I got into every college I applied to and earned $600,000 in scholarships, not because I was the most accomplished applicant, but because I knew how to write a great essay. Now I help students do exactly the same.
Hello and welcome. My name is Avigail Laing and I am a college essay coach who got into every college that I applied to, including NYU, Rice, Vanderbilt with a full ride Cornelius Vanderbilt Scholarship, Georgia Tech and many others, and $600,000 in scholarship offers total. I have coached over a thousand students now into getting into their dream schools, ranging from Cornell to Penn to UC Berkeley with the Regents Scholarship to Georgetown, UCLA and many others, and I would love to help you as well.
I offer one-on-one essay coaching, meaning that whether you need help coming up with ideas for your essay, or having someone help you write the outline, or having someone help you edit, choose a good topic, revise, give you feedback, I'm here to help with all of that. So I have either individual sessions you can do with me if you just want help getting an idea for your essay or quick feedback and edits, or full packages where I walk you through the whole process of coming up with your Common App essay, or a supplemental package where I walk you through the process of making all your supplementals, or a package with eight sessions where I can help you with both.
I can also do scholarship essays, and I can help with writing the awards or activities section of your Common App. Whatever you need help with, I'm happy to help you.
My goal is to make the college admissions process as easy and effective for every student as it can be, because I know personally that choosing a topic, editing your essay, and everything that comes with it can be really overwhelming if you're not sure you're headed in the right direction. Since I've reviewed so many essays and have had such good results myself, it's my goal to give you that information so it can simplify the process and you don't have to do so much guesswork.
Whenever we jump on a call I'll be giving you the same strategies I used to get so many scholarship offers and to get accepted into every college I applied to, because I didn't even have remarkable stats. I didn't do more than three extracurriculars and I didn't win any crazy national awards. It's really the passion and heart and clarity and writing style in my essays that helped me get such good results, and I want to teach you or your student how to do that.
I would love to work with you.
I was a high school student from Knoxville, Tennessee. I didn't found a nonprofit. I didn't win national STEM awards. By most conventional metrics, I wasn't the "perfect applicant." But I understood something most students miss: admissions officers are human beings reading thousands of essays, and the only ones they remember are the ones that feel like a real person wrote them.
So I wrote mine that way. And it changed everything.
The letters themselves
Home address and student ID number blurred. Everything else is exactly as it arrived.
Every single one of these required an essay. That is not a coincidence.
If you want to write an essay that goes in the yes pile, you have to write an essay with strategy, not just a story. This is the five stage system I run on every call, and it is the same one that got me into every school I applied to.
We go through all seven Common App prompts out loud, no filtering and no judging, and I take notes live in a shared doc. You cannot pick a topic from a list of topics. You pick it from a list of moments.
A story is not a thesis. This is where we find the one idea underneath your moment, the thing the essay is actually arguing about who you are.
Before you write a word, you know what every paragraph has to do and what it promises the next one. This is the step that stops the endless rewriting.
We go line by line and replace anything you have asserted with something you can prove. This is also the pass that makes an essay read like a person instead of a machine.
The last read, against the same questions an admissions officer is asking. You submit knowing it is done, not hoping.
You leave with a finished essay and the five artifacts that produced it.
Every stage ships a worksheet you keep, so the system still works on the next essay, and the one after that.Every worksheet I use on my paid 1:1 calls, plus the prompt guides and the school-by-school supplement packs. If you would rather work through it on your own time, this is the same paperwork my students get, and it is yours to keep.
You only get one shot at this application.
The difference between a great essay and a forgettable one can mean the difference between your dream school and your backup, and between a full scholarship and full tuition.
See Coaching Options →Every session is live, 1:1, and focused entirely on your story. No templates. No generic feedback. Just the exact strategy I used to earn $600K in scholarships, applied to you.
The exact strategy I used to earn $600K in scholarships and get into every college I applied to, all in a downloadable guide. Includes my actual Common App essay.
One focused 30-minute call. Whether you have no idea what to write or have a draft that needs work, we cover it all. You leave with a clear direction and specific next steps.
Most students spend months rewriting endlessly, second-guessing every word, still not confident at submission. This package changes that. Four sessions plus unlimited email support, idea to final draft.
Most students treat supplements as an afterthought and submit generic answers that could have been written by anyone. Admissions officers notice. This package tackles your supplementals school by school, so every Why Us feels like you were made for that campus.
Your Common App essay. Your Why Us essays. Your Why This Major. Your diversity essays. All of it handled together from first brainstorm to final submission. Every essay in your application polished, purposeful, and done.
Same eye, no calendar. You send the draft, I send back written notes. This is the fastest way to work with me if your schedule is the problem, or if you are in a time zone that makes calls hard.
A single essay, read closely and returned with written notes. No call to schedule and nothing to coordinate. Good if you have one piece you want a real opinion on.
Send your Common App draft and get written notes back within 48 hours, four times over a month. You keep writing on your own schedule and I keep reading. No calls at all.
Eight written reviews of your supplemental essays, one essay at a time, each back within 48 hours. Built for the stretch where you are writing a lot of supplements at once and just need a fast second read on each.
Written edits on your Common App essay and up to ten supplementals. Everything in your application read and marked up, without a single call on the calendar.
No, and I want to be specific about why. I never write a single word of your essay. That isn't a technicality, it's the whole method. I ask you about your life until you say something that surprises you, and then I hand your own sentence back to you and we build from there.
Admissions officers have said for years that outside feedback is fine, the same way a writing tutor or an SAT tutor is fine. What isn't fine is somebody writing it for you, and that's the one thing I won't do.
This is the thing students worry about most now, and it's a fair worry. Essays get flagged when they're vague, when every sentence runs the same length, and when the writer states a lesson instead of showing the moment it came from.
My process pushes hard in the opposite direction. We work in specific sensory detail, real remembered moments, and your actual vocabulary, because that's what makes writing read like a person. The words stay yours the whole time, so there's nothing there to flag.
That's the most common way students show up, and it's genuinely the best place to start. Most students have a story worth telling and just can't see it yet, because they're too close to it and because they assume it has to be impressive.
Finding it is the first thing we do together, and it usually takes one call.
There are two versions, depending on where you are.
If you don't have a topic yet, we get on a video call, I ask you about your life, and by the end you have a real idea and a full outline you can write from.
If you already have a draft, you send it to me beforehand and we go through it together on the call, line by line, and you leave with it actually revised instead of just critiqued. Either way you get a PDF afterward with everything we came up with.
A lot of it is, and I give plenty of it away myself. But no video can tell you which of your five stories is the one, and that's the actual job.
General advice can show you what a good essay looks like. It can't tell you what yours should be about.
The packages are built around 30 days because that's the pace that works best, but I've had students come to me a week out and still submit something they were proud of.
If your deadline is close, book a single strategy session and we'll make the most of the time you have.
Yes. I coach students across a lot of time zones, and every session is on video, so we just find a slot that works for you.
You probably could, on the writing itself. The writing usually isn't the problem.
I've watched students who ignored a parent's feedback for three weeks make that exact change in ten minutes on a call with me, and it wasn't because the parent was wrong. It's that you're their parent. There's also the deadline, which matters more than people expect: a due date set by somebody outside the house tends to actually get met.
Because I did this recently instead of decades ago. I know what the prompts look like right now, what the rules around AI are right now, and what a 17-year-old will actually sit still for on a call.
I've also coached more than 1,000 students since, which is more application essays than most people read in years. My own results and my students' results are both on this page, and they're the real answer to this question.
It's for students who either don't know what to write about, or have a draft that isn't landing and can't tell why.
If your child's essay is already done, and it's specific, and three people you trust have read it and genuinely loved it, you don't need to book anything. I'd rather tell you that than take the money.
Every one of them. There's no team, no junior coach, and no handoff. When you book, you're booking me.
Yes, and honestly it often matters more. Merit scholarships get decided on essays, and some of the largest awards my students earned this year came from schools that were never anyone's reach.
A full ride to a school your child loves is worth more than a rejection from a famous one.
Still have a question I didn't answer here?
Message me on Instagram →After coaching 1,000+ students, I know this: it's not about being the most impressive applicant. It's about telling your story in a way that makes admissions officers remember you. That's exactly what I help you do.
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