The personal statement represents an opportunity to transport an admissions officer into the student's world so they can see what the student sees, think what the student thinks, and feel what the student feels. Admissions officers already know from their grades and test scores what students can accomplish— with the personal statement, they want to know what makes a student tick.
All too many students make the mistake of submitting a reformatting of their resume for their essay. Listing their accolades, a student does nothing to demonstrate their psasion, their value system, what drives them, how they will utilize a college's resources, and how they seek to impact the world in the future.
In my process, the student and I join a shared Google doc where I interview the student, riddling them with questions about their lives to reveal captivating stories that encapsulate their character traits, personalities, experiences, passions, and values. Whether the student I'm working with is a racecar driver, a refugee on an H-4 visa, a volleyball fanatic, a film critic, or a precocious biomedical engineer, I always get the student to tell me every detail from a profound moment in their life that serves to demonstrate what they value, how they look at the world, and how they have used their experiences and resources to grow. Then, I edit the document with the student, quickly eliminating redundancies, instances of passive voice, grammatical errors, and vagaries. Usually, within a few sessions, we end with a powerful, polished essay having started from scratch!
Supplemental essays offer a similar opportunity for students to share rich details from their lives to demonstrate their passions, worldviews, experiences, and pieces of wisdom. I help students brainstorm, write, and edit every essay which they have to submit in their applications, all with the emphasis of bringing out their personal voice, true stories, and character traits.
Rob also helps students pack their activities sections and resumes with informative, concise, verb-driven entries through his unique questioning process and extensive experience.
Finally, Rob takes a tailored, flexible approach to assisting students in crafting their college lists where requested through synthesizing students' qualifications, interests, and college search parameters. Unlike other college counselors, Rob continues to optimize students' college lists as they discover themselves through the essay crafting process.
Through his unique one-on-one interview-style essay counseling, Rob has helped hundreds of students reach their dream schools. Notable acceptances to conventional top-tier schools over last two years alone date include Harvard (3.2% acceptance, Yale (6.5%), Johns Hopkins pre-med (<1%), Dartmouth (6.2%), Brown (7.7%), Cornell (10.7%), UIC BSMD (3.0%), NYU Shanghai (7%), and NYU College of Dentistry (10%) UCLA (14.6%)! But students with whom Rob works with have also been accepted to far more selective programs: UIUC BS/MD Program (<1%), UCLA Film School (11 acceptances/3000 applicants), and USC's Elite Film Acting Cohort (30 acceptances/10,000 applicants.
Please reach out so I can share past essays and tell you even more about my process and how I help students every step of the way!
Rob Shaw
Founder, Fathom Academics
