"Best" admission consulting companies?

So I decided to use a consultant for a few reasons; I had very unusual work experience, a poor GPA, and time constraints (didn't take the GMAT until middle of October). All of this worked against me in a few different ways. I had not discovered GMATCLUB and basically just googled it and started calling people. I did informational interviews with Veritas (seemed competent, but nothing stood out), MBAMission (could not have been more turned off by their services--I ended the phone call early it was so bad), MBAExchange (it was honestly hard to get any serious answers out of them and I didn't like their pushy advertising) and ClearAdmit.

I ended up choosing Stacey at ClearAdmit for a few reasons. The first was it felt like she was the only one listening and actually thinking about my profile, and ways to enhance and frame it, during the informational interview and I felt comfortable talking with her. The other was that I felt her insight having served on the Tuck AdCom would be valuable, especially with Tuck being my #1 choice. I will also say that while I had a mixed experience, and at times was frustrated/disappointed, if I were to do it over again (given the same choices) I would still hire a consultant and still hire her. After having been on the board for some time now I had actually contacted Alex Chu and gotten some interesting information and was planning on using him for a ding analysis and probably at least one application in the next cycle (fortunately I got in off the WL so no more apps!). I also freely admit that I was probably a tough client and could have used someone who did more "hand-holding" to use a phrase from earlier in the thread. She definitely had a lot of clients and a packed schedule, so it was tough at times if I forgot a question in a draft, or just wanted a simple clarification or a quick question answered it could be 2-3 days until the next response. I am definitely someone who prefers to communicate over the internet/e-mail and yet at times, I felt like I needed to talk to her on the phone, and it was very difficult, if not impossible to do so.

I have kind of laid out my main criticisms already but I am going to use the same format from an earlier post that I liked.

1. Initial Consultation (5/5) - I was surprised at how poor of a job most of the other companies did when it came to initial consultations. You are getting ready to plop down 2k+ you would think that they would be paying attention and formulating some real answers. I suppose they probably get a lot of tire-kickers but I was offended by MBAMission's absolute indifference and really liked how Stacey handled the call. She sold her service without being pushy, was reasonably upfront about the challenges that I faced and talked to me for another 20-30 minutes a few days after my initial consultation to answer some follow up questions.

2. Input on Content and Knowledge of School (4/5) - Her knowledge of Tuck was one of the main reasons I hired her and I felt like this really shone through in my two my Tuck essays in particular (my career goals and interview are what sunk my ship imo). She also seemed very knowledgeable about Fuqua (one of the other schools we worked on) and to a lesser degree Yale (the final school we officially worked on together). I also felt like she did a good job of vetting essay ideas and telling me which ones to scrap and which to pursue--which happened a few times--as well as the rest of the editing process.

3. Overall Strategy - I don't want to give a numerical score for this one because I honestly am just not sure. I feel like she tried her best and that a lot of the blame here falls on myself for really just not knowing what to do about my career goals and not knowing enough about the different industries. At the same time, I feel like she could have done more to push me into figuring things out or telling me "this is generic" which, in retrospect, I think some of my career goals essays were. I think eventually we probably reached a limit in terms of the number of reviews she could do with her schedule and the time constraints of impending deadlines. Again I would reiterate that this is just as much my fault as hers, but looking back I think we did a good job of telling 'my story' but that my career goals were the clear weakness in my application. I think this was further complicated by the fact that I have an odd work history, one which adcoms would know nothing about, so I had to devote a lot of time to fleshing out what I had done and how this was relevant to my career goals. I am not sure if this was a mistake or not (one friend has told me he thinks it was a waste of time to spend so much word space explaining what I do and why that is relevant) but it definitely made things trickier and probably contributed to some of my 'career goals' malaise. I think on the whole it was a tough assignment and, I don't know, I hate to be too critical but you can draw from it what you want.

4. Time Management (2.5/5) - This was definitely the weakest part of our relationship and I understand it can be difficult. She was upfront initially that essay revisions would take 24-72 hours and we devised a schedule going in, however, there were two times when it exceeded 4 days and one of those times it was I believe 6 days with no communication during the heart of the application season. As I mentioned earlier, due to her schedule (and I think she might have small children) it was also difficult to get any quick clarification/quick questions answered in a short time frame. It was also really hard to get her on the phone after our initial consultation and follow up conversation. One other anecdote, which I think shows some of her pluses and minuses, is that I eventually got an interview invitation from Johnson after applying in R3. At this point I had struck out everywhere--we had nothing left to work on for Tuck, I didn't get an interview from Fuqua so we had no further work relationship there, and it was pretty obvious I wasn't getting an interview that late from Yale either--and so I kind of expected that she would be willing to help with any further correspondence I had with Johnson even though it wasn't a school that we worked on explicitly. I understand that she didn't have to help here, and was appreciative of that, but when it came to talk we had our phone chat cancelled the first time, and then she said she would call me the day of my Johnson visit and I told her I could talk anytime prior to 3:30. I got called at 3:27 as I was walking up the stairs to Sage and so it was difficult for me to get a whole lot out of that conversation when I was walking into the building. We did a mock interview for Tuck, and I asked her to e-mail me the notes she took from the mock interview and never received them. So some small things like that were annoying. Do I think that if I had the notes from our mock that I would have aced the interview and gotten into Tuck? Nope. But I also think that she shouldn't have told me to schedule my interview there before I submitted my application. I think she should have been able to tell that I didn't have a good enough grip on my own application at that point and recommended that I do my applicant-initiated interview afterwards. I think this would have made some difference. So, at times, I suppose maybe she was just going through the motions, but again, I was probably a tough client as well, and on the whole I think she did a decent job.

Final Rating (3.5/5) - I did not get into any of the schools we worked on together. In fact, I did not even get so much as interview invitation from the schools we worked on directly but I also know that had I not worked with her on those applications that my application to Johnson would not have been good enough. I even made a decision (risky, perhaps) to switch to a new long-term career goal for my Johnson application but if I hadn't worked with her I wouldn't have known how to frame it, and how to organize my essays. I can definitely say that I would not have gotten in without a consultant, even though I did not actually use a consultant for that application. This is getting long and I am running late so going to have to wrap it up. I think there are some things that she could have done better but on the whole it was an expensive, but necessary part of the application process for me. I have tried to be fair here and hope I haven't come off as too critical because I liked her and did think that for the most part she was trying hard and offered valuable input but also wanted to include some fair criticism.

Let me know if I can answer anymore questions for anyone or if the mods need to verify anything.