Ask MBA Prep School

Thanks for rolling out the welcome to GMAT Club, bb!

MBA Prep School is very excited to be a part of the GMAT Club community, and we hope to be a valued resource for GMAT Club members for many years to come.

The internet has changed every industry it touches and admission consulting isn't any different. In some ways, the "business" of advising MBA candidates couldn't exist without the web. In my four-and-a-half years as an admissions consultant, I've worked with clients from all points on the globe. We communicate via internet video and email and the process works well. Of course, I love meeting clients face-to-face whenever I have the opportunity. On the other hand, GMAT Club is a case-and-point about the limits of 1:1 communication. In forums like this one, a much larger audience can benefit from the advice GMAT tutors and admissions coaches provide. Our combined wisdom (or at least we hope it's wisdom) can be shared by many and a dialogue with many diverse perspectives leads to new and unexpected answers. It's really pretty amazing to see how information rich this website has become over the years. Hats off to bb and all of the moderators and contributors who have worked so hard for our mutual benefit!

One-to-one admissions consulting is a valuable service, and I do believe applicants derive tremendous benefits from working with a private coach. The clients who benefit the most are those who need additional help with the "accounting process": identifying which of their qualities and strengths to feature on their application; the "strategic planning process": positioning themselves and differentiating themselves from the competition; and with the "story-telling process": sharing their life experience in a unique, engaging, and memorable way. What an admissions consultant does -- in my opinion -- is to help his or her clients achieve greater self-awareness and then to communicate what they've learned in the application medium: application forms, essays, resume, and interviews.

Last year, I started thinking: what if we could use the internet to deliver a series of videos that would teach applicants the "accounting, strategic planning, and storytelling" techniques that top admissions coaches use to help their clients build outstanding applications, and instead of charging a few thousand dollars we’d charge a few hundred dollars? That what-if question was the genesis of MBA Prep School.

MBA Prep School teaches MBA candidates, our students, how to optimize the quality of every element of their MBA application: application forms, essays, resume, reference letters, and admissions interviews. (We leave GMAT prep to the excellent firms that you'll meet here at GMAT Club).

You might be a year or more from applying but it's never too soon to start building the foundation for a great application. I'll tell you about a conversation I had with a former admissions board member from Harvard Business School who really changed my perspective about applying to business school. He told me that a successful application to a highly competitive MBA school didn’t start a few weeks before the application deadline; it really started a few years before the deadline. His point was that by the time the application deadline was in sight, everything was pretty much a given: the candidate’s academic record, GMAT score, resume, and even the life experiences they’d eventually write about in their essays. His message and my message to you is that you need to start gathering the raw materials and building the foundation for your application long before it’s time to sit down and put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard to start crafting it.

I think it's great that you have a knowledge-base like GMAT Club to tap into when you embark on this quest. My intention, which is shared by our entire team at MBA Prep School, is to be a valued contributor to this community, and I look forward to answering your questions and helping you earn an acceptance letter to your dream school. At MBA Prep School we have a saying: Prepare to be accepted!