I'm Kristie Schmidt.

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I write literary memoir, and I've spent twenty-plus years thinking about how language reveals a person. That's the eye I bring to your kid's draft.

 

My coaching is the literary work, applied to the college application.

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I have a B.A. from Smith (with high honors) and an M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Human Development and Psychology, the part of Harvard that studies how teenagers actually think.

 

I'm also a National Writing Project Fellow through SUNY Stony Brook.

 

For eighteen years I taught AP English Language and Composition in a public high school,

plus nine overlapping years teaching college Academic Writing through UConn's Early College Experience program. 

 

I was trained as an Essay Specialist by College Essay Guy and have been mentored by a former admission director at Cornell. 

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My essay "Molasses Brain" won the 2025 International Amy MacRae Award. The judge, novelist Sharon Butala, called it "sheer strength of writing" and "admirably delicate touch."  

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You can read it here.

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