Our Story

College Essay Guy is where students, parents, and counselors find smart, practical guidance for the college admission journey.

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The Story So Far

In 2011, Ethan Sawyer creates a free college essay resource blog. The goal: bring more ease, joy, and purpose to the college admission process.

Over the next few years, Ethan begins teaching pay-what-you-can courses and training up a team of essay specialists to work with students individually.

Today, CEG offers a broad range of online courses for students and counselors, plus in-person workshops, an essay review platform, and 1-on-1 college counseling and essay coaching.

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We’re One-For-One

We’re proud to operate on a one-for-one model, which means we support one student from a low-income background for every paying client.

1 PAYING STUDENT = 1 PRO BONO STUDENT

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We’re a certified b corp

Unlike traditional corporations, B Corps are legally required to consider the impact of their decisions on all stakeholders: customers, workers, communities, and the environment. As a B Corp, we demonstrate our active commitment to providing college application support to every student, everywhere, by offering hundreds of free resources, and pay-what-you-can spots for our online courses.

Our journey to now

2003

Ethan gets post-college job helping students with college essays

2011

Ethan starts CEG blog + teaches first pay-what-you-can course

2015

The Matchlighters Program born

2016

College Essay Essentials published

2017

CEG podcast launched + first full-time hire (Devon Sawyer)

2019

College Admission Essentials published + second full-time hire (Sandy Longworth)

2020

CEG Live launched in response to COVID, with 20K students attending + team expands to 8, including Matchlighters Director (Erika Coplon)

2021

CEG blog receives 6,735,523 visits

2022

Team expands to 15 + CEG launches its Essay Review Platform

Beyond

Let's find out together.

It’s rare to find strangers who truly care about you and want to help you in every way possible, and I think the CEG team really does.”

Aida

Student, University of Southern California

We love our team (a lot).

Meet some of our team

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Want to work with us? 

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Careers

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Partnerships

How we can help

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Parents

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Counselors

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Students