How can a grad school essay tutor help me boost my chances of getting into my dream school and succeeding once I am accepted? When figuring out how to get into grad school, you might have noticed that essays play a big role in the admissions process. Writing a killer essay is extremely challenging if you don’t know where to start, or even what to write about. Furthermore, a grad school essay tutor can help you develop superb writing skills to complete the myriad grad school essays you have to write throughout the years of grad school. The right grad school essay tutor will help you improve your writing skills, proofread your work, and provide personalized feedback. But finding the ideal professional to guide you in this journey can be a challenge in itself! That’s why this article reveals everything you need to know before hiring a grad school essay tutor.
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What is a Grad School Essay?
A grad school admissions process normally involves writing one or more essays as part of your application. Other elements, such as your GPA, transcript, GRE scores, or your graduate school CV, contain general information about your academic performance and history. However, numbers do not define us, and there is only so much you can learn about a person by merely reading facts about them. That’s what grad school essays are for: they allow the admissions committee to get to know candidates more in depth, by learning about their personality, motivations, goals, and reasons to apply to graduate school.
The aim of these essays should be to convince your school that you are the right fit for a program, and that you can make valuable contributions as a student. A grad school essay tutor will work with you not only during your admissions process to provide grad school application help but also throughout your education to develop your professional writing skills. They can help you with course essays, how to write a master's thesis proposal, and essentially any piece of writing you might be required to produce.
There are several kinds of essays you may be required to write as a graduate school applicant or graduate student:
How Can a Grad School Essay Tutor Help You?
It is not hard to imagine how difficult it is to write a grad school essay, especially an admissions essay, given that you only have one opportunity to impress the admissions committee. But not everyone is a great writer naturally. This is why hiring a grad school essay tutor can be a game-changer.
A grad school essay tutor can help you write your admissions essay. You might not even know what to write about, or how to structure your writing, and depending on your major, you might not even have taken English classes in a long time. If you feel completely lost, or if you want to make sure your essay will make your application stand out, hiring a grad school essay tutor is definitely something you should consider.
Unlike grad school admissions consultants, grad school essay tutors can also help you write “in-school” essays and provide support during the entire duration of your grad school journey. A tutor or graduate school advisor will teach you long-lasting writing skills that you'll take with you into your post-graduate career, as well as help you excel in your graduate studies.
However, not every student needs someone to help them with their grad school essays. Maybe you feel confident enough to write them on your own, using online resources such as examples and tips for graduate school statements of purpose.
What Does a Grad School Essay Tutor Do?
Let’s start by clarifying that it is not your tutor’s job to write on your behalf. If you expect to pay someone to do the work for you, a professional grad school essay tutor is not the kind of person you are looking for. The job of your grad school essay tutor is to provide you with guidance, tips for applying to grad school, and help you develop writing and editing skills that will last you a lifetime.
More specifically, a grad school essay tutor will help you:
1. Pick an Essay Topic
Sometimes the hardest part of writing your grad school essays is getting started. Before you start with the writing process for any kind of essay, your tutor will have a brainstorming session with you to help you discover things that would look good on your essay. Brainstorming is an excellent resource for overcoming writer’s block, as it will provide insight into how to get started. The introductory paragraph is often the one which takes the longest to write. The rest of your essay will be easier once you have a clear idea of how to continue. Grad school essay tutors can help you during your studies, too, by helping you find a topic for your master's thesis or coaching you on how to find a PhD topic, too!
When it comes to writing admissions essays specifically, most people find it really difficult to talk about themselves while others have too much or too little to say and need a little help deciding what direction to follow. Either way, choosing what to talk about in your essay will require quite a bit of introspection and self-reflection. Your tutor will ask you questions such as “how would you describe yourself?”, “what’s your biggest dream?”, or “what’s your story?”, and eventually more specific questions like “what made you become interested in your field of choice?” or “what do you hope to do with the education you expect to receive in this program?”. Asking the right questions will be the key to finding those ideas that will bring your essay to life. Taking grad school interview questions as a guide is not a bad idea! You can talk about a specific life experience that changed the way you see things, about your greatest achievement, or about someone who influenced you personally or academically.
2. Structure Your Essay
Once you know what you are going to include in your essay, you will be facing the challenge of structuring your text. The way you organize your essays is almost as important as the actual content. Each paragraph should revolve around one central idea, and follow an order that makes sense to the reader. Your grad school essay tutor should help you design the architecture of your essay. Keeping in mind the prompt and guidelines you are given, your tutor will help you decide how many paragraphs to include and what each one of them should cover.
In the case of an admissions essay, the very first sentence of your essay is usually the most important one, as it is aimed at catching the attention of the reader. You might be tempted to use typical phrases such as “for as long as I can remember...” or “ever since I was a child...”, but those are extremely overused phrases that will instantly make the reader lose interest. It is your tutor’s job to prevent you from making these mistakes and guide you on how to write compelling essays that grab readers' attention.
3. Tell Your Story
Your writing should reflect your personality and your true self. You might take for granted that whatever was written by you will naturally display your voice as the author. But, believe it or not, achieving a writing style of your own is not easy if you are used to writing essays based on what other authors have said. A big part of developing solid writing skills involves being able to produce original writing pieces that showcase your personal brand. A grad school essay tutor will help you achieve this by giving you personalized feedback and encouraging you to exploit your talents. With time and practice, your confidence will grow and your writing will start portraying your personality without you even noticing!
4. Proofread Your Essay
Even though there are numerous online writing assistants that highlight grammatical inconsistencies in our writing, they aren’t as insightful and accurate as a human expert, as they might ignore contextual or situational aspects of your text. Your tutor will know what your program expects. Tutors are familiar with the tone, style, and register a grad school essay should have, they know which topics are overused and cliché. Your grad school essay tutor will also check your grammar and make suggestions to improve your writing style. Don’t underestimate the difficulty of correct syntax and punctuation. Even if you are a native speaker of your language and have been immersed in books and academic texts for as long as you can remember, every text can be improved. Sometimes all you need is an extra pair of eyes!
5. Provide Personalized Feedback
Getting personalized feedback from your tutor is the most important part of your essay writing process. Feedback helps us understand our strengths and weaknesses and shows us what to focus on in the future. While bad feedback is never easy to process and can feel extremely discouraging at first, it is necessary for us to identify mistakes that we might never know we’re making unless someone else points them out.
Your tutor will walk you through those segments of your writing that might be repetitive, or confusing, or that might need rewording, and you will work together to find solutions. Receiving feedback is also something you will have to face constantly during graduate school, so this would be a good time to learn not to take it personally.
Looking for more info on what to include in your grad school statement of purpose? This infographic will help:
4 Tips for Choosing the Best Grad School Essay Tutor
Tip #1: Check If They Are Qualified
Research your potential tutor by navigating their website and looking for reviews from previous clients. Determine the quality of the essay tutors available. What are their qualifications and experience? Use the following questions as a guide to evaluate whether they are qualified to provide this service:
Testimonials from former students are a very common resource tutors use to promote their work, so there should be plenty for you to analyze before making your decision. If you can’t find enough information about a tutor’s academic and professional background, how can you make sure they have the expertise that this task requires?
Tip #2: Check If Their Work Is Guaranteed
Even if you write a jaw-dropping essay, getting rejected is, unfortunately, always a possibility. What is your tutor’s policy regarding a possible rejection? If they have a high success rate and trust their service and their method, they should have no problem giving you your money back if you don’t get accepted after carefully following their instructions and professional advice.
Tip #3: Make Sure They Adjust to Your Budget
Grad school essay tutoring services can be expensive. Choosing the best and most qualified professional to help you tackle the admissions process is important, but you also have to be able to afford it. There is an option available for every budget, and the most expensive services are not necessarily the best for you, so make sure to explore your options carefully. Their prices should also be transparent and available for you right from the start. When the price of a service is not available on their website, or if they don’t seem open to discussing costs until the last minute, they might be hiding additional fees that you’re not considering.
Tip #4: Get a Free Initial Consultation
After carefully navigating their website and reading reviews and comments from previous students, contacting them is the next step. Most tutoring services offer a free initial consultation to determine if the service they provide is right for you, especially if their fees are elevated. They need to know if they can help you and how, and it will be your opportunity to ask as many questions as you need. Find out what their service will consist of and talk about your expectations and what you hope to get from them.
Want to see some of our top tips for gaining acceptance to graduate school? This infographic is for you:
Conclusion
Hiring a grad school essay tutor might not be necessary for everyone, but it will undoubtedly help you improve your writing and provide you with valuable life-long skills. Writing is never easy, especially if your writing will determine whether or not you get into your school of choice. A grad school essay tutor will provide personalized feedback, edit your work, and help you decide what to include in your essay and how to structure it. To find the perfect tutor for you, you will have to do some research. Explore the tutor’s website, make sure they offer the kind of services you are looking for, study their reviews and success rates, and determine if their fees adjust to your budget.
FAQs
1. Should I hire a grad school essay tutor?
It is entirely up to you. If you have experience writing this kind of essay, or if you feel that doing your own research on how to improve your writing will be enough, then you will also have higher chances of success. If, on the other hand, writing is not your best skill, or if you feel completely lost, hiring a grad school essay tutor to guide you in the process will make a big difference in the outcome of your application.
2. Will my grad school essay tutor write my essay for me?
Absolutely not. Your grad school essay tutor is meant to assist you in the process of writing your own grad school essay. It is not their job to write it for you, as it wouldn’t reflect your personality and your voice, which is essentially the whole purpose of a grad school essay.
3. Are grad school essay tutors expensive?
Even though they tend to be expensive, there’s a broad variety of options that might be suitable for your budget. Most grad school essay tutoring services, however, offer a free initial consultation that will help you decide if what they offer matches what you are looking for before you decide to hire them.
4. What does a grad school essay tutor do?
The job of a grad school essay tutor is:
- To provide guidance before, during, and after writing your grad school essay.
- To provide tips and expert advice.
- To help you choose an essay topic.
- To help you organize the structure of your essay.
- To proofread your work.
- To provide personalized feedback.
5. How do I pick an essay topic?
Choosing the perfect essay topic can be almost as difficult as writing about it. Your grad school essay tutor will help you decide what’s the perfect theme for your essay by asking you a series of questions and brainstorming essay ideas with you. Candidates usually choose to talk about past experiences that led them to where they are today, about what makes them special, or about what made them become interested in their chosen field.
6. How do I know if a tutor is qualified?
Start by researching their website thoroughly. Any qualified grad school essay tutor will have a detailed and easily accessible description of their academic and professional background. Check out what previous students say about their services, and whether or not their applications were successful. Their success rates should also be at your disposal to help you decide if the service they provide is worth the investment.
7. What if I don’t get accepted?
Your grad school essay tutor should be able to guarantee your acceptance. If their service is as effective as they claim it to be, they won’t hesitate to offer a money-back guarantee.
8. How long should my essay be?
Every school has different requirements. Always try to stick to their guidelines. Grad school essay tutors are normally familiar with what admissions committees expect, so you can trust their judgement when it comes to the register, tone, style, and length of your grad school essay.
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