College Essay Exchange

If you are interested in becoming a volunteer, please register with our volunteer management system to be added to our cohort of volunteers. We coordinate with teachers at the beginning of each school semester to confirm dates and times of sessions. We reach out to potential and returning volunteers with the final list of sessions, usually in September for fall sessions, and February for spring sessions. 

New volunteers are required to fill out the registration form, review training materials, and complete a volunteer background check with Portland Public Schools. The background check is free and lasts for three years. Once you receive your approval email, just forward it to alberto@literary-arts.org, and you will be allowed to sign up for sessions! We are actively seeking volunteers from a wide range of cultural and professional backgrounds. About half the students we work with are first-generation applicants to college.

While some students will arrive with completed essays that need polishing, it’s much more common for students to be brainstorming and/or working on a first draft. Grammar and punctuation are not the focus here. Instead, we ask that our volunteers be thoughtful, active listeners and encourage each student to present their best selves on the page. The most important part of a college essay is that it illustrates the student’s unique story. Of course, we’ll go over all of this and much more at the trainings.

Volunteers can expect to spend about 50 to 90 minutes per session, depending on the length of the class period. New volunteers are required to review provided training materials, which should take about an hour of your time. Since sessions are held at the high schools, we also ask that volunteers take travel time and parking into account.

Before you volunteer at a session, we require that you peruse our volunteer handbook (available on our Bloomerang page) and watch our video training here.

Once you are registered on Bloomerang, the scheduling tool allows you to self select and sessions you would like to attend, and cancel any that you are unable to make. If you are cancelling less than 24 hours ahead of a session, you can email alberto@literary-arts.org to give us extra notice.

Fall 2025session requests will be available soon. Sessions are offered to educators at no charge.

We have held College Essay Exchange sessions for the PPS high schools, and other outside districts including Parkrose and Woodburn. Because our volunteer base is in the Portland metro, the program is limited to Portland and the surrounding school districts. We are not currently offering remote sessions.

We typically cap sessions at 35 students, but can make accommodations on a case-to-case basis. We can occasionally offer multiple sessions at the same school to accommodate more students.

Volunteers are prepared to help students anywhere from beginning the brainstorming stage of their personal statements, to polishing off a final draft of their essays. We just ask that all students present are engaged and prepared to work with a volunteer on their application materials. This is not a general writing workshop where volunteers will help students with assignments unrelated to the college applications process.

The College Essay Exchange began in 2010 through a partnership with Susan Bartley, a teacher at Franklin High School who co-founded the Advanced Scholar Program. (She also received the Council Trenholm Memorial Award by the NEA, an award for teachers who work to reduce inequities within education.) In the program’s  first year, we trained 34 volunteers to work with 34 students at an after-school session at Franklin. The session was a powerful, positive experience for everyone involved. We’ve steadily expanded the program and currently serve around 250 students per year.

Volunteers have traveled to high schools to participate in one-on-one sessions with students. In 2019, local companies The Standard and Wieden+Kennedy hosted sessions where students received mentorship, learned about their job fields, and toured their offices.