Free College Essay Webinars—July 2026

College Essays 101: 7 Secrets for a Great College Essay

Watch the recording

Writing college essays can be a chore, or an adventure.

What do admissions officers actually want to read? What makes one essay land and another fall flat? Do you really know what makes a great college essay?

Odds are, you don’t. Don’t take it personally. We’ve asked thousands of students and parents, and most of them have no idea either.

In this webinar, you’ll discover what makes a great college essay and the 7 secrets that will help you write your best one.

Plus, we’ll send you free tools and resources after the webinar to help you get started on your adventure.

We’ll cover:

  • Secrets 1–3: what professionals know about writing
  • Secrets 4–6: what’s in every effective college essay
  • Secret 7: it’s a surprise!
  • Bonus secret: How to write your college essay like a pro
  • Q&A

College Essays 102:

Write Your College Essay Like a Pro

Thursday, July 16, 5 PT / 8 ET

You can write what AI can’t. Here’s how.

How do teens write college essays that actually help their chances? How do they tell an engaging, authentic story that shows who they are and what they’ll bring to campus?

Here’s the challenge (and why so few college essays make a difference):

  • Few English classes teach this kind of introspection, thinking, and writing.
  • AI tools only know how to write generic essays that make admissions officers’ eyes glaze over.
  • Few adults know what makes an effective essay, let alone how to help a student write one.

In this webinar, Barak will share EssayQuest’s Write Like a Pro process—the framework that Barak’s personal mentoring students and thousands of others have used to write their most effective essays.

As one of Barak’s students said a few months ago:

It is quite weird, and it seems to work!

– Joseph K, one of Barak’s personal mentoring students

Joseph thought it was weird because it was so unlike anything he’d learned in school. It works because we spent eight years developing these teen-tested, nothing-like-school activities—built with our students, as they were writing their essays.

We’ll cover:

  • Connor’s essay (and how he wrote it)
  • What to do before writing a single word
  • The 3 phases of pro-level writing (and how to use them)
  • 8 key milestones (to keep yourself on track)

After the webinar, we’ll send you:

  • Activities from EssayQuest for each phase of the process
  • Sample essays
  • Our How to Read Any College Essay Like a Pro handout
  • A link to the 7 Secrets for a Great College Essay webinar

Can’t make it live? Register anyway—we’ll send you the recording.

Your Guide

Barak Rosenbloom
Founder | College Essay Mentor | Architect of EssayQuest

Barak is the founder and Chief Essay Mentor at EssayQuest, a college essay platform serving students, schools, nonprofits, and independent educational consultants nationwide.

Since 2012, he has mentored over 500 students one-on-one, trained hundreds of educators, counselors, and consultants, and speaks at regional and national college admissions conferences.

He led the development of EssayQuest—the teen-tested, nothing-like-school program that turns the college essay from a chore into an adventure. Schools, nonprofits, and independent consultants use EssayQuest to guide their students to inevitably authentic college essays.

He’s a skilled storyteller who turns a complex, high-stakes process into something students actually enjoy.

Barak has a B.A. in History and English from Williams College and a Master of Public Policy from the University of Michigan. He lives outside of Seattle in Snoqualmie, Washington.