Graduate School Personal Statement Editing Services

Originally from the suburbs of “The Windy City,” Chicago, Amy A. came out to California’s sunny San Francisco Bay Area in 2002 to pursue her undergraduate studies in Human Biology (with concentrations in the areas of Gerontology, Psychology, and Public Health) at Stanford University. She completed the elite Structured Liberal Education (SLE) program at Stanford, an integrated program in humanities classics (literature, philosophy, and the arts) and writing instruction.

Amy joined EssayEdge in 2003, and what started out as a part-time job to pay for her college tuition quickly grew into a passion for admissions essay editing and counseling. She has been working for EssayEdge ever since, even though she has gone on to attend business school at Santa Clara University and to pursue a successful career as a nonprofit CEO in the aging services industry.

Amy lives with her husband and their two young children near the ocean in Pacifica, California. In her spare time, she loves to hike, bike, camp, run, read, and practice yoga and meditation.

Anastasia has three degrees from University College London, University of London, including a master’s degree in history and anthropology. She also studied at the Sorbonne university in Paris as part of a B.A in History and French. She has been living in Bogotá since 2002.

Anastasia was a lecturer at Colombia’s leading Javeriana university where she created a course on U.S. relations with Latin America and was responsible for setting and marking exam essays and dissertations. Anastasia is a trained history teacher turned award-winning journalist and editor.

A former correspondent for the Financial Times, her articles about politics, business, and society have also been published in the top newspapers in Britain and in the U.S. and on major news websites. She is also a report writer for the United Nations, multilateral development banks, and risk consultancy companies. Her expertise is helping clients craft their essays in clear and concise English, while highlighting their unique strengths and experience.

Anna is a graduate of Yale University (B.A) and has been with EssayEdge since 2001. She has helped hundreds of clients with their application essays for undergraduate programs (including all Ivy League colleges), medical school, dental school, graduate school (all subjects), law school, PhD programs, and MBA study.

Her clients have been accepted to schools and programs like Harvard, Stanford, Yale, London Business School, Stanford Business School, and many more. Anna provides meticulous and sensitive edits that help clients convey their unique message effectively and thoroughly - she perfects a client's writing while also addressing critical areas that need improvement, all while maintaining the client's unique voice.

In addition, she is very skilled and patient in working with international and ESL clients. Her areas of expertise are Common Application essays, personal statements, statements of purpose, supplemental essays and short responses, and recommendation letters. Anna is knowledgeable yet warm and friendly, and addresses every concern until the customer is confident in their written work.

Ashley is an editor at Essay Edge, where she has helped to craft hundreds of pieces of writing including personal statements, research papers, and letters of recommendation for clients applying to top-tier institutions since 2009.

She is an alumni interviewer for Yale’s undergraduate application process, interviewing prospective students and writing recommendations for admittance based on impressions from these interviews. Ashley also writes informational articles for CUnet that are posted on education websites and are primarily focused on using education to set and accomplish professional goals. She is the Secretary for the Yale Dramatic Alumni Associates Board of Directors.

Professionally, Ashley has experience in several industries including finance and the entertainment industry. She worked as the Business Manager of a growing venture capital firm during its expansion of a fund focused on financing for tech startups. At present, she works in professional theater in both the creative and management sides of the business.

Her experience as a theatrical director gives her a unique perspective on how individuals present themselves, and she is able to give clear feedback on both content and presentation in interviews as a result.

Overall, Ashley has a unique perspective on the college admissions process and on the job application process from her broad set of experiences as both an applicant and an interviewer.

Brandon is a PhD candidate in Biological Engineering at MIT. He is excited about the role enzymes play in daily life and how they can be repurposed for novel industrial reactions. Outside the laboratory, he is a fellow in the BE Communication Lab, where he coaches MIT students and postdocs on written documents and presentations.

He has coached groups on application best practices following his success in attending the UK Fulbright Summer Institute at the University of Bristol as an undergrad. He graduated from Arizona State University with honors, summa cum laude with Biomedical Engineering BSE. He is excited to help take your writing to the next level.

Cynthia graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with majors in Biology and Management Science. She then went on to earn her MD degree from Columbia University and is now working as a resident physician in Pennsylvania.

Cynthia has extensive experience working with clients from all over the world, helping to perfect their essays and applications for top undergraduate and graduate programs. She has volunteered in the admission offices of both her undergraduate and medical school institutions and has gained unique insight into the inner workings of this stressful process.

Cynthia prides herself on her detail-oriented and conscientious editing skills that she is sure to tailor to the individual needs of each client.

Helen is an award-winning journalist with over 20 years’ experience as a foreign correspondent at Bloomberg News and Reuters in Latin America. She headed a team of nine English and Spanish language text reporters, photographers and television crew covering politics, the economy, and the war with drug-funded leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia. She has interviewed several presidents and rebel commanders in clandestine meetings in some of the most hostile parts of the country.

Helen is a graduate of politics and history from Manchester University in the UK and has taken postgraduate courses in journalism and documentary filmmaking. She also worked as a reporter in Hong Kong, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, and Ecuador as well as back home in London.

After graduating from Yale (cum laude, history) and earning a Master’s degree in accounting from NYU, James worked in the corporate world as an auditor for a Big 8 public accounting firm, an operations analyst for Xerox, and controller of several privately held companies. When Communism fell in 1989, he left the corporate world to join an NGO providing technical assistance in Central and Eastern Europe and moved to Poland in the mid-Nineties.

Since becoming an Essay Edge editor in 2003, he has edited nearly 4000 essays in all categories. He has also written and published a book of his own short stories and poems and edited the prose submissions for a series of books produced by New Europe Writers. In 2014 he started performing as a spoken word artist and stand-up comedian. In 2019, he completed his second full-run solo show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

While James edits all types of essays, he especially likes to work on essays for graduate programs (Master’s and PhD) in any discipline, including MBA, MPH, pharmacy, medical school, medical residency, engineering, accounting, biotech, fintech, and others.

Julia earned her DPhil in Sociology from the University of Oxford in 2018. Her work focuses on gender, conflict, and grassroots mobilization in Colombia, Mexico, and El Salvador.

She has an MPhil in Latin American studies from the University of Oxford; her thesis was awarded the Crawley Prize for best in her cohort. She completed her undergraduate degree in Political Studies and Global Development at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada.

Julia has 8 years of editing and academic mentoring experience. She is experienced in supporting clients to express themselves using concise language. Julia enjoys helping clients make themselves stand out, by highlighting their unique experiences and backgrounds in admissions essays, recommendation letters, and academic writing.

Kiran is a PhD candidate in Sociology at UC Berkeley. Her academic work focuses on politics, gender, and violence in Latin America. She also holds a master's degree from the University of Oxford, and a bachelor's degree in Political Science from Barnard College, Columbia University.

Kiran has worked as an EssayEdge editor since 2014, and enjoys helping clients transform their writing. She is experienced editing admissions essays, recommendation letters, as well as academic papers and theses.

Linda has been with Essay Edge since its second editing season and may be its longest-tenured editor! She is a 1988 graduate of Stanford University, with degrees in biology and communications, and earned her MBA from the University of Southern California in 1993.

Linda enjoys getting to know her customers and helping them reach their undergraduate and professional goals, while learning about their cultures, families and careers through editing their essays. She is always available to answer customer questions. Linda spent 20 plus years in sports public relations, and loves her "mom job" as an editor.

She also volunteers her time as an elected member of the Board of Education in her Southern California community, and is the proud mom of a sophomore politics major at Oberlin College who represents Team USA internationally in the sport of triathlon, and a high school sophomore who is an aspiring distance runner and writer.

Lyra is a student at Cornell University pursuing undergraduate degrees in English and Computer Science. She harbors a deep love for the written word and has thoroughly enjoyed her time working with high school and college newspapers, designing and publishing websites, and collaborating with journalists to strengthen the expository writing skills of high schoolers.

As a student of both natural and computer languages, she has a nuanced appreciation for syntax and lexicon that she draws from in her own writing and editing practices. When she is not in school, Lyra lives in Seattle where she enjoys reading, painting, running, coding, and crocheting.

Through positions in environmental technology, artificial intelligence/machine learning, corporate, financial technology, education, non-profit, and the service industry, she has amassed much experience in both humanities and STEM fields, and as such, is comfortable handling a wide array of essay topics and prompts. Lyra is unfailingly delighted to discuss anything literary, so please feel free to reach out!

Mary is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Princeton University, where she studies Anglo-Italian literary relations in the Renaissance. Her graduate work has been supported through the prestigious Beinecke Scholarship. She also holds a B.A. in English/Italian and an M.A. in English from the University of Notre Dame.

As an EssayEdge editor, she is passionate about helping clients craft their ideas into sophisticated prose. She pinpoints your writing's strengths and weaknesses and helps tell your story in a compelling way, enabling you to show admissions committees why you’re a great fit for their program.

When she’s not editing or writing her dissertation, Mary can be found dreaming up recipes for her literary food blog, The Library Kitchen.

Mary Storm has a Ph.D. in South Asian Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles and an MA in Asian Studies from Stanford University. She has taught South Asian history at universities in India and the United States.

She has published numerous peer reviewed articles on South Asian history on subjects ranging from historical textiles to Buddhist aesthetics. She is the author of Head and Heart: Valour and Self-Sacrifice in the Art of India, Routledge 2013. Her present research focuses on the issues of violence and the sacred within South Asian religious aesthetics. She presently lives in Sri Lanka.

Melissa is currently a senior at Brown University studying a dual degree in Computer Science and Economics, and will be working in finance at Goldman Sachs after graduation. She also has a background in the arts, having studied music and piano performance for over 10 years.

With several years of experience editing essays, she prides herself on her counseling and guidance for students applying to programs ranging from summer school to college applications, incorporating each student’s unique spirit and creativity in their work!

Melissa has a BA in English with Honors from Swarthmore College, Phi Beta Kappa, and an MA in English Literature from Columbia University, where she received the MA Essay Prize and the Bennett Prize in Comparative Literature.

Melissa has been working for Essay Edge for over 10 years, covering all genres of application and scholarship essays, following a career in arts administration. She also edits audio transcriptions, helps to prepare submissions to academic journals, and writes and edits feedback for Philadelphia Young Playwrights.

She finds great joy and satisfaction in crafting precise and evocative language, and in helping people tell their stories with honesty and style. Melissa lives on the East Coast with her husband, two teenagers, two albino rats, and a bearded dragon, and enjoys acting in community theater and participating in Scottish and English Country Dancing.

Reid A. is currently a graduate student at the University of Oxford, working towards a Master’s in English and American Studies – that is, a degree in literature studies! In 2020, he graduated from Cornell University as a double major in English and Government, with a minor in German, and distinction in all subjects.

During the summer, Reid lives in Chicago, Illinois, where he stays immersed in literature (not only analytic and expository, but also creative) every day. He is truly passionate about expression on the page, and appreciates the extraordinary power & value of well-crafted writing in the many forms it takes.

Given that appreciation, Reid counts himself as fortunate for the wide opportunities he has had to sharpen his skills in English: in reading, writing, and editing, but most essentially, in helping others to improve their own grasp of the written word.

Among those opportunities, he most hopes to share what he has learned in his days of reviewing book manuscripts and article drafts as an academic research assistant, plus letter drafts as a legal clerk, on top of the vast writing and peer-reviewing he has done for school. Feel free to reach out to Reid to talk further, whether about his essay reviewing style, or any other writing topic under the sun! He always loves to discuss literature.

A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Scott majored in Radio, Television and Motion Pictures, which was eventually folded into the Journalism and Mass Communication major. For more than 20 years, he worked as an advertising copywriter, honing his creative and writing skills as he created numerous television commercials, radio spots, print ads and internet content.

He has worked for Essay Edge since 2003, and in that time he has edited literally thousands of application essays of all kinds – undergraduate, MBA, Ph.D., Medical School, Law School, Business School and countless others. He has also worked extensively with students on academic papers and dissertations.

His goal in working with customers is to help them present their ideas and perspectives in their own words but in a professional, well-organized, grammatically sound and persuasive manner that will help them stand out from other applicants. He thoroughly enjoys the process of working with customers to tailor their essays in creative and compelling ways that will satisfy them and impress the admissions committees at the programs to which they are applying.

A Northern Irish native, Steven Grattan has been Colombia-based since 2013. He founded English-language newspaper and website The Bogota Post that same year and has been a researcher and lecturer of journalism at Colombia’s prestigious Universidad del Rosario.

He has worked as a journalist covering breaking news and feature stories for international media since 2018 and has reported from some of Colombia’s most forgotten and violent regions for Reuters, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, BBC, The Guardian and The Economist, among many others. His reporting has focused mostly on migration, human rights abuses, LGBT+ stories and the complicated ongoing peace process in Colombia.

During his time in Colombia he has also worked as a translator and proofreader. Steven holds a B.A. from University of Chester in Journalism and Spanish and a M.A. from University of Leicester’s Politics and International Relations faculty in Human Rights and Global Ethics.

Susan earned a BA in International Relations from Stanford University and Master in Public Policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. For the last 21 years, she has been working as a freelance business writer and editor for clients across a variety of industries, including law, software, entertainment, and healthcare.

Additionally, she also taught poetry writing to youth in an afterschool program. Although Susan is new to Essayedge, she has helped a number of students and professionals prepare many types of applications as well as academic and professional documents.

Susan is also an award-winning fiction writer whose short stories and novel excerpts have been published in The Nervous Breakdown, the South Dakota Review, and Voice from the Planet, an anthology of international fiction. Susan currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband, daughter, dog, and pet tortoise. She speaks Spanish, French and some very rusty Russian, and has traveled to 38 countries, including several which no longer exist.

Valerie is a writer, editor, and producer who has been editing for EssayEdge since 2010. She graduated from Yale University in 2009 with a B.A. in Philosophy and Chinese. She has lived in France, London, and China, and presently resides in New York.

In addition to editing for EssayEdge, she works in the fields of film and theater as producer, writer, and actor. Her expertise also extends to the field of business, as she formerly served as Director of Operations for a start-up company in the education technology industry.

Valerie specializes in editing essays for undergraduate and MBA programs, and she is also very experienced in editing for medical school, graduate programs, and law school.

Yasmine is a graduate of Brown University, where she studied Cultural Anthropology, specifically in the Middle East. Since graduating, she has worked as a professional writer and editor, both internationally and within the US.

Yasmine has lived in Colombia, Lebanon, and most recently in Senegal. Yasmine also works in the field of education, which has given her keen insight into the strength and pitfalls of applicants. She is extremely passionate about languages, and has been an Editor with EssayEdge for over four years.

She specializes in editing essays that highlight personal growth, ranging from Academic Personal Statements to Medical Statements. Yasmine is proud to be fluent in English, Arabic and Spanish, and is hoping to learn French this year!