Consultants in India

The trickiest part with hiring consultants is making sure they are vetted.
Anyone can become a consultant. There are no barriers, requirements, or qualifications. It is pretty simple and sometimes scary.

If you get one, You want to get one from a personal recommendation based on someone who has worked with that consultant. You want to talk to their customers. We have Verified Reviews on GMAT Club where people prove their identity that they are real people who are applying to schools but if the consultant is not reviewed, I would not trust google or yelp reviews alone. Just my take.

A lot of the success depends on the consultant's approach and how diligent they are. I would say any consultant that says "you have a great chance to get into your dream school" is a warning and a concerning flag as they want to sell you on their service. It takes a lot of gut to tell a potential customer that they have a difficult fight.

At the same time there may be some nuance that the local consultant has about your area/market/demographic specifically that an international one may not catch (not sure if this is true but I can see something potentially surfacing).

Overlall, I would assume many of the local, Indian consultants should be a lot cheaper than the US ones due to the cost of living and i can see how the ROI may be better one way or another. It is tricky though as I am not sure I am comfortable getting cheaper service for certain items - do I want to get a cheaper surgery or get a cheaper school for my kids? It is a tricky situation and some people exploit it to charge higher prices but sometimes the savings are not worth the risk which is why my recommendation, only trust people you know and not strangers on the internet like me