For those of you who weren't on hand for an in-person demo, you can email us at info@collegeessayorganizer.com anytime, and we can set up a time to walk you through it. IECA members are also entitled to one free student account per season, so please contact us if you have not already done so, so we can get you set up.

Thanks again to all of you who came by to introduce yourselves in person. Talking with our members enables us to keep making improvements, and lets us know that we are meeting your needs.

And you're right. The purpose of these essays is not to talk about them but to talk about you. Your job in all of your college essay writing is to convince the reader that you're an interesting person who belongs in their highly-selective class. You're trying to get them to choose you instead of someone else.

Easier said than done, indeed. So today we direct you to a post written last year that has gotten a lot of traffic: How to tell a college that you're interested.

Always keep in mind that your job is to express what you have that they want. It's already implied that they have what you want - a great education and a raft of opportunities for your future, whatever that may be. Do this by identifying your own intellectual interests and developing them from a personal standpoint.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 12, 2011

IECA and College Essay Organizer Announce Strategic Partnership: All Members Receive Free Accounts

Fairfax, VA—IECA is proud to announce an exclusive strategic partnership with College Essay Organizer. “We have always been committed to offering our membership the most innovative and unique benefits,” said IECA Executive Director, Mark Sklarow. “Particularly in regard to new technology that saves members time and helps them work smarter.” With this in mind, IECA will now provide interested IECA members with free College Essay Organizer student accounts during each college application season, in addition to the already specially discounted rates for IECA members. Each member of IECA will receive one free student account valued at $49; any member purchasing nine or more student accounts directly from College Essay Organizer will get an additional free account. (The more student accounts a member purchases, the lower the per student rate.)

Member feedback on this one-of-a kind web tool has been overwhelmingly positive since it was first unveiled at last year’s IECA conference. In this short time, hundreds of members have begun working with College Essay Organizer. “We designed our Web site with independent educational consultants in mind,” said Dan Stern, President of College Essay Organizer. “Our goal has always been to help IECA members optimize their time and ensure an even more professional way of running, and growing, their businesses.”

For those who are new to College Essay Organizer, this partnership will give IECA members the opportunity to discover how this easy-to-use, groundbreaking technology will save time, reduce anxiety, and allow members to work more efficiently during the busy application season. IECA members who already know the value of College Essay Organizer will enjoy the additional savings with their free account(s).

IECA In Philadelphia

We had a great time at the IECA Spring Conference in Philadelphia, PA! We were excited to meet in person so many of you who we'd only known through email. It was great to meet so many new people, too. As promised, we also gave away a free CEO master account valued at $200 during the IECA raffle. Good times all around.

Showing off our new improvements was definitely the highlight for us. For those of you who weren't on hand to get an in-person demo, College Essay Organizer users can now:

• Remove essay questions from the Essay RoadMap that are not relevant to a client
• Upload, edit, and track status of essay drafts within each client’s account instead of emailing back and forth
• Gain access to our weekly webinars on topics related to the essay process

Thanks again to all of you who came to introduce yourselves in person. It makes running the site a more personal task for us and also helps us get concrete, usable feedback from our users. All of our most important improvements have come out of your requests!

Come by and see us tomorrow!

Tomorrow, May 6th, at 8am, we'll be at the technology seminar at the IECA Conference in Philadelphia. Make sure to stop by and get a sense of what College Essay Organizer can do for you!

This week in Philadelphia has been great. We've had many happy users coming by to introduce themselves in person, and lots of new people getting to know the site and what it can do for them. For those of you who haven't come to the College Essay Organizer booth yet - we're giving special discounts to all who make a purchase at the conference, so come find us and say hello. Most of the time we've been settled in at our table in Salon H.

College Essay Organizer is a product that reveals its benefits best with hands-on experience. We're giving demos all day long and have a lot of new features to show that improve the experience for both student and counselor, including the new Upload Draft feature and the new ways you can manipulate of the Essay RoadMap results to suit your needs. The site's scope and ease of use are improving every day and we're proud to show it off to the people we serve best.

IECA In Philadelphia

We'll be at the IECA Spring Conference this week in Philadelphia, PA! We invite you all to visit our booth and say hello - we're looking forward to meeting the many people we've emailed and spoken with throughout the year, and to meeting new faces as well. This year, we will be giving away a free CEO master account valued at $200 during the IECA raffle.

We'll have a lot to discuss with IECA members this year, including College Essay Organizer's new improvements. Stop by our booth and we'll discuss with you how you can now:

• Remove essay questions from the Essay RoadMap that are not relevant to a client
• Upload, edit, and track status of essay drafts within each client’s account instead of emailing back and forth
• Gain access to our weekly webinars on topics related to the essay process

It has been a terrific year for us at CEO, in large part because of IECA and its wonderful membership, and we're excited to be joining you in Pennsylvania.

Hope to see you all this week!

13. Is there anything that I can do to improve the format when printing the RoadMap results?

We have added functionality to remove any questions, which will reduce the length of your printed document as much as you choose. If you are copying and pasting into a Word document, you can reduce the amount of space between lines by making sure the document is single-spaced with zero paragraph spacing before and after each line (look for this setting in the Alignment and Spacing section of the formatting palette). If you have further questions about formatting your RoadMap for your students and their families, please just send us an email and we'll be happy to help you out.

You may want to consider giving your clients access to their CEO accounts, rather than printing out reports, as many consultants have found that sharing CEO with their clients serves two key purposes: first, it validates the need for your services, as CEO demonstrates the sheer magnitude of the essay process; second, it delivers a clear plan that parents can follow if they wish and empowers students to work more efficiently and proactively on their own.

14. Will you be adding essay questions for transfer students?

We don't have enough demand for transfer applicants at this point in time. Most students who want to transfer typically apply to only one or two specific colleges, making CEO less useful to them.

15. Do you value customer service?

We place great value on our customers, and provide quick and accurate responses to all inquiries. We are always available by email and phone to further discuss how we can improve your experience if you feel anything is in need of improvement.

11. Is there always a word or character count listed for every essay?

We always include the listed word or character limit for each question if it is provided on the application. Instances in which essay lengths are listed as "Short space provided" (or something similar) refer to physical limits on a paper application. When there are discrepancies between the stated lengths of questions in the online and paper applications, CEO lists the questions for the online application.

12. How useful are College Essay Organizer's essay samples?

We post what we deem to be "very strong" essays. We have found that posting truly exceptional essays intimidates students who are poor writers or are uncomfortable writing about themselves. We'll be adding more samples this year, which should give your students a broader range of essay topics to review.

7. I found that I did not use the RoadMap as much as I could have. Do you have any suggestions to help me make better use of it?

The RoadMap provides a suggested plan for organizing your essay questions and shows the overlapping themes among your essays. But one of its best features is that it provides as many topic options as possible for each essay that the student needs to write. Take advantage of this flexibility! It is ultimately up to the independent consultant and the student to relate the student's life to the broad themes addressed by the essay questions. But choose your topics carefully and specifically. It will make the writing process quicker and simpler, and increase the quality of the essays.

We are always improving the RoadMap's functionality and ease of use. We have greatly simplified the layout of the RoadMap, and have added note-taking and essay uploading features to make CEO your one-stop source for guiding students through the essay writing process.

If you would like to go over these upgrades individually, or find out how to optimize your clients' experience using CEO, please let us know and we'll arrange a private demo with Dan Stern, our president. We're confident you'll find that the new and improved CEO will guide students more clearly and successfully.

8. Will you be adding any additional tutorials for independent consultants?

We will be including additional resources to help new users this coming season, including live webinars that explain how to best use CEO and that cover various essay topics. We will also include materials you can share with clients that allow them to optimize their CEO experience. Though these additions aren't required to use CEO or understand its benefits, they can help improve the experience for all.

9. Is it possible to buy only the QuickFinder for my clients?

We do not currently offer QuickFinder-only accounts through the Master Account platform.

10. Why not?

We have developed the RoadMap around the QuickFinder format, allowing the RoadMap to function as a flexible, modifiable QuickFinder. Now that we've added an essay-sharing platform to make communication between you and your students even easier, CEO has become a one-stop shop for the college essay writing process. We see the RoadMap as the core of that experience. The overwhelmingly positive feedback regarding the RoadMap, as well as the upgrades that make the RoadMap even easier to interpret now, makes clear that this is the best approach for our users.

4. Students often choose not to apply to schools on their original lists. Will it be possible to make changes to the list of schools for each student?

We have added 5 additional college selections per student account to grant even more flexibility. Each account now allows a maximum of 20 college selections. The RoadMap allows for colleges to be selected and de-selected, and will automatically provide an updated essay writing plan based on the student's most current list.

5. How can College Essay Organizer enhance independent consultants who pride themselves on their 'high-touch' services?

CEO is designed to increase the quality of 'high-touch' services. Researching and organizing essay questions on your own (or having your clients do it) wastes valuable time and opens up the possibility of overlooking program-specific, optional, and scholarship questions, which are usually not included on schools' regular applications or the Common App.

With CEO, speed and accuracy are taken care of, and you can focus your energies on high-level essay responsibilities like brainstorming the best topics and editing drafts. This optimizes the real value you bring as a consultant and eliminates the tedious, time-consuming work involved in looking up essay questions and designing a personalized essay plan.

Our new note-taking and essay uploading features will make this process even easier, allowing you to use CEO as your one-stop source for the college essay process.

6. How can I be sure that College Essay Organizer's data will be updated quickly and accurately?

We consider accuracy our top priority. Occasionally there will be a slight delay between the time an essay questions is made available by a college and when it appears on our site, but we closely monitor all the universities in our database and upload their essay questions as soon as they have been released publicly and verified by our staff.

Our stellar track record for speed and accuracy speaks for itself, and this season we will work even harder to ensure that new essay questions are uploaded as early as possible.

Unfortunately, university admissions departments do not always post accurate information. In 2010, many colleges posted essay questions that contradicted different versions of their own applications. Ultimately, CEO helped to resolve these issues for its users, and for the colleges who were unaware of their discrepancies. We plan to have even more researchers this year to ensure greater speed and accuracy.