My issue also comes down to location...

Make a similar list for yourself..

Washington U (St Louis, MO) - ranked too low
Notre Dame (Notre Dame, IN) - ditto
UNC (Kenan-Flager) - middle of nowhere.
Purdue (Lafayete, IN) - im not going to indiana.
Texas - Austin (Mcombs School) - not interested in texas at all
Georgetown - decent sized city, weak rank, but OK odds. May apply.
Virginia (Darden) - poor city size, but near DC and Case study (a plus for me) Applying.
Duke (Fuqua) - too remote
Emory (Atlanta, GA) - im not doing the south and definetly not atlanta.
Cornell (Johnson) - remote, but beautiful and worth considering, applying.
Michigan (Ross) - would like to apply but my fiance is against it unfortunately.
Indiana (Kelley) - no way am i doing indiana
CMU (Tepper) - I hate pittsburgh.
UCLA (Anderson) - I hate LA.
Yale (New Haven, CT) - middle o nowhere
Northwestern - Yes
Chicago - Yes
NYU - Poor selectivity, and frankly I dont want NY
MIT (Sloan) - Too quantative
Dartmouth (Tuck) - middle o nowhere
UC Berkeley (Haas) - Poor selectivity, but a consideration if R1s fail. Cost of living scares me.
Wharton - I'm just not quantative enough to get in
Columbia - Ditto as wharton and lots of IBers just getting ticket stamped.
Harvard - No chance but I applied anyway
Stanford - Absolutely no chance, I'm not wasting my time or money.

You might also want to check out http://www.admissionsconsultants.com, those guys have pretty reasonable full service packages like what Stacy offers but cheaper

I spent an hour on the phone with mbaexchange months ago just talking about my experience and school choice, hearing them pitch how they go about it. Frankly, I was impressed. The amount of information I got in that hour was astronomical and helpful. I didn't hire them in the end because, well, frankly, I didn't think I needed one, but they seemed extremely competent. I got hte impression they would be most useful to non native speakers who are likely going to write piss poor essays full of run on sentences like this one that go nowhere and mean very little and confuse hte adcom and something else cause this is supposed ot be a run on sentence so I should keep typing. I know two people that have used them and they both swear up and down they are excellent.

In the end, I'd evalute the following when deciding whether or not to engage someone:

1) How weak is your app?
2) Do you have stories you can use for the weak areas?
3) Do you know what the definition of leadership is? Teamwork? Sensitivity? Ethics? And I don't mean just a one sentence definition. I mean, you could talk for a good 20 minutes about each of these and relate them to your personal experiences.
4) How strong or weak are your writing and/or english skills?

Thanks for all your insight. Your advice was very valuble and based on it I decided to go with MBAExchange. I hope that it will turn well for me. The only thing that worries me is that it takes them on average 2-3 days to write me back a response, were as other companies do it in 1 day. Well, maybe thats because they are good and have that many clients.

I will write posts from time to time on the forum to let others know who maybe in similar situation to mine how the process is going and if it is/was a worthy investment.

As to why I want to use a consulting firm? Well, I preatty much have to do the MBA in fall 07 or forget about it for many years (or ever). I am suppose to come back to my home country in few years to take over family business, so I dont have much time. I have good stats (750, 3.9, plenty of community service and extracur. leadership), but not much work experience (just graduated in may, other than 3-4 high level internships with international work experience). I also have a strong anwser to "Why MBA" , "Why Now" and long term goals assesment. Because I am only interested in getting an MBA from a ultra elite/elite school, I want to maximize my chances by employing professionals. I think in my case it makes sense.

Any thoughts

hbs, stanford, wharton, chicago

but i am applying hbs, stanford, chicago, columbia (the "will extremely hard category")

and duke, michigan, darden, cornell, ucla, berkley (more realistic)

and if not then Master of Finance in UK (Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, hopelly one of them)

what about you? what are your schools?
what is your profile...situation, why MBA now?

cheers

Wait your applying to hbs, stanford, chicago, columbia, duke, michigan, darden, cornell, ucla and berkeley? and maybe Oxford, Cambridge and LSE?

Thats waaaay too many schools unless you happen to have a spare 1000 hours.

I dont know, I don't think its that easy - especially not now. A lot of deadlines are not that far away, and it's common knowledge that R3's tend to be a "bad" time to apply. The consultants will help you craft essays that answer the questions that have been asked - but it wont do you much good to copy and paste. Honestly, once you start doing this, you'll see just how much work it is to craft a quality response. Yes, there's some elements you can borrow across schools - but were usually talking a paragraph or two, and the rest needs to change. At the very least, prioritize your list on deadline dates or preference so if you do run out of time you get the most important ones done.

I've applied to 4 so far - HBS, Kellogg, Chicago, Cornell and intend to complete my Darden application sometime soon as well.

If HBS, Kellogg Chicago don't accept, my plan is to re-apply to both Kellogg and Chicago on a part time basis.

If that fails, I'll need to decide between any other accepts and waiting another year.

Maybe I spend more time on mine than most. I don't know. Honestly, the biggest "hurdle" for me to add more schools on is asking my recommenders to keep doing more letters. I feel like I've asked them for a lot, and I can't ask them for more right now.

I agree with that point. Thats probably the main reason why I'm limiting myself. At the same time its sort of though to see the essays of some of the schools I've eliminated and realize how little marginal effort it would take to apply. Applying to b-school takes alot of overall effort and I would prefer to cover my bases and not have to go through this process a second time

What do you guys see a the ideal number?

I'm currently set on:
Kellogg
Wharton
Columbia
INSEAD
LBS
Ross

and am tempted to add:
Duke
Darden
Chicago

Finally, my favorite posts! Opt out floor to ceiling portfolio selection!

Yale- I would not really consider New Haven the middle of nowhere. UVA is at least as much middle of nowhere compared to New Haven. If you travel 75 miles from New Haven you are in one of the greatest cities in the world. If you travel 120 miles from Charlottesville, you reach a city with famous buildings rising up from a swamp.