India, May 3 -- Thirteen years ago, I stood at a crossroads-more a mother than a mentor, more curious than qualified. My child was applying to college, and I knew nothing about writing the "perfect" college essay. I wasn't an academician. I had no formal training. But I had one thing most essay strategists didn't: a mother's instinct to listen without judgement, to observe quietly, and to stir possibilities from the simplest of stories-like ingredients in a kitchen experiment.
And that's how it all began.
I treated each essay like a recipe. The raw material was always the child's experience-imperfect, unpolished, and deeply human. My job wasn't to make it sound like a thesis. My job was to retain its soul while layering it with structure,...