I am trying to find a great MBA Admission consulting company to help me in my future application process and to guide me to do some "early stage planning" (I'm planning to start school in 2016).
After looking around the Internet, all of these companies seem to be great, which I find rather suspicious. (look at it yourself, they’re all 5-star rated on GMAT Club -> see “Admissions Consultants Reviews”).
Most of the MBA Admission consulting firms out there offer free 30-min calls; so I decided to give it a try to form my own opinion. And I'd like to share my first impressions. I've been doing 3 calls so far, with
Stratus Prep,
Fortuna and Veritas.
Stratus Prep gave me a good impression. From looking at my profile, they explained to me what was bad, what was good, what we could use to make up the bad. Then the consultant explained why
Stratus Prep is a great company for me, how great their consultants are, without saying bad things about their competitors.
Fortuna is my favorite by far (as of today - I'll do more calls). I Skyped (with Video) with one of their "real" consultants. He spent most of the time giving me great advice about schools, my profile. The call lasted 53 minutes! He did not say any bad thing about the competitors; in fact, he did not really mention the competition. I also had a precise question* that I wanted advice on (see * at the end if you want to see what I asked) and he took about 15 minutes or so to give me a great answer full of great advice. He had a positive and humble attitude, had reviewed my profile beforehand, and quickly picked up on what strengths can be used in my profile to make it up for the weaknesses. We also talked about a plan to strengthen my profile in the year to come. In other words, I feel like I got a real 1-hour consultation for free.
Now, Veritas. This was disappointing. I felt that the lady I talked with wasn't any better than an AT&T customer rep (she was not a consultant). She spend almost all of her time saying that they were the best, so much better than any other ones out there. She had not reviewed my profile beforehand. She told me about what was bad in my profile, but only said something like "your head consultant will definitely help you work around that" without telling me how and what we could use to work around that. She also tried to sell me their GMAT prep program, even though I had told her that I was still working with
Manhattan GMAT (which I find amazingly good by the way - I'll spend the time to write a full review about them once I'm done with the GMAT). They have videos on YouTube saying how better they are than
Manhattan GMAT.
She was a very pushy saleslady, trying to sell me 20 hours of consulting right away. She also emailed me after our talk with information (written by Veritas - not an independent company) showing how better their Consulting services are and how better their GMAT Prep programs are compared to
Manhattan GMAT, Kaplan or Princeton Review.
With all of that being said, has any of you worked with an MBA Admission consulting firm, especially one year or so before starting your application process? What are your thoughts? The good and bad things? Thank you all!
* I would like to start touring some schools soon. I’d like to discuss tips about that: what questions should I ask, what attitude should I adopt, who should I try to connect with (what kind of students should I contact, who should I connect with at the university: professors? Admission? Career?).
***** do not answer this question - see paragraph above about Fortuna *****