Riverside Educational Partners offers college application essay coaching, ongoing writing support, and LSAT preparation for a small number of active clients per cycle. Every student has a story worth telling. We teach them how to tell it.
Noah Slager is a graduate of Columbia University, an incoming student at Yale Law School, and a verified 180 LSAT scorer. Grace Riginos is an experienced English teacher with an English degree from Barnard College and an M.Ed. from the University of Notre Dame.
Services
with both of us
Packages built around the Common App personal essay and school supplements. We help students find the story only they can tell, then guide them through drafting and revision. The student writes every word.
Discuss essay coaching →with Grace
Regular one-on-one sessions for high school and younger students who want to become stronger writers.
Discuss writing support →with Noah
One-on-one LSAT tutoring from a 180 scorer, plus coaching on law school personal statements, resumes, and addenda.
Also available: a one-hour LSAT diagnostic consultation covering study habits, error patterns, timing, and study-plan design.
Discuss LSAT preparation →Approach
We talk about where you are, where you want to go, and whether we’re the right people to help. No obligation, and no pressure.
If it’s a fit, we set a schedule and a scope: which essays, what cadence. Because we cap our active client list each cycle, every plan gets our personal attention.
All work is remote and live. You work directly with Noah or Grace, never with a subcontractor.
At Riverside, conversation is the center of our work. Through conversations, we help you unlock the story you want to tell and how you want to tell it. We’ve built a three-session model that moves you from the messy brainstorming stage to a polished draft that is authentically yours.
We ask questions, you answer. Each session is tailored to you and your draft. Our sessions are built around what each of us does best. Grace leads with the early work, helping you land on a story that shows the reader who you are and something you are excited to write about. Noah takes over as the draft develops, encouraging you to think carefully about the stylistic elements.
We keep our practice small on purpose. We want to know our students, and provide them with the highest quality feedback. On walks, over coffee, at dinner, we’re still talking about your essay and deciding how to structure the next call.
About
Graduate of Columbia University (3.99 GPA) · Incoming student, Yale Law School · Verified 180 LSAT
Leads LSAT tutoring, LSAT diagnostic consultations, and law school application coaching.
I’ve worked in some form of education my entire adult life. In college, I led service, camping, and backpacking trips in Alaska and Maine. After graduating, I took a job managing an educational afterschool program that now serves 150 students annually in the East Bay. What unites these experiences with my LSAT tutoring and essay work is a belief that everyone is capable of far more than they realize. Often we just need someone to see the best in us and offer the right scaffolding and expert support, and then we can do things that exceed our wildest expectations.
I love helping students discover that their lives are richer and more interesting than they’d believed. Nearly everyone arrives in the same place: they don’t know where to start on their essays, and deep down they suspect they just aren’t interesting enough to write a great one. We design our process as a journey of both skill development and self-discovery, so that each student learns they have a story to tell and builds the skill and confidence to tell the best possible version of it.
Experienced English teacher · M.Ed., University of Notre Dame · English degree, Barnard College
Leads college application essay coaching and ongoing writing support for high school and younger students.
I’ve always loved the writer’s process; specifically, those moments when you move from the messy ideas stage to the frustrating “how does all this work?” before it all just clicks. While at Barnard College, I worked with hundreds of college writers as a Writing Fellow, guiding them through the frustrating writer’s block toward that great “aha!” moment. This very work led me to pursue my M.Ed. at the University of Notre Dame and begin my career as an English teacher.
Every writer needs a first reader. During lunch, I often had a visitor (or two!) pop by my classroom asking my favorite question: can you look over my draft? While comments and a quick review are always helpful, it is conversation that truly strengthens our understanding of the stories we want to tell. My students understand the power of a messy first draft and leave our conversations feeling excited to continue the journey of personal writing.
We’ve always been each other’s first readers. When one of us had a paper due, an application, or an early Substack idea, the other always looked it over, and we talked about it at length, pushing each other to produce our best work. Usually our best ideas did not occur on the page; they came up through our conversations. These habits inspired our coaching model and inform our collaborative process today.
A note on integrity
We teach and we coach. We do not write essays for students, and we never will. We ask questions, suggest structures, mark up drafts, and push for another revision. Every application, essay, and answer a student submits is the student’s own work. If that’s not the kind of help you’re looking for, we’re not the right fit.
FAQ
The initial consultation is free, remote, and without obligation. We’ll talk about goals, fit, timing, and whether we can genuinely help.
Prefer email? Write to us at grace@riversideadvising.com.