COLLEGE ESSAY REVIEW SERVICES
With our guidance, you will craft essays that make an admissions impact.
- Work one-on-one with an expert essay coach to brainstorm your topic and plan for your first draft.
- Students are offered professional college application essay reviews to finesse and improve their essays.
- Our essay coaches listen to and support students throughout the entire process.
- Talk to one of our experts to create an essay plan that meets your child’s needs.
Contact Us
Writing a great college essay is challenging
We’ll help you get noticed.
HelloCollege’s full quality review goes beyond basic college essay proofreading. Our team of expert essay coaches, with a combined 80+ years of professional writing experience, begin by assessing an essay’s topic, treatment (how it’s written), content, structure, mechanics, and fact-checking. Subsequent college essay coaching sessions continue to guide students in shaping and polishing the essay, elevating it to its potential.
Essay Review Service also Includes:
One brainstorming conference: video/phone
Continued email support from first to final draft
Up to three essay reviews from your essay coach (in-depth structural critique, proofing and polishing)
We can review any type of essay
HelloCollege helps you avoid essay uncertainty and stress by following a strategic college essay assistance process based on each essay.
Common Application Essays
Supplemental Essays
Honors Program Essays
Coalition Application Essays
Scholarship Essays
Summer Program Essays
How the Review Process Works
One.
Complete your online brainstorming exercise
Two.
Meet one-on-one with your essay coach to fully vet your essay topic and develop a compelling story
Three.
Write and submit your first draft of your essay and submit it online
Four.
Within 48 hours, receive expert editorial guidance, review and edits.
Five.
Continue revising your essay working hand in hand with your essay coach, submitting up to 3 reviews
essay Service options
We offer a variety of services designed to usher you through essay season.
Common App Essay
Work hand in hand with your essay coach to brainstorm, review and polish your essay. At each step, you will receive in-depth feedback with up to three edits and reviews to complete your essay.
Essay Bootcamp
This multi-day bootcamp, offered the summer/fall before Senior year, will enable you to complete your Common Application essay well before “crunch time” arrives in the fall.
Multiple Essay Review
Are you seeking highly selective schools? These custom packages allow you to choose the number of edits that matches your application goals. We offer packages of 10, 20 and 40 edits.
What Families are Saying About
Our Essay Review Services
5/5
The essay workshops and my essay coach were extremely helpful in shaping my ideas into compelling essays. Through HelloCollege, I also made invaluable connections that helped me to create a unique “stand out” submission that I feel made a hugely positive impact on my application portfolio.
Elaine C.
Hinsdale Central Grad - Attending Notre Dame
5/5
The essay assistance was truly invaluable. So far, he has been accepted into (and received significant financial aid offers from) the Engineering program at 4 schools, and we're waiting to hear from 2 more. My younger son will definitely be signing up!
Joan Koenig, Mother of Peter
Oak Park River Forest - 2020 Graduate
5/5
HelloCollege was a huge help for my son to prepare a winning essay for the Common Application. Each step along the way, he strengthened the focus, content and quality of his essay.
CJ Bauer, Father of Charlie
Glenbrook South - 2020 Graduate
Our Essay Team
Kevin Krebs
Founder and Managing DirectorKevin Krebs is a first-generation college student and lifelong entrepreneur; he has founded four companies and helped launch a student-athlete mentoring program at his alma mater Northwestern University. A two-sport athlete at Northwestern in football and baseball, Kevin supports higher education by empowering schools and parents with expert college admissions and guidance on paying for college while inspiring students to achieve their potential through goal-oriented mentoring programs.
Will Wagner
Essay CoachWill fell in love with the written word his junior year in high school, thanks to an English teacher named Mrs. Kelley. She exposed him to the magic of writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and especially John Steinbeck. Just like that, his future came into focus.
And while Will never became the next Steinbeck (darn!), he did go on to have a gratifying career in publishing as a writer and editor for everything from national magazines to websites. He even wrote a book of his own, Wrigley Blues: The Year the Cubs Played Hardball with the Curse (but Lost Anyway), published in 2004 by Taylor Trade. For the past several years, he also has worked as an essay coach at HelloCollege. His goal in this role is simple: to bring a little “Mrs. Kelley” to the game and help students down the path of fulfilling their passions and achieving their dreams.
Sara Walsh
Essay Coach & Career Success CoachSara currently serves as an Essay Coach and Career Success Coach at HelloCollege. She has worked as a high school English teacher for the past 15 years, beginning her career at The Dwight School in New York City. Sara later taught at EF Education New York, an international boarding school, where she taught students from more than 49 different nations.
Sara is a graduate of The University of Notre Dame and holds an M.A. in English from the State University of New York at New Paltz. She has been published in The Washingtonian, The Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, and Chronogram. As an essay coach at HelloCollege, she is honored to be a witness to the students’ stories. Sara currently lives in Oak Park with her husband, son and Frankie (their terrier).
Chris Bench
Essay CoachSince he was a child, Chris has known he wanted to teach. Whether it be in his classrooms at the University of Chicago or Roosevelt University or the hundreds of students he’s worked with in his decade of essay coaching, Chris loves helping students find their voice on the page. “It’s an amazing privilege,” he reports, “seeing a student learn who they are as a writer. You’re really watching them discover themselves.”
In his free time, Chris is an avid cook. He particularly enjoys preparing Mexican food, even growing his own chiles for salsas and moles, and every Fourth of July, he throws a pig roast for his friends. An Eagle Scout, Chris also enjoys camping, backpacking, and paddling. He has gone trekking in Glacier, King’s Canyon, Yellowstone, and Gates of the Arctic National Parks. When he’s relaxing, Chris loves music and record collecting, and he’s always excited to learn what’s in his students’ earbuds.
Chris received his A.B. in English Language and Literature from Kenyon College and his M.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago.
Alisha Braun
Essay Coach, Workshop FacilitatorAlisha worked in higher education for 12 years, having taught at Michigan State University and the University of South Florida. She is the author of 28 book chapters and research articles on diversity and inclusion, comparative and international education, and qualitative research methods. She has consulted for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and has led numerous independent and collaborative community-based research projects and service-learning study abroad programs in Tanzania, Ghana, Botswana, South Africa, England, and the United States. Working on multiple college campuses domestically and abroad has made Alisha appreciate the diversity of collegiate experiences available to students. As an essay coach and workshop facilitator, she enjoys mentoring students and families as they navigate the college application process and step towards their college and career goals.
Alisha received her Ph.D. in Educational Policy from Michigan State University with graduate specializations in International Development and African Studies. She also holds a M.A. in School Psychology from Michigan State University and a B.A. Honors degree from the University of Calgary. In her free time, Alisha enjoys yoga, golf, Broadway, and most of all spending time with her husband, two-year-old daughter, and dog Elphie (named after Elphaba from her favorite musical, Wicked).
Why Choose Us
Peace of Mind
You can count on us to keep your student on track during the college application essay writing process.
Confidence
Feel confident we will help you sort through the complexities of discovering a theme for your essay.
Industry Knowledge
Our experts have decades of professional writing experience and understand how to help you create compelling college essays.
Structure
Our proven process for college essay help will keep you focused and let you finish a well-crafted essay on time.
"I love being part of the experienced and enthusiastic team of essay coaches and editors at HelloCollege. We all work together toward the same goal: guiding our students through the process of writing compelling, meaningful essays that will give them the best possible chance to get into their top choice colleges. Nothing gives me greater satisfaction than when students have that “aha” moment; faces light up as they realize we’ve uncovered a winning topic they hadn’t even known was in them. At that point, I know an essay is afoot that will make all the difference on their application."
