Gratefully Read
Your Writing and Application Doctors
Diagnose | Invigorate | Lyricize
Your Writing, Admission Strategies,
Professional Presentations, and More
With Our Expert Guidance
Who We Are... in 500 Characters or Less (Sound Familiar, Applicants?!)
Gratefully Read are your writing and application doctors. We specialize in delivering client-centered care on your application essays and personalized advisory on your college, grad-, law-, and medical-school admission strategies. But we are generalists too: equipped to work with any form, genre, or rhetorical occasion related to the writing and editing of your manuscripts—from developmental- or line-editing your book chapter to ghostwriting your marketing collateral, from revising your med-school secondaries to polishing up your resume or presentation slides.
Our Mission & Approach
Writing—about yourself, your stories, the subject matters you love, how you plan to make an impact in the world —can be a long strange trip, as poet and Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter famously scribed. *
Applying—to your dream school, dream job, or dream promotion—can make that trip longer and stranger.
Gratefully Read can be your guiding hands and eagle eyes for navigating the stop-and-go traffic of those trips.
The Gratefully Read team strives to deliver more than routine document editing. We envision of ourselves as writing and admissions doctors, who pride ourselves on client-centered care: we listen closely, read carefully, think collaboratively, diagnose deeply, while prescribing gingerly.
We promise to be strategic problem-solvers who are as diligently invested in the health of your writing products and application outcomes as you are. At the same time, we will empower you to own your stories and to make great writing decisions from them. Our approach teaches you how to proactively source materials from your life, organize them into coherent narratives, and make your words sing on the page.
We can also administer a calming, healing touch on the pain-points that will inevitably emerge during any high-stakes admission, proposal, or presentation process—from college and graduate-school admissions to job applications and promotions, from journal and grant writing to your professional presentations and public talks.
We know—from years of experience teaching, researching, and practicing writing—that the composition process has a remarkable power to reveal things to you about yourself. At its best, your writing can be life medicine: affording you confidence and clarification about who you are, where you've been, and the destinations you envision next. We at Gratefully Read hope to be ministers of care for this illuminating (albeit, at times, agonizing) process.
Moreover, as a PhD-holding prof and a currently matriculated MD student, the doctor conceit just felt kinda right ;)
Our Service Aims
With customized one-on-one support—from flesh-and-blood humans whom you will speak/confer with at length!—our writing and university experts will assist you in
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crafting exceptional prose for your application essays, personal statements and job narratives, journal articles and book chapters (whether academic or popular press), resumes, and cover letters;
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ensuring your slide presentations and public talks are ready to impress with appropriate audience-driven language and impactful visual rhetoric;
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refining your school-admissions strategy through personalized support packets, informed insights, and novel ideas for calibrating which institutions and pathways are best-fits for your educational or professional journey;
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and more!
Whether you are struggling with how to tell your personal or professional story as clearly, creatively, and powerfully as you can; wondering which schools are truly right for you or how to formulate an optimal reach/target/safety list that affords you the best chance of admission in today's competitive higher-ed landscape; or simply wanting a third-party soundingboard to discuss your ideas, plans, feelings, and uncertainties about the next chapter of your educational or professional journey—the writing and app docs at Gratefully Read are here to help.
Take the next step toward reaching your writing and admission goals by emailing Nick (The Writing Doctor) or Ameera (The Application Doctor) to schedule a free 20-minute discovery call/initial consultation.
If you have already been in touch, please fill out our client intake form [coming soon!].
We would be honored to embark on this exciting journey—er, trip—together.
*My college-application essay, many moons ago, was essentially a meditation on the peculiar musical and cultural artistry of the Grateful Dead. Believe it or not, it helped get me into some pretty great schools. (Okay, all I can say for sure is it did not prevent me from getting admitted to those schools! But sometimes that's good enough.)
NB: None of the writing or designing of this
website was produced with the help of AI 😁
Our Team
Meet Dr. Nick Pici, The Writing Doc and Founder of Gratefully Read. Dr. Pici earned his PhD in English and biocultural humanities from UC Santa Barbara and has taught writing and rhetoric, literature, and film studies for over 20 years at six R1/R2 universities around the country. He has worked with hundreds of undergrads, grads, and faculty clients one-on-one in college writing centers as well, where he began specializing in personal-statement advisory.
Having visited hundreds of universities around the US, and a few in Canada and Europe, Nick's active pursuit of knowledge about universities and campuses has become a professional passion project.
Click here to read a more extensive biography and CV [coming soon!].
Meet Ameera Mazraany, Gratefully Read's medical-school application expert and college-application strategist extraordinaire. Ameera graduated from the University of Miami with a BA in psychology and was recently admitted to UM's Miller School of Medicine, where she is now pursuing her MD.
Ameera is passionate about mentoring others. And she enjoys helping students—particularly those with uneven stats and records who may be underdogs in the admissions game—to navigate those proverbial rocky roads of school applications.
Click here to read a more extensive biography and CV [coming soon!].
Testimonials
Hello Dr. Pici: I found out yesterday that I was accepted to UCLA and Johns Hopkins! I also received interviews at both Harvard and Yale. I could not thank you enough for all your help with my application writing! I just wanted to express my immeasurable gratitude. — Ovviyaa R, U of Miami & Johns Hopkins Hi Nick: Here is your one, awesome, discursive evaluation for last semester: “Nick is awesome...!!!!!!” The numericals are attached. Thanks for all the great work. — April M, Writing Center Director, U of Miami Hi Nick: I was just informed I am a semifinalist for the Fulbright (care needs in abuse survivors in Ireland)! Thank you so much for all of your help on my writing and application. See you the next time I apply for something! … [later] I got the Fulbright!!!! Thank you so much for your help on my app again, they said they loved how it was written. — Bailey D, U of Miami Miller School of Medicine Dear Professor: I am very pleased to inform you that I have been admitted to the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. I owe my success to your help with the recommendation letter and instruction in class! To this day I also am fond of the theme you chose for this course: love. This is also one of the reasons that made me firm in my idea and decided to further study psychology. Therefore, I will continue to major in psychology at Michigan and have chosen clinical psychology as the branch of my chosen field for further study. Once again, thank you very much for your company and instruction! I welcome you to visit Nanjing, China, my hometown, when you have time, I will be honored to act as your guide here! I wish all the best! Keep in touch. — Jingzhi Q, U of Miami & U of Michigan Hi Nick: I am delighted to share that my partner and I have couple-matched with the Mayo Clinic pathology residency program in Rochester, MN. Thank you for your help with our application and teaching in writing. We appreciate your guidance and support! — Yi and Chuan, U of Miami Miller School of Medicine Dear Dr. Pici: I took ENG 102 (Texts and Contexts) with you and I wanted to take a moment to thank you. Going into your class, I didn't expect much (I'm typically not a big fan of English classes). However, I learned so much—your course challenged me to think more deeply and use my brain in new ways. I've found myself applying what I learned from your course to my everyday life. More than just new ways of thinking, your course taught me something I genuinely can't thank you enough for: it taught me to love learning and to be passionate about what I am studying. Before, I saw school mostly as a means to an end—something to get through in order to get a good job. But now, I see education as an opportunity to ask meaningful questions and explore subjects I'm passionate about. The rest feels like a bonus. It was inspiring to see how passionate and dedicated you are to teaching. Since your class, I've been pushing myself to grow both academically and personally. I've been loving the experience of college more than ever, and I'm genuinely excited for what the next two years will bring. Thank you again—your course made a lasting impact on me. — Christian O, Saint Joseph’s U I just wanted to reach out and say thank you so much for a great semester. You were an awesome professor throughout the entire course. I feel like I learned a LOT and your curriculum was very interesting. I will be sure to recommend your course to anyone who has to take English 106! — Nellie J, U of Miami The professor facilitated an environment where any idea was possible. — Course Evaluation (Anonymous), Temple U The analytical journals Professor Pici assigned have greatly helped my writing skills. A course to take if you like discussions and writing, very thought-provoking and informative. — Course Evaluation (Anonymous), Temple U This course [ENGL 802] was really effective in helping me grow as both a reader and a writer. The assignments were meaningful and helpful, the discussions encouraged deeper thinking, and the feedback helped me improve my skills. The course was organized, engaging, and clearly designed to support students’ development. I took new skills from this course that will stay with me. — Course Evaluation (Anonymous), Temple U I really liked the teaching style of this course better than others. The professor never excluded any student because of background and was mutually engaged with every single student. Had a great time! — Course Evaluation (Anonymous), Temple U [Coming soon!] — Yui M, U of Miami School of Nursing Faculty [Coming soon!] — Lew G, U of Miami RSMAES Faculty [Coming soon!] — Amie D, U of Miami RSMAES PhD / Currently @ DoE Brookhaven National Lab [Coming soon!] — Tasnia A, U of Miami School of Communications PhD Student [Coming soon!] — Sofia D, U of Miami Miller School of Medicine / Currently @ U of Colorado Anschutz, Dept of Ophthalmology [Coming soon!] — Claudia I, U of Miami School of Communications PhD Student [Coming soon!] — Ameera M, U of Miami [Coming soon!] — Samantha G, Lehigh U [Coming soon!] — Lucy J, U of Richmond [Coming soon!] — Isabella M, Ohio State
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