plan revisions, introducing additional brainstorming exercises as needed. You then perform as many revisions as necessary while we continue offering feedback and encouragement.

Polishing: As a final step, we pay special attention to the editing and polishing phase, carefully considering every word choice and writerly move. We also review your work through the lens of a college admissions committee in search of any concerns.

Getting Started

Application season starts in the fall of your senior year, so the perfect time to begin looking for a college essay tutor is the spring of your junior year. That will allow you to start the college essay writing process over the summer.

We offer one-on-one coaching, both in-person and online, and weeklong online workshops each summer.

The summer months provide quiet, unburdened time to explore your topics, experiment with drafts, and, ideally, complete the personal statement required by most application systems without the pressure of a looming deadline. It is also wise to start working on any college-specific supplemental essays while crafting your lists of extracurricular activities, test scores, and candidates for letters of recommendation.

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Acceptances to Top Universities

California State at San Luis Obispo

St. Louis University
(Medical Scholars Program)

University of California at San Diego

University of California at Irvine

University of California Los Angeles

University of Oregon (Honors College)

University of Portland

University of Southern California
(World Bachelor in Business program)

University of Washington

Vanderbilt University

Villanova University

Our Qualifications

Our lead college essay tutor and owner of Tutor Visions, David Wolf, Ph.D., has been involved in the admissions process at Portland State University and City University of New York (CUNY). David has over twenty years of relevant university and high school teaching experience and degrees from Brown University and the City University of New York. He was a Writing Instructor in the Honors College at Portland State, where he mentored seniors writing their honors thesis. He has published academic research in peer-reviewed journals and served as a moderator for award-winning student literary magazines.

After working with thousands of students, David realized that his greatest passion was working one-on-one to impart strategies and light a fire in young writers. That prompted him to launch this tutoring business, where he serves as an owner-operator and vets prospective new tutors through this lens. All writing tutors at Tutor Visions must have a background in teaching, a demonstrated enthusiasm for the English language, and impeccable references.

Success Stories

David was an incredible help during the college application process, especially when writing the personal statements. I now attend Vanderbilt University and will be conducting research at Harvard this summer, all of which has largely been due to my time working with David.

David spent a great deal of time with both of my kids helping them with ideas for their college essay and with the fine tuning. He's an excellent resource. The applicants still do their own work (which I find important), and David steps in with great guidance, promoting self-thinking and bringing out great ideas that the applicants might have a hard time putting in writing otherwise.