Sara Larner graduated cum laude from Columbia University's Barnard College, where she earned her Bachelors in English. Afterward, she went on to University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, where she earned the Masters in Writing that makes her so perfectly suited to help you craft an exemplary essay.

Sara became a college counselor after discovering the unique satisfaction of helping her students get into their dream schools. She'd been tutoring for five years already, and a few of her students asked for help with their college essays. When the acceptances began rolling in, she knew that she wanted to provide this service to others.

Four years later, with a few thousand hours of experience, Sara is confident she can guide you through every step of this process, and teach you the techniques necessary to get into the school of your choice. In addition to her own Ivy League education, she's honed a results-focused method over the years that has helped students earn acceptances everywhere from Princeton to MIT. Sara has even helped some students earn likely letters from various Ivy's, including Yale. (For anyone unfamiliar: a likely letter is a letter elite schools send out to top-tier applicants prior to official admission. These are essentially wooing letters, requesting the student refrain from accepting other admission options and indicating that a generous financial package can be expected; each school sends out only a hundred or so every application cycle.) She also has a great deal of experience helping students gain admission to BS/MD programs and post-graduate schools, including medical and law school.

Sara will work with you to build a college list, draft essays, and then polish said essays until they demonstrate exactly why each particular school needs to admit you.

Nobody wants to read an essay; everybody wants to read a story.

This is a tested and true concept, and lies at the core of my approach to college advising. I am happy to help you build your lists, look through scholarships, and every other aspect of college advising—but the core of what I do is that I make sure your essay is something the college admissions officials won't be able to put down. When that reader goes before the admissions committee and argues your case, I want them to care. I want them to be invested. Frankly, they have to be. When an application is being considered, three things can happen. First and most rarely, a student with an exceptional application may get passed directly to the admission director—in which case that essay will still need to be emotionally compelling. Second and most commonly, those who clearly don't make the cut will be rejected by the first essay reader. But many students will fall in between, and the reader who likes your application will have to argue your case in front of the admissions committee.

I want you to be the student that reader truly wants to admit. The one they fight for. The one they care about.

In our sessions, my approach depends on what you want and where you are at in your applications. In broad strokes, if you are at the start of things, then I will begin by discussing your entire application. We'll go over grades, extracurriculars, test-scores. We'll build a list of reach, target, and safety schools, and I'll build a schedule to get everything done by the desired deadlines (be that ED, EA, or regular decision). We'll begin brainstorming for the common app, and set aside stories that are likely to come up in supplementals. Together we'll map out a story, and you will then go write it out. Afterward, I will edit it, leaving comments to explain every suggested change. We'll repeat this process until we have something that you are truly proud of.

I'm also available to help with scholarship applications.

Please see my packages below for more details. If no packages are visible, it is because I am fully booked.