U.S. undergraduate package
One application season from start to finish: settle the direction and the school list first, then write the main essay and every supplement.
U.S. undergraduate admission and transfer · one to one
Plan the application. Then write something a reader remembers.
A former financial journalist, previously at Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal. I studied at UNC-Chapel Hill, and I help students work out what is genuinely important in their own experience and put it on the page precisely.
How this works
Newsroom standards, applied to applications
Interviewing, not questionnaires
A reporter's core skill is asking questions until something vague becomes specific. Mentoring starts with a long interview rather than a template questionnaire; the material worth writing about usually shows up on the third or fourth follow-up question.
Professional-newsroom standards
Years of writing and editing English copy in international financial newsrooms, under strict fact-checking and editing. Essays get the same treatment: sentences must be accurate, details must be sourced, adjectives must be earned.
Judgment before narrative
Like a good story, a good application essay is decided long before the prose: which experiences actually matter, and which through-line explains this person best. We settle that first, then write.
How admissions readers evaluate writing
I know how admissions readers decide whether an experience is specific, credible and meaningful — and which phrases that work in Chinese come across as empty in English.
Services
See all services What I do
Both packages cover planning and every essay. One to one, and I do all of it myself.
U.S. transfer package
A transfer application has to answer two questions honestly: why leave, and why this school. Planning through to every transfer essay.
About
Who I am
My training comes from newsrooms. At Bloomberg News, The Wall Street Journal and Mergermarket, the job was to interview strangers, verify facts, decide what actually mattered, and write it in the most precise English I could manage. That work leaves no room for vagueness: every number needs a source, every characterization needs evidence, and readers decide in seconds whether to keep going.
A U.S. undergraduate application poses the same problem. Admissions readers move through a great deal of material quickly, and what they are looking for is not an elegant sentence but a person who is specific, credible and still memorable at the end. Most essays fail not because the English is weak but because nothing has been chosen — everything is listed, and the reader remembers none of it.
- Bloomberg News · Jan 2022 – May 2025
- The Wall Street Journal · Jul 2018 – Nov 2020
- Mergermarket · Aug 2017 – Jul 2018
Start with a conversation
Tell me the student's year, the type of application and what is hardest right now, and I will come back with specifics.