Want to Help Students with Their College Essays? Become a Volunteer Essay Reader on CC

I think any of this is fine. Some people might initially give feedback, then one or two might spend more time with a student until they have done what they can. If a reader is all about ideas, they can just give their perspective on that. If someone just wants to read the end result, they can offer to do that.

Example (very clichéd and hastily created):
Sally writes her essay on the joys of baking. She writes of baking disasters, trial and errors, baking with family, baking to raise money for charity, etc…

But maybe Jake, a reader, doesn’t get enough of sense of what Sally’s goal is with her essay. Jake suggests Sally keeps the focus of the essay on her baking disasters and her trial and error baking attempts because he felt that those aspects of her essay were helping him understand what she wanted the AO to know.

Sally revised her essay and focuses on baking setbacks. Jake felt that a stronger idea was emerging, so he suggested Sally incorporate examples that showed how she was willing to try and fail in her baking.

She asked Jake what he thought about a few ideas. She added a story about ruining one cake and improvising a new recipe at the last minute, which everyone loved… Now her essay shows how she has learned something about herself and not being afraid to try new things, to keep striving to get something right, to enjoy small victories, or other personality characteristics.

With Jake’s feedback, Sally was able to revise her essay so that it was much more clear what Sally wanted an AO to know about her. Jake doesn’t have more time to volunteer on this essay. Maybe Nancy is able to give Sally’s essay a final review because that’s all the time Nancy has.

Anything is helpful.

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