Chances are your professor has given you an assignment to write an essay that reflects on a piece of literature, or another body of work like a film or play. Do you know how to write a good essay? One basic way to elevate the quality of your next essay is to stop...

Hello again, budding ESL writer! We left off our last ESL post (How to Avoid 3 Common ESL Writing Mistakes) reminding you that it’s okay if your written English isn’t perfect because there’s  no such thing as perfect English. That’s an important message...

What’s the difference between writing a cover letter that will land you a job, and writing a cover letter that will end up in a paper shredder? It’s all about language choices. When writing a cover letter, you have three, maybe four, paragraphs to tell your...

Have you ever made an awesome chocolate cake without looking at a recipe first? Unless you are an extremely talented baker, most likely the answer is “no.” Just one cup of flour too many and your chocolate dessert will be a chocolate mess! The same goes for...

I’m going to make a bold statement: Any online proofreading service that uses Microsoft Word’s word counter as the basis for its proofreading rates is ripping you off. (Hint, that’s nearly all of them!) To prove my point, I obtained a quote on the exact same...

Are you an English as a Second Language (ESL) writer guilty of making some of the more common ESL writing mistakes? Do you mix up your subjects and objects, write your adjectives all out of order, and confuse annoying English verbs that mean nearly the same thing?...

  In our last post, we wrote about 4 Must-Answer Questions Before Brainstorming Personal Statement Topics. If you haven’t read that and answered those questions yet, you’ll need to do so before moving on to this post.  Now that you’ve answered...

As tempting as it is to pick a topic for your college application personal statement, get writing, and get it over with – this is not the right way to go. Chances are, you’ll get jammed up with writer’s block, end up wasting a lot of time, and become...

It’s time to go back to school, a fact that may be causing you a bit of anxiety. After months traveling around the country, going to concerts, and catching up on good books and movies, you have to go back to college. How are you ever going to get organized and...

Are summer classes harder or easier than regular school year classes? It’s an age-old question that many panicky, pent-up students start asking themselves when they realize that their next few months aren’t going to be solely spent reading trashy romance...

Not all countries have three months of summer vacation like the U.S. and Australia do. In a global market, it’s best not to waste three months out of the year worrying about nothing more significant than getting a tan. Some experts say that summer break is a...

Hollywood is arguably the biggest and most experienced marketing machine in the world. It earmarks massive budgets for feature flicks and often exceeds them because it has mastered the art of advertising the appeal of these films to the masses. In fact, Hollywood...

Think back to the last time you saw a really great stand-up comedy show. The jokes were funny. The comedian was a good story teller, transitioning effortlessly between segments, and everyone seemed to be having a good time. Now think about a time when you saw a...

We usually have a goal in mind when we set out to write something. Many times, we’re trying to convince our reader of something. Buy a product. Hire me. Admit me to your college. Join me in a crusade of world-dominance. Choose me to be your new roommate. You...

It’s that time of year again: Valentine’s day is fast approaching. While Hallmark is getting giddy, flower shops are gearing up to gouge men the world over, and spoken for women try to contain their anticipation, some of us aren’t so thrilled....

Last week, I wrote about some new design and user experience changes we made to our sign up, upload, and purchase process. While those were some great improvements, they pale in comparison to the one we made this weekend. We’ve just overhauled our entire...

User experience is a tricky thing. There are a myriad of articles, blog posts, and plenty of research on how to offer a great user experience. However, in my mind, they all boil down to one simple goal: delight your users. There are a vast number of ways you can...

For a long time now, Jim and I have been wanting to revamp the design and configuration of the Kibin user dashboard.  Our goal for this project was to make the post-sign up process both more intuitive and efficient.  For the past week, we’ve been...

If the end of the academic school year finds you up to your neck in assignments and too busy to visit your school’s writing center, there may be a way to avoid it. Many college writing centers are putting their tools online, offering online writing help with...

Kibin co-founder Travis Biziorek is off to Education Innovation Summit ’12, an annual gathering of education game-changers in classrooms, tech, policy, and business. This year the conference will be held at Arizona State University on April 16-18....

Kibin editors helped Scott Lansing polish his personal statement essays as part of his application to the prestigious MBA program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Scott, who calls himself a “fringe candidate,” credits Kibin’s help with...