Read on to hear from Isa, Prompt’s Director of Coach Development, and Kristina Chun, Prompt’s Director of Network Operations.
Isa is the Director of Coach Development at Prompt. She started as a Writing Coach in 2018, was an inaugural Coach Mentor, and stepped into her current leadership role in 2023. She studied in The New School’s undergraduate and graduate programs before earning her Doctorate of Literature at Drew University, centering her dissertation on the decolonization of the memoir. For the past 20 years, Isa has spearheaded projects that span education, human rights, food sovereignty, and the performing arts. Notably, she worked with Amnesty International for over a decade before serving as a director at several international nonprofits. Her work at Prompt represents the perfect intersection of her interests in writing, pedagogical theory, community, strategic planning, and education access.
Higher education was my pathway toward the life that I wanted. My family struggled financially, and we moved around a lot. I also just didn’t fit in, and I knew I wanted to build a different kind of community than the one I grew up in. Since then, I’ve had several jobs where I was able to do that and help people tell their own stories. I love that we at Prompt are engaging with students at the very moment that they are considering what they want their adult life to look like and how to get there. That’s a key moment for shaping someone’s voice! It feels very full circle to me to challenge students to think about who they are, how far they’ve come, and where they want to go, all while equipping them with the tools to be critical thinkers and efficient, effective communicators.
I really needed Prompt’s help! I wrote about shucking corn while singing with my family, listening to echoes of our harmony in the valleys that surrounded my great-grandfather’s farm. There were some solid insights about collaboration and wanting to broaden my perspective, but I spent far too much time on the metaphors! However, I was lucky and had an interview where I could focus on my potential. As fewer and fewer schools offer interviews today, I’m certain that my application would not have been as successful!
Your experiences may feel familiar, but they’ve all worked together to create your own unique perspective. Admissions readers want to know how you see the world and what you value. By using everyday narratives to show how you think, readers will clearly see the person you will be in and outside of the classroom. Remember, not everyone can be president of the class. But you can be a leader in so many ways. Communities are like an orchestral concert — we need someone to conduct, yes, but we also need someone to play 4th seat flute and someone to applaud loudly in the audience. All of these roles have their counterparts in a college community, and readers want to see your role!
My favorite moment came after I finished working with this one student. They said the most affirming thing.
“I am in a cohort of 30 computer science students and I am the only one who wasn’t referred to the university writing center to improve my papers. I know how to brainstorm, outline, and revise, thanks to you!” This proved to me that we are doing so much more than fixing one essay.
I look for confident content assessment. Can they get to the heart of the student’s message? And then, can they ask the right questions that help the student get from a solid message to a compelling essay? We train coaches to be more actionable in their instructional approach and to organize their feedback in a way that is accessible, but our coaches show up on day one with their curiosity, confidence, and a love of learning.
All of the most memorable essays that come to mind have a unique insight that really shows what the students bring to the table. I’ve had students write about gardening with their grandmother, coding composting apps that earned them major awards, and failing their driving tests. The common thread is that the student could connect their narrative with a core trait that will help them make an impact, succeed, and learn in any community or environment.
(Read more about Prompt’s 5 Traits Colleges Look For)
One of the most memorable essays I’ve read was from a student whose parents immigrated from Honduras. He thought the lesson he had learned from his father was independence. When the student was facing some obstacles in his own life, he thought he had to solve the problems on his own because that’s what his father had always done… or so he thought. One morning, he was up before dawn trying to catch up on school work, and he saw his father leaving to play soccer with the team he had been on for 18 years. He later asked his father about why he was so consistent about going to early morning practices. His father told him that the team had been a rock of support for him for learning English, connecting with fellow immigrants, learning to be a father, and rooting himself in community when he first arrived in the US.
This was when my student realized he was following the wrong lesson from his father. His final draft shared the story of his father’s community and how that catalyzed him to build a network of friends, teachers, and family that helped him solve problems that were spiraling out of control. Talking with his father about the importance of community for immigrants also inspired him to volunteer as a tutor at a local middle school that had a large demographic of ELL students. The student was able to demonstrate his personal growth and impact through clear narratives and self-reflection about how his own perspective of resilience has evolved through his relationship with his father. It was a meaningful essay to him, and it resonated strongly with admissions readers who offered him acceptance to several top 50 schools.
We are constantly evolving to fit the challenges that are facing our students every day! This includes our extensive research and experience with issues across DEI & intersectionality, artificial intelligence, emerging technologies and careers, and higher education trends. It also means meeting our students where they are at, helping them feel comfortable with their own voice, and challenging them to dig a little deeper.
Kristina is the Director of Network Operations at Prompt. She graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and Cell Biology and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. Since joining Prompt in 2019 as a Writing Coach, she has worked on over 3,500 college essays, and she now supports our Writing Coach team in her current leadership role.
For a while, I actually planned on going into healthcare. I've always felt that knowledge was power, and I loved making complex topics easy to understand and, most importantly, helping people understand what that topic meant for them, specifically. After I realized that the part I loved about healthcare was educating, I started focusing on education in a one-on-one setting where you can really tailor a student's learning to their strengths and weaknesses. Now — as someone who hated writing all through high school — I love making nebulous essay ideas feel really concrete and easy to write about for my students.
I applied to the University of California system. The UC system asks for four shorter essays, and I'm sure I wrote about the things that I still remember from high school: how much I loved biology and genetics, the time that we changed marching band instructors and I helped rally all of the seniors to hold extra practices, and the volunteering I did at clinics and senior centers. Write about something that's important to you — you’ve got this!
Stay organized and start early! You might be juggling school lists, essays you need to write, different deadlines you have to meet, teachers you need to ask for letters of recommendation — it can add up to a lot! Take some time to set up a system, whether that’s a spreadsheet, checklist, or dartboard with your favorite schools on it — or you can keep it simple and use Prompt's essay list builder to keep track of any essays you need to write.
I love that "aha!" moment when everything clicks for a student. Nothing is more exciting than when a student who was dragging their feet on their college essays tells me that they're actually excited to write them.
Strong writing and teaching skills, a keen eye for detail — but I think the trait I look for the most is curiosity and a desire to push their students. It can be really easy for students to overlook their best or most impressive qualities, or to downplay what makes them unique and special. Our coaches are genuinely curious to learn more about their students and that lets them help students’ stories shine. By challenging our students to improve, we help them discover the best way to tell their story.
I worked with one student on an essay about how her love of math and art intertwined and how her math skills enhanced her creativity, rather than hindering it. The part I remember the most was how the student came to our call with just a single idea:
"I hate when people ask if you're an art person or a STEM person. Why can't I be both?" But she wasn't sure how to turn that idea into a personal statement. Working together, we found a lot of areas in her life where those aspects intersected: counting stitches and constructing patterns in crochet, dissecting gymnastics moves into degrees and angles, breaking down dance steps into beats and patterns. Her application was a mix of the arts and STEM, and by writing her personal statement around this idea and her contribution in each area, she showed the reader how those interests intertwined to make her the person that she was.
We genuinely care about our students. We want all of our students to succeed and get into the right school for them. But it's just as important to us that our students become better writers along the way, because being able to take an idea and clearly, succinctly, and effectively communicate it is a skill they're going to be able to take with them anywhere they go.
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