My college application essays feel disjointed, so could professional dissertation-style editing techniques help me refine my narrative flow?

You can definitely use some high-level structural editing strategies for your personal statement, but you have to adapt them so you don't accidentally turn your college essay into a dry academic paper. I totally get why you are stressing about this right now, especially with those early action deadlines creeping up and your word count stuck at a tight six hundred fifty words. When you are staring at a screen trying to weave together a bunch of different extracurriculars, it is super easy for your main theme to get completely lost in the shuffle and for your transitions to start sounding like awkward speed bumps. Imagine you are building a tiny house instead of a massive skyscraper. Graduate students editing a dissertation are usually trying to connect massive chapters with heavy academic scaffolding, but for your personal statement, you just need a few clever hinges. Instead of heavy dissertation editing, try printing out your draft, taking a highlighter, and marking just your core theme every time it appears. If you notice huge gaps where you are listing activities without connecting them back to who you are, use the reverse-outline trick. Just write down the single point of each paragraph on a sticky note to check your logical flow. You do not need formal academic proofreading techniques to make your story shine, you just need to ensure your personality stays front and center. Take a deep breath, trust your own voice over any complicated formulas, and you will totally nail this essay before the deadline hits.