Essay workspace

Brainstorm, draft and track every essay in one place. The workspace is opinionated: it makes you answer questions before it gives you a blank page.

Archetype detection

When you create an essay, the prompt text is matched against seven archetypes. Each carries its own brainstorm questions and its own list of what sinks that kind of essay.

ArchetypeTriggered by
Why this school?“why us”, “why do you want to attend”
Why this major?“why this major/field/program”
Personal statement“background, identity, interest, or talent”
Challenge or failure“challenge”, “obstacle”, “setback”
Community or identity“community”, “identity”, “background”
Activity elaboration“elaborate on an activity”
Intellectual curiosity“idea”, “topic”, “concept”

Anything unmatched falls back to a generic set. You can add your own questions to any essay.

Draft checker

Runs live once you pass 40 words. It is mechanical on purpose, it checks things that are actually checkable and does not attempt to judge quality.

  • Word count against the limit, with an over-count and a colour change.
  • ClichĂ© detection: fifteen phrases admissions readers see constantly (“ever since I was”, “little did I know”, “passion for”).
  • Weak openers: flags the six most common opening constructions.
  • Sentence length: warns above a 28-word average.
  • “I” density: useful because a “why us” essay that is I-heavy is usually about the wrong subject.

The checker never rewrites anything and no essay text is sent to a language model. It is regex and arithmetic running in your browser.

Status and XP

Brainstorm → Drafting → Revising → Final. Passing 150 words awards 40 XP once per essay; marking an essay final awards 100, once. Answering a brainstorm question awards 10, once per question.

Auto-adding supplements

For any school on your list, one click creates three standard supplement shells, a “why us”, a “why major” and a community prompt, each pre-loaded with matching brainstorm questions. Replace the prompt text with the school's real one when it publishes.

Feedback

Contributors you've granted comment access can leave threaded feedback on any essay, and you can mark each comment resolved. See Contributors.

UCAS statements

With the UK track on, the three UCAS personal statement questions can be created as separate essays with character limits converted to approximate word limits.