About Matt
I tell stories for a living. That is the whole job of a college essay.
My name is Matt Schwartz. By day I'm a journalist and podcaster at Bloomberg Law — before
that, years at NPR. My work is narrative: I find the story inside a complicated subject, decide
what actually matters in it, and build it into something a stranger will listen to all the way
through. Every week the question in front of me is where is the real story here, and why
would anyone care?
That is exactly, and literally, the problem a seventeen-year-old faces in front of a blank
Common App essay. Almost every student I meet arrives with three ideas, and usually the one
they're least excited about is the one worth six weeks of work. Most consultants at my price
are excellent editors — they will make your sentences better. I am something different and
harder to replace: someone who finds the story before anyone edits a sentence of it.
Editing is the part AI already does. Recognizing the story is the part it can't.
I'm also a Georgetown University Law Center graduate, so I know how an argument gets built and
why most of them collapse. I've won top national prizes for feature writing, including the
American Bar Association's Silver Gavel and an Edward R. Murrow Award. And I've taught
graduate-level storytelling at American University, working with students on presenting the
most compelling version of themselves.
Over the past decade-plus I've worked with high school students applying to Ivies, elite liberal
arts colleges and large state schools, and with college graduates writing personal statements for
law school, business school, medical school, architecture school, and a steady stream of programs
I'd never seen an application for until someone showed up with one. The prompt changes. The
problem never does: which story, and why should a stranger care. I started doing this because I
loved that puzzle. I still do.
- Bloomberg Law journalist and podcaster — narrative reporting, previously NPR
- Georgetown University Law Center — J.D.
- American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts
- Edward R. Murrow Award for best feature reporting
- Taught graduate-level storytelling at American University
- 10+ years college & graduate school essay consulting
I've watched AI transform this industry, and I've thought hard about whether what I do
still matters. I believe it does — more than ever. When every applicant has access
to a machine that produces decent prose on demand, the students who invest in finding
and articulating their genuine voice are the ones who get through.
