Why College Essay Tutors Need to Be Brutally Honest
One of the most important qualities in any good tutor is patience. If your tutor gives you space to think your own thoughts and get things wrong, that will allow you to grow and understand what they’re trying to teach you. And there’s no doubt that a college essay writing coach needs to be patient with you as well – otherwise, you won’t be able to write a great college essay that captures your own experience.
But if a college essay tutor is only patient with you – if they don’t also provide you with honest feedback about the quality of your writing – they won’t be helping you very much. A college essay tutor is the last qualified person to read your essay before it goes to admissions officers, and they won’t be doing you a service if they act like you’re ready to submit when you’re not.
If you know what to expect, working with a college essay tutor can be extremely helpful and, we hope, enjoyable! Here are three reasons why you should seek out a college essay tutor who’s direct with you:
To write a great college essay, you need someone to tell you the truth
Students often come to us with drafts of their Common App essay already completed, and most of the time, the essay needs a lot of work. In this situation, we see it as our duty to give students our honest assessment.
What happens next? Almost always, the students get straight to work. They already had a sense that something wasn’t working with their essay, and they feel relieved that a qualified tutor has been able to articulate exactly what was wrong (especially because they could have submitted this not-so-great essay if they hadn’t consulted us!).
So if a college essay tutor gives you criticism, consider it a good thing.
College essay deadlines are firm. You don’t have time to beat around the bush
Students don’t work with us for the long-term as they tend to do with other tutors. Sometimes they might even come to us only a few weeks before a deadline. In this situation, there simply isn’t time for us to act like an essay is in good shape when it’s not.
Think about it: if your future is on the line, do you want a tutor to gently encourage you when you’re heading in the wrong direction? Or do you want them to be honest that something isn’t working?
You’re actually more resilient than you think
You might think you can’t take direct feedback after working on something as personal as a college admissions essay. You might worry that your confidence will be shot if we tell you that you need to start again.
Guess what? You can take it. Time and again, we’ve been impressed by how resilient high school students are when confronted with direct feedback. They take our comments in stride and write something much more effective than they imagined they were capable of.
As college essay tutors, we’re in an unusual situation compared to other teachers you’ve interacted with. We work hard to be patient and help you find your own voice, but we’re direct and honest as well. If you’re looking for someone skilled at achieving this balance, please get in touch. We’d love to help you as you embark on your college essay writing journey.