My Approach
Through the Academy, I help 9th–11th graders brainstorm, launch, and scale long-term passion projects (like the ones listed below).
Through the Apps Lab, I guide 12th graders through every step of their college applications, from personal statements and supplemental essays to activity lists and brag sheets.
J. combined improv comedy and mindfulness meditation to help his classmates cope with academic anxiety.
B. sampled recordings from interviews with nursing home patients to compose a concept album about aging, life, and death.
C. launched a new creative writing club at her school, culminating in a poetry/fiction anthology and ongoing open mic series.
R. hatched and raised ducklings, bringing them to local elementary school classrooms to assist in biology lessons.
Most consultancies offer either creative or admissions expertise.
I offer both.
A Strong App Tells a Story
I leverage my terminal degrees in creative writing and narrative studies to help students write Ivy-level personal statements drawing from Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey and Shakespeare's 5-act structure.
Here's how:
Pre-Writing: The Origin Story
First, we brainstorm several potential narratives, seeking character growth and avoiding overused tropes (e.g. sports injuries, bad grades, "voluntourism").
Act I: Exposition ("The Hook")
We begin in medias res, instantly hooking your reader and setting the scene. Then we excavate the deeper, vulnerable stakes; we want your reader to feel exactly what you felt.
Act II: Rising Action
A brief flashback adds deeper context and portrays your "old self" before we progress the story at hand.
Act III: Climax
The Turning Point: What triggered your profound change?
The Realization: Through what mindset shift did the "old you" end and the heroic "new you" begin?
Act IV: Falling Action
Words are just words; we need evidence. We convey specific actions you took post-realization and their measurable, positive outcomes.
Act V: Resolution
We wrap up your story by articulating your current standing and future goals, finishing with a thematically and poetically satisfying ending.
The Body Test:
Heart
Controlled sentimentality: emotional resilience and wisdom.
Brain
Skillful construction: thematic and imagistic intellect.
Teeth
Grit and integrity: willingness to fight injustice or adversity.
Guts
Courage: not the absence of fear, but the overcoming of it.
N. honed her craft, reading, writing, and submitting to literary contests.
She decided to launch an indie publishing press, platforming her fellow young writers.
N. built a website, drafted her founding documents, and began soliciting chapbook authors.
After providing edits, she published her first titles, offering mentorship and live reading support.
We spotlit N.'s press heavily in her apps, helping her secure acceptances from Barnard, USC, UC Berkeley, and BU.
Future-Proof Your Brain
College admissions are more competitive than ever. Meanwhile, as AI disrupts the traditional classroom, universities are pivoting away from paper-writing and toward oral exams. So, how can you prepare?
The Burgess Workshop Studio equips you for this new landscape through 1:1, rigorous intellectual conversations resulting in interdisciplinary application "spikes."
Socratic Dialectics
Refined over a decade-long career in education, my mentorship relies on the Socratic method and dialectics. I help students dismantle complex ideas and articulate their own original insights with clarity and conviction.
Gamified Architecture
Instead of traditional "homework," students and I co-create custom tasks framed as quests mapped to the Hero's Journey, helping them achieve goals they genuinely care about. Together, we brainstorm, launch, and scale a long-term, interdisciplinary, major-related project one step at a time.
Rhetorical Mastery
A great application requires more than good grades—it requires compelling self-advocacy. I teach students how to formulate bulletproof arguments using emotional intelligence and textual analysis, graduating from passive learners into confident, authoritative thinkers.
Results
Drawing from my professional experience as a writer—and my nine years of admissions consulting, editing thousands of essays and applications—I'll help you translate your successes into elite college acceptances.
Or, first explore my programs helping: