My main area isn’t helping with essays. A few years ago, I was helping a tutee with the writing for his essay. For the school he really wanted to go to, about 40th ranked nationally, he was writing an essay on visiting his uncle who was a judge in the city the school was located in. I told him to just mention the judge as one of the reasons for wanting to go there, but to pick another topic for the essay. I thought that was laying it on way too thick and would hurt his application. Was this the right approach. In retrospect, I probably should have suggested to the parents to hire an essay specialist, but I wasn’t aware of how big the essay spin business was.