How to Use psgrader: From Essay Submission to Revision

psgrader returns more than a verdict. A report shows the tier a draft currently reaches, the dimensions behind that judgment, the sentences used as evidence, and a small set of revision priorities. The workflow below explains how to get from a draft to that report, and from the report to a better next draft.

1. Choose the product line that matches your application

The lines are not interchangeable. A UC PIQ set is judged as a four-answer portfolio, and a UCAS statement is judged as three connected answers. Submitting one PIQ answer on its own, or treating the three UCAS questions as three unrelated mini-essays, does not match how those applications are read.

Each line also has an official length rule. The Common App personal statement is capped at 650 words. UC PIQs are capped at 350 words per answer. The UCAS three questions share a 4,000-character budget, including spaces, with at least 350 characters per question.

psgrader accepts somewhat longer drafts for evaluation: up to 1,000 words for a Common App draft, up to 450 words per PIQ answer and 1,600 words across the four, and the UCAS character limits above. These are evaluation input limits, not permission from the application platform. A draft can pass the site's checks and still be too long to submit. Always confirm the final count in the application system.

2. Prepare the text before you paste it

• Submit application text written primarily in English. Formal evaluations are designed for the English draft you intend to use, not for notes or an outline.
• Check what was actually pasted. After copying from a document, confirm paragraph breaks, quotation marks, dashes, and any special characters survived. If you used OCR, proofread the text against the original before submitting.
• Keep the structure the product expects. UC PIQ needs four different question numbers. UCAS needs all three answers. A missing or duplicated section can fail validation before any evaluation starts.
• Do not add explanations for the evaluator. Notes such as "this is my hook" or "please focus on the ending" belong outside the essay. The report responds to the text you submit.

3. Decide between Quick, Full, and Compare

Quick returns the overall tier, per-dimension signal lights, and the highest-priority revision advice. It is the right choice when you want a fast read on where the draft stands and what to fix first.

Full adds per-dimension reasoning, evidence quoted from your own sentences, and a prioritized revision plan. Choose it when you are ready to work through the draft in detail, or when a Quick report has already told you the main problem and you need the supporting analysis.

Compare is different from both. It re-evaluates a revised Common App personal statement against the original Full report, so you can see what changed between drafts. Compare is currently available only for the Common App personal statement. It is not a deeper report, and it is not available for UC PIQ or UCAS.

If you start with Quick and later want the deeper report, an eligible Quick evaluation can be upgraded to Full by paying the difference shown on the report page. The upgrade applies to the same essay and the same product line, once per essay. If you are unsure, Quick first is usually the cheaper way to learn whether the draft needs structural work or only line editing.

4. Confirm the charge and submit

Evaluations are paid in credits. Before you submit, the interface shows the credit cost for the selected product and depth. Read that number together with the product line: a UC PIQ evaluation is charged once for the four-answer set, and a UCAS evaluation is charged once for the three-question statement. Current credit prices are listed on the pricing page.

If the submission fails a pre-evaluation check, such as a missing answer, an unsupported format, or a length over the site's input limit, no evaluation credits are charged. A system failure that prevents report delivery returns the evaluation credits in full. For the full refund rules, including the handling fee that can apply when submitted content is confirmed not to be an application essay, see how credits and refunds work.

5. Wait for the report and find it again

After submission, the evaluation appears in your history with its status. Completion time varies with load and with the depth of the report, so the page does not promise a fixed number of minutes. You can leave the page and return through the history entry; you do not need to keep the tab open.

If a task appears stuck well beyond a reasonable wait, check its status in your history, then contact support@psgrader.com with the account email, the task or report link, the product, and the submission time. Before starting another submission for the same essay, confirm whether the earlier task is still running and wait for its status to resolve; if it appears stuck, contact support rather than opening a parallel task. Other product questions are covered in the FAQ.

6. Read the report in the right order

Start with the overall tier, then the one-line summary, then the dimension lights, then the evidence, and only then the revision priorities. Reading the priorities first tends to turn the report into a checklist; reading the evidence first makes clear why a priority exists.

The report can be printed or saved as a PDF from the report page. Before sharing it, review whether it contains personal details you would rather not circulate. If you have not submitted yet and want to see the report structure first, browse the sample reports. A fuller explanation of each section is in how to read a psgrader report.

7. Revise, then decide whether to re-evaluate

Choose two or three changes you can actually make, starting with content and structure rather than word-level polish. A new draft can be submitted as a new evaluation on the same line. If the first report was Quick, check whether an upgrade is available before paying for a second full evaluation. If you are revising a Common App essay that already has a Full report, Compare can show the movement between versions.

What psgrader does not do

psgrader provides AI-assisted feedback on application writing. It does not write the essay for you, does not provide human scoring or re-evaluation, and does not issue an official assessment or a prediction of admission. The tier is a reference for revision, not a guarantee, and the school names attached to tiers describe the current standard rather than your chances at any particular school.

If a report seems inconsistent with the text you submitted, or you believe there is a substantive quality problem, contact support with specifics. A disagreement with the judgment is not by itself a defect; a missing section, a report that does not match the submitted text, or a clearly broken output is.