Yale Graduate Writing / College Essay / Application Mentor

Sebastian C.

Hello! I’ve been tutoring and teaching for over five years, specializing in college essays, mentorship, and music. However, I still remember a time in my life when I hated writing. In middle school, I was a voracious reader but saw myself as a STEM kid with barely enough patience for a paragraph. When I learned that writing didn’t have to be formulaic and boring—that it could be hands-on, nerdy, and personal—my pen took off like a bottle rocket.

Since then, I have written personal speeches delivered to the mayor of Hiroshima and my high school class, sprawling essays on K-Pop and Avatar: The Last Airbender, and studied poetry under 2020 Nobel laureate Louise Glück. I owe a great deal to my amazing teachers at Choate Rosemary Hall and Yale University, where I enjoyed graduate coursework and some of the most fun writing experiences of my life.

My college application essay was about getting lost in a foreign country and simultaneously getting lost in life, as a robotics genius turned anime nerd. I love working with clients to transform personal experiences that seem mundane into stories bursting with flavor: a gymnast recovering from an ACL tear, a misspelled name on a restaurant’s waiting list. I have worked with clients both as a freelancer and through online platforms. If I had to name my best qualification, it’s the experience of taking an essay from a shaky concept to a smooth piece of writing that feels like you.

In my day-to-day life, I’m a singer/rapper and songwriter, having created music for Pokémon GO! and taught music production to systems-impacted youth in San Francisco. I bring that same pen and enthusiasm to teaching my students. I want to make the process straightforward and intuitive for whatever your need is: structuring, editing, ideating, or wording. That’s my story. What’s yours?