Essay Coach

About us
American Study helps Vietnamese students pursue undergraduate (and graduate) study at the most selective universities in the United States, the UK, and beyond. Over the past decade our students have earned offers from Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Brown, Columbia, Duke, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, and dozens of other top-ranked institutions - along with meaningful scholarships at most of them.
What gets them there isn't a formula. It's the discipline of turning one teenager's (young researcher's) messy, specific life into a story an admissions officer can't put down. That discipline is a craft, and we're looking for someone who loves it.
The role
We're hiring Essay Mentors to lead students through the most personal part of the application: the writing. You'll work the Common App personal statement, supplemental essays, "Why this school" pieces, and scholarship essays from the first blank page to the final polish. You'll also work with students in exciting yet challenging writing competitions and tasks where you provide insightful and fair coaching for them to compete.
You'll sit alongside our counselors in a deliberate division of labor. They help mapping the profile, the activities list, the academic narrative; you help shaping the prose. Both sides matter in supporting our excellent and talented students as they pilot their application through a maze, and our best results come from real collaboration among the trio.
This is not a proofreading job. It's a coaching job. You'll ask better questions than the student is asking themselves, push back when a draft is too safe, and know when the seventeen-year-old in front of you has stumbled onto something quietly extraordinary.
What you'll do
● Run 1:1 coaching sessions across the full drafting arc - brainstorming, outlining, drafting, revising, polishing
● Help students surface the stories they actually have but haven't thought to tell - family, small moments, obsessions, contradictions
● Align essays with each student's broader application narrative in close partnership with the counseling team
● Lead small-group workshops on specific topics - Why School essays, short-answer craft, writing about identity, handling a non-linear GPA, etc.
● Contribute to the student's journey and readiness