Agree with you. Dee, head of HBS admissions, came to my firm to sell us on HBS and one of my colleagues asked her how she felt about admissions consultants. Her response was "If authors have professional editors help with their work then I don't understand why you shouldn't also have professional editors help with your work." Frankly if you got an invite without a consultant, great, but that doesn't make you better than anyone that used fair and available resources to get the same outcome.
longhorn07
I’m also a bit turned off by the growing use of consultants in the admissions process. I’ve always thought that if you weren’t good enough to get into a top 10 school without someone holding your hand each step of the way, well, you probably don’t belong to begin with. I know not all of you will agree with my stance, especially those with a “get in at any cost” mentality, but I take a good amount of pride knowing I didn’t need any third party help to be competitive at the best schools in the world. To some, this satisfaction is worthless, but hey, to each his own…
However, I don’t think that the use of consultants is any more unethical than say, signing up for a professional GMAT course. Both services are geared towards those who can afford to spend the money, and in essence you are paying to get coached professionally. Much like Yale does for its law school application, I do wish all the major business schools would require each applicant to disclose how much third party help s/he received during the process. I think this added level of transparency would certainly help clarify the “holistic” picture of each application.
Ok, time for me to chime in here....
First of all, saying that using a GMAT course is at all unethical is completely silly. The GMAT is a unique test where practicing questions and learning new techniques to answer them is almost more important than studying the material covered. Also, many companies (including most investment banks and private equity firms) will pay for their employees to take a GMAT class....hard to say no to free help on an important test.
Second, it's not like the use of admissions consultants is something you were unaware of. You were obviously fully aware of the industry's existence and chose not to pay for its services. Do you also believe that using equity research to help evaluate investments is unethical? Do you take pride in doing anything else on your own when help is available?
Third, how is using this forum to help you with your application or interviews different from an ethical standpoint. Just because you're not paying for our services doesn't mean you're not using other people to help you by reading and posting on this forum.
Please try to be a little less judgmental in your post....would be much appreciated...