I'm late to the discussion, but one thing I would like to add is as an entrepreneur, you NEED to have a very coherent and believable story on why you would want to apply to b-school, spend 2 years of your life not earning money (spending $100+K) when you already have 2-3 successful startup stories? You have to CONVINCE the admissions committee that you have a real need for the MBA, whether it's because you want to do something else, you felt that you need to learn how not to make mistakes, or something. Spend the time to think that over. You got a LOT of time (compared to some of us who only started in July of 07) and a LOT of resources here at GMATClub. So get on it!
Speaking of resources, river, kwam, toga, and others are right, you can probably get ALL the support you need from the folks on here. Just look around! Your profile (on paper) is probably better than most of ours, yet many of us already got into the GSBs, the Whartons, the Columbias, the Kelloggs, etc... If we can do it WITHOUT a consultant (especially if it costs $1500!!!
), you can definitely do it. It might take some time to read through some posts, ask some detailed questions, and get some help from us, but in the end, YOU CAN DO IT! (just ask helg
)
Anyway, River and I and other mods are going to start populating a new forum (to be revealed by Praetorian soon) where we will comb the forums and put all the links that are useful and relate to the application process (Interviews, Essays, Financial Aid, etc...). That will tie us over until we get stuff into the wikis. For someone like you applying in '09, you'll have ALL the resources you need to be successful without a consultant. Heck, you'll even have some "Admitted Student Essays" and tons of MBA profiles to compare and learn from. It's something that us '08 folks could only dream about, and the '07 folks didn't even have.
Therefore, hold off on the consultant for now. Do some searches here (or wait for river and I to do the work) and read over the threads. I learned so much from digging through all the 2006-7 posts and getting help from rhyme and folks. As for essay reviews, like river, I definitely did a few (hopefully I can get some good references
) and will probably do some once all the admit decisions are done and I quit my job. Ya know, like rhyme, us poor prospective students may need some beer $$ sometime down the road
Alright, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. Sorry about the long winded response (can you sense my "passion" for this form?
)
EDIT: BTW, don't forget Haas and Anderson (I'll leave Stanford to grad_mba, terry12, or kwam
)