If anyone has tried vikram shah mba admission consulting, please share your experience.

Hi Giusippe:
I understand your concern and your question. I sent you a PM last night and we can go from there. Please respond via PM or email me at mba@amerasiaconsulting.com.
Respectfully,
Paul


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Hi..anybody has experience with ClearAdmit? Haven't seen any comments regarding that company in this thread..

I am personally working with them for one school package (super expensive $3500...) and unfortunately I dont think my consultant is giving me enough attention. We even omitted the deep brainstorming/outlining session about the essay (as stated in service agreement) and I was simply asked to start drafting right away. Right now I have drafts of half of the essays pretty much done (according to the consultant), but even my friend who have zero experience in MBA admission thought I should further polish them : (

I wonder anybody else has experience with this firm? Now as R1 deadline approaching, I am worried about the outcome. I dont know if I should solicit help from other consultants.

I need the essay strategy so that's why I purchased the whole school package - I dont even need service on school selection/GMAT PREP..

but we never got chance to brainstorming together about the essay, even though I requested a phone call to discuss the outline and the phone usually ends within like 10-15 min...with not much accomplished...I believe this shouldn't be the case of a deep essay brainstorming session.

Yeah, I actually used Stratus Prep for my applications. I went through all the different free consults also (Stacy Blackman, Sandy K, Clear Admit, etc.) Stratus stood out to me initially because I'd be working with their founder, Shawn, who was actually a graduate of HBS (my top stretch school). I'd heard about him from a friend of mine, and read a couple of articles he'd written about getting into HBS in Fortune and Forbes, and since that was my dream school, it seemed like the best bet. It was definitely a financial investment, but Shawn helped me come up with an incredible strategy for my app that I don't think I would have pieced together on my own, and really helped me differentiate myself in the applicant pool (white male in finance---just about the toughest demographic these days). He did numerous rounds of extensive edits and comments that made the difference. Also, my job in finance (when I was applying) was super stressful and I worked ~14hr days consistently, and Shawn was helpful with scheduling meetings early morning, late evenings and weekends and was really responsive via emai -- To me, that was huge bc I needed someone as invested in the process as I was. Oh and his interview prep was really helpful too. His mock interview was really challenging, but was good prep for the actual HBS Adcom, which was helpful because HBS was a super challenging interview. I'm getting started at HBS this semester, so everything worked out for me. I've recommended him to my friends too. We joke around and call him "the HBS Whisperer." Haha. Hope that helps.

I went with Betsy Massar at Master Admissions. Had a phenomenal experience working with her on a few essays over the past month. Prior to signing up, I talked to several popular consultants but just didn’t seem to click with them. At the last minute I saw a good review about Betsy on this forum and we hit it off right away during the free consultation phone call.

I’m a non-traditional applicant, but she was really able to turn the technical parts of my job and my personal and professional stories into great b-school that made for great anecdotes in the essays (and even brought out my sense of humor in them too). The essays really turned into multi-dimensional stories instead of an essay that went simply from point A to B.

I see that several reviews from folks who had issues with turnaround times for their essays with other consultants. Betsy promises to turn things around within 2 business days; however, it was almost always much, much faster. Although she is a fantastic writing coach, her true value came in pointing out what part of ‘my story’ was unique and relevant to writing these essays.

She offers a free 30-minute consultation and then together you design a package that fits your specific needs. I used her for my essays, but not resume or interview prep (though I may ask her to help with some interview prep in the future). We designed an hourly package, but I will say she is very generous with her time. When I had basic questions (all via email) she didn’t start the clock – only when editing essays. So the back and forth brainstorming and discussions were free (although they were invaluable to me).

Also, if you go with Master Admissions the only person you’ll work with is Betsy. I didn’t like how you didn’t quite know who you were going to work with if I had gone with another company. Check out her LinkedIn profile/resume for her resume. Harvard MBA, Goldman Sachs, lived in Hong Kong, Stanford writing coach, etc. Though I’m not sure how, she also seems to know key folks at a lot of the top tier schools. I’ll have to ask her about that.

We’ll see what schools I get into, but I’m very happy with where my essays are at.

PM me if you have questions.

I took this survey and was extremely delighted to see the high quality questions, and the pleasing design. I dont know how useful the data will be coming out of this, especially as I didn't see checks in place that ensure only REAL people fill this survey (eg: email address should be mandatory, although not disclosed, alongwith gmatclub/beatthegmat username information). I know my suggestion doesn't completely eliminate fake posters, and may even eliminate some who are true clients, but there should be a mechanism to check for valid entries.

Nonetheless, kudos to your effort - very well done. I am in the process of writing an 'article' on my experiences with consultants. I will post that soon, especially as the next few weeks are much freer as we all wait for interview invites cheers!
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Good to hear your thoughts and I hope this effort yields results. I am posting a review on my experience with an admissions consultant below, and he's the same one I entered in the survey. So you have atleast 1 verified response
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Continuing what Ward said about ALice - I think she is excellent as well.

I haven't yet fully engaged her, but she and Bryan (mentioned above) were the two individuals who provided a highly detailed free consultation which felt more engaging than any others I have had. With Alice, my construct was very different. Instead of the usual consultation, she and I did a mock interview of sorts as I had already submitted R1 applications. This shows her flexibility to help, as doing an interview involves a lot of time from the consultants side (25 min. interview I think), but more importantly, she gave me extremely useful advice for the interview based on how I answered questions, which were invaluable. Her going out of her way to genuinely help me instead of saying ok I did the interview, now for the feedback you gotta pay me $$$ was much appreciated, in addition to her flexibility to really do an interview instead of the usual, and sometimes boring, free consultation call.

I think she will be a very effective critic and will point out the right stuff in my applications - she did so during our interview and I felt she picked on the right things. Knows her stuff very well. What I also found intriguing was that she's British. What that meant to me was that I was getting 'international feedback' of sorts - eg: she said I speak a bit too fast - no one has ever given me that feedback in India, not even people from the US. Also, she graduated from Cambridge and has worked at Bain for a few years - hence, knows her stuff in terms of career goals and making them sound plausible, well enough as well.

As I mentioned before, I havent engaged her fully. I highly recommend you setup a 30 min call with her and figure out if you'd take a chance with her. I hope I don't have to do R2 apps, but if I do, she'd probably be someone I'd look at for advice.

Hope this is helpful.
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I spoke to her, but didn't engage her. I found her quite knowledgable and experienced. And she gave me some good tips during our initial consultation. She's also written a few articles on poetsandquants.

Personality wise, I just felt I gelled with someone else better, but I know she was on my short list for someone to hire. Also, she only does hourly billing, and I was worried that would get too expensive.