Dave

Rate $175
Response 1h
Students
Number of students Dave has taught since their arrival at Superprof
2
Number of students Dave has taught since their arrival at Superprof

$175/h

Essay writing
Writing

College Application Essay Coaching — Published Novelist (Random House) & Yale Graduate | Personal Statement, Supplements & Activities List | The Essays Only Your Kid Could Have Written

Essay writing
Writing

Lesson location

- online

About Dave

I'm a professional writing coach and novelist. I work individually with high school students on the writing side of their college applications — the Common App personal statement, supplementals, and the activities section. Sessions are done by video, with written notes on drafts back within 48 hours.

My books have been published by Random House, and I've written under contract for Star Wars, Transformers, and Call of Duty. I graduated from Yale with a degree in history, and spent several years at a company later acquired by Gartner, coaching Fortune 500 executives one-on-one on structure and storytelling.

Most people who do this work come from admissions offices or general tutoring. Very few of them write for a living. That matters, because the college essay isn't just an admissions problem — it's a writing problem. A senior sits down to write about themselves and produces something careful, generic, and safe. An essay generated with AI fails the same way, for the same reason: it produces what an essay is supposed to sound like. An admissions reader going through two thousand applications skips those in seconds, and no one ever tells the student why.

Getting past that takes someone who has been edited professionally for years and knows how to help a young writer revise without flattening their voice. I don't write the essays and neither does AI. My job is to help a student find the story they didn't know they had, and tell it in a way only they could have told it.

About the lesson

I start by reading everything the student already has — drafts, fragments, the activities list, work they're proud of. Then an in-depth conversation, which is where the essay actually gets found; it's often not the story they came in planning to tell.

From there: we pick the thread, I give them the shape, they draft, I give line-level notes, and we revise until it's done. Notes come back within 48 hours. Supplemental essays are often adaptable across schools, so I build the set in an order that makes the work carry.

The student writes. That's not a technicality — an essay authored by someone else or by AI reads as careful and generic, and that's exactly what gets skipped by admissions officers.

Early Action and Early Decision deadlines are November 1, which means finished essays by mid-October. Regular Decision runs through the rest of the year in most cases, so there's still time either way. Message me and we'll set up a free 20-minute call to see whether there's a fit.

Rates

Rate

$175

Pack rates

5h: $800
10h: $1,500

online

$100/h

Details

The hourly rate and packs above are for families who want individual sessions. Most people book a flat-fee package instead.

Full application writing — personal statement, supplements for up to 5 schools, and the activities list — $2,400.

Additional schools $250 each. Two full revision rounds on every essay, plus a final polish before submission.

Personal statement only — $950

School list review — $300.

Notes come back within 48 hours. Half at the start, half at first submission. Message me and we'll set up a free 20-minute call to figure out which fits.

College Application Essay Coaching — Published Novelist (Random House) & Yale Graduate | Personal Statement, Supplements & Activities List | The Essays Only Your Kid Could Have Written

Lesson location

About Dave

About the lesson

Rates

Rate

Pack rates

online

Details

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College Application Essay Coaching — Published Novelist (Random House) & Yale Graduate | Personal Statement, Supplements & Activities List | The Essays Only Your Kid Could Have Written

Lesson location

About Dave

About the lesson

Rates

Rate

Pack rates

online

Details

Other tutors in Essay writing

Jonny and Ellen

Ellen

Isabella

Iris

Annabelle

John

Andrew

Jenny

Michelle

Sakhi

Olga

Albert

Spencer

Rachel

John

Jacqueline

Abby

Madison

Nazik

Hannah

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