How Chromolo Works

Chromolo offers digital summer classes on the art of the personal essay, and private editing sessions for high school upperclassmen working on their college essays.

In our intimate, eight-person classes and private sessions, students develop original essays based on their own interests, experiences, and beliefs. We read and discuss different essays, analyze storytelling structures, and break down the steps to crafting compelling personal essays. Our teachers work closely with each student, edit each new draft of our students’ work, and help the author reach the most polished, powerful version of their story.

We endeavor to help students discover the joy in writing, and to make each writer’s own words and ideas shine.

At Chromolo, students develop the skills and confidence they need to write and edit their applications, but also to succeed in their own future writing — in high school, college, and beyond.

About Chromolo

We here at Chromolo believe that too often, the college application process puts students in an impossible position. High schoolers are told that their applications depend on their personal essays — yet students have never studied, written, or in some cases even read any personal essays!

How can anyone write a successful essay — let alone many — without knowing anything about the form? Students are trapped between their own high expectations, and a lack of direction or support. It’s no wonder that many students dread writing, and would rather fight an alligator than finish an essay assignment.

We hope to fix that. We live for storytelling, love helping writers find and refine their voices, and believe that the most successful college applications showcase the writer as a person, not as a collection of scores or accomplishments.

The best essays introduce the author. They say, “This is what I care about, this is what I believe, this is how I think.” Which is also exactly what college applications are looking for!

Personal writing doesn’t need to feel intimidating. We know that writing can be exciting, revelatory, clarifying — and even fun. At Chromolo, we try to ensure that as our students develop their stories, hone their voices, and craft polished essays, they actually enjoy the process.

Chromolo’s History

Chromolo is a made-up word, a derivative of the art term “chromoluminarism.” Chromoluminarism describes the pointillist style of painting in which images are broken down into individual dots of color, which interact with each other dynamically. Like in George Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte.

When he began this work five years ago, Josh Harris named the business “Chromolo” because he thought pointillism is an apt metaphor for the focus of great writing. Excellent writing captures the nitty gritty details, and those details texture and deepen the bigger picture, skillfully folding different views into one composite image.

As awareness of Josh’s methods grew, he quickly realized he had more student requests than he could responsibly take on. So he asked long-time friends and fellow writers, whose work he knew he could trust, to join him — and so Chromolo continues!