My Approach
Through the Academy, I help students brainstorm, launch, and scale long-term passion projects (like the ones listed below). Then, through the Apps Lab, I guide them through every step of their college applications—from personal statements and supplemental essays to activity list entries—ensuring they receive maximum credit.
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.
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.
N.'s press featured 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: