Graduate School Applications Editing and Proofreading Services

An admissions committee opens a file containing a CV, a personal statement, a statement of purpose, a writing sample and three letters. The CV lists the same research assistantship the personal statement describes, which the statement of purpose describes again, and which two of the three letters also describe. Five documents, one story, four wasted opportunities.

We edit graduate school applications as complete sets — personal statements and statements of purpose, CVs and résumés for academic applications, diversity and contribution statements, writing sample selection and framing, the briefs given to referees, and the supplementary and programme-specific questions. Our editors work on the file as a whole rather than one document at a time.

The division of labour across the application is what most applicants never plan, and its failure is five documents all telling the strongest story and leaving four others untold. A committee reads the file, not the document. We work through these so each element is assigned the job only it can do — the CV carrying what is countable, the statement of purpose carrying the intended work, the personal statement carrying the reason it is you, the writing sample carrying evidence of thinking — since duplication costs the applicant space rather than reinforcing anything; so a fact appears in detail once and by reference elsewhere, because a committee reading the same assistantship four times concludes there is only one thing to say; so the referees are briefed on what each should cover, given that three letters describing the same seminar paper is a failure of the applicant's planning and not of their referees; so the writing sample is chosen for what it demonstrates rather than for what grade it received, and framed in two lines saying what to notice; so any weakness is addressed once, in whichever document suits it, and not apologised for repeatedly; so the programme-specific question is answered with something that could not be sent elsewhere; so the whole file is read in one sitting to catch the repetition, as this is invisible document by document; and so the strongest single fact appears where the committee will meet it first. Files assembled this way read as one argument.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including applications, transcripts, unpublished work and referee correspondence. We are editors rather than admissions committees or academic advisers, and we offer no view on your prospects, any programme or any decision. What we can do is stop five documents saying the same thing.