"Best" admission consulting companies?

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I am above 30 years old, with a GMAT score below 690. I have more than 6 years of working experience and lived in Europe and Asia. I want to contribute back to this forum and share some words on Tyler Cormney. Btw I got into Stanford Sloan, Kellogg (with full scholarship), Insead and Wharton.

Tyler has been critical in my success. His methodology is nothing short of exceptional. He pushed me beyond my limits and helped me to craft applications that put me into the top business school. Tyler has a strong business background but also a Master’s in writing. I chose a boutique firm vs the big firms because I wanted to work with the founder, with a person who knows not only what the MBA schools want but also could make my story more attractive and sharp. If you go with the big firms you will end up working with one of the many MBA consultant who has MBA admissions experience but might not understand good writing.

I learnt how important it is to have someone who can respond your email in 24 hours and gives you relevant comments.

Tyler has also become a close friend who helped me to decide what school to go to and gave me well reasoned and honest feedback. Now I am super happy with my choice.

If I were in your shoes would I go for Tyler? GO with Tyler, only if you are ready to work hard on your application, and only if you aspire to the top business schools.

Three point to remember about Tyler:

1. Best in class methodology to craft a top notch application
2. Best in class in story telling
3. Great motivator

This sounds plain arrogance.

I had this free profile evaluation with a consultant (great reviews everywhere) and she told me that she hadn't handled candidates in XXX industry and in YYY role (something of that sorts) and I would be better of going to some other consultant. At the same time she kept suggesting to apply to schools outside top 16.

I could not help but think that my school selection was a major point because of which we could not partner.

As bb pointed out, I do feel this was incredibly honest of the consultant. Perhaps, a bit too honest for my liking. Either ways not a good fit.

deleted

Please join me in welcoming the new moderator for this thread - theK

Its funny how after I posted my negative review of AmeriAsia all of a sudden there are 3 people who have new join dates and just a few posts immediately chime in and root for AmeriAsia.

I'm not saying the reviews are fake but take it with a grain of salt.

Question:

How much of a help is knowledge of 'specific school culture' ? How much of it varies with schools?

So, if you meet consultant A, who is the best writer you can get and consultant B, who has some specific school knowledge to go along with his writing (which might not be absolutely amazing) , who would you select?

Hello Andrew:
Thanks for voicing your concern. I wanted to take some time to address your concern because I notice that you have posted other comments to discredit Adam (and now me and the clients I have worked with.)

Previously (within this thread), you tried to discredit another one of my clients who posted a review. He responded directly to your post by stating that his review was in fact being officially verified by GMAT Club and posted in the official Amerasia review forum (https://gmatclub.com/reviews/amerasia-8?page=3). You then deleted your post on this thread (in which you claimed that his post was fake.)

Now, it appears that you are engaging in the same pattern of behavior again - which resulted in you deleting your old post(s). I am a little dismayed because a) these reviews have already or are being officially vetted by GMAT Club b) prior to this, you and I have had no direct interaction by which you could judge my individual abilities, but yet you feel informed enough to take issue with my client's assessment of those abilities.

If you take issue with me or any of my client's credibility of assessment, then I invite you to respectfully and maturely discuss it with me personally via phone call. I believe that our conversation would be much more productive, and place your anxiety to rest. Please let me know if this would interest you.

Respectfully,
Paul Lanzillotti

Hey jumsumtak,

My 2 cents - if it was a question of one OR the other (that is, you could not have both to any varying degree), you want to go with someone who can best tell your story. I say this because it's ultimately incumbent upon you to research the school and determine what courses, clubs, orgs, initiatives, etc. that will best address the gaps you have and ultimately help you address your goals. In the scenario you propose, a good writer would understand how ideas should flow and would ask you the questions that would draw out those ideas, which you would then place on paper to edit/rinse/repeat. A consultant with school specific knowledge may be a great help on the goals essay (for example), but may do little to help you understand what stories you should tell, as well as how they should be told to resonate with a reader. Put another way, it's easy to determine what club you need to join. It's harder to tell a story that makes you seem like a person, rather than an 8.5" x 11" piece of paper.

Respectfully,
Paul Lanzillotti

1. I haven't discredited you - I merely brought up the coincidence that there were positive reviews from users with few posts and recent join dates after I posted my negative review. Could these reviews be fake? I don't know. How hard is it for someone to create a fake profile and write a good review? Business owners do it all the time.

2. I never deleted any of my posts and I stand by every word I wrote. I still think that review is fake. GMATClub can't determine whether or not a review is real or fake.



3. I have nothing to say to you or anybody at AmeriAsia on the phone that can't be posted here. I have nothing to hide in private and believe others would benefit from my experiences.

4. Bottom line is - I believe the consulting services I received were quite poor. How could a company that claims the be one of the best advise a client to put down on his career goal essay that he is shifting from one field to another (in my case from engineering to marketing) without providing a clear transition? That was my case with AmeriAsia and I strongly believe it cost me admission into my top school choice (Columbia).

My interviewer at Columbia asked me questions such as "What have you been doing to prepare yourself for a career change?" and "Have you been reaching out to people in the marketing industry?" These are things that you would expect your Consultant to prepare you for, which in this case AmeriAsia didn't. If I were a consultant this would be one of the first things I tell my client!

When interviewing at Cornell (my alma mater and safety choice), I asked my interviewer what she would suggest to be the best way for me to prepare for business school and she told me that my drastic career change choice worried her. I had the numbers to back myself up (760 GMAT, 3.43 undergrad GPA, 3.30 grad GPA, both in mechanical engineering) but her biggest concern was that someone with the career goals that I stated in my essay would have trouble finding a job in this economy. I ended up getting waitlisted.

So a note to all those reading this - if your sole goal is to get into business school and you have no idea what your career goals are, make sure you tie them into your work experience and background. Unfortunately I learned this the hard way, even after shelling out close to $3000 to AmeriAsia for their comprehensive package and following their advice.

As other readers of this thread go grab their popcorn, I will just address your main points as respectfully as possible.



it's pretty clear that by introducing doubt (without any actual evidence) specifically aimed at my credibility and the veracity of statements about me - that you are trying to discredit me. It's apparent when you state that you are not trying to do something, and then do it in the immediately following sentence. I'm just trying to make sense of why you personally targeted me, when I have never worked with you. This is why I wanted to speak with you one-on-one - not because I have anything to hide, but because it's more personable, and because its harder to defame someone gratuitously when speaking with them (as opposed to a faceless forum ID.)


this is the post that you deleted: best-admission-consulting-companies-92923-380.html#p1166735. The actual entry remains, but you scrubbed all content from post - hence, deleting it. In the post the follows (best-admission-consulting-companies-92923-380.html#p1166738) you can see that MNC86 replied to you calling him out as a shill by telling you that his GMAT Club review was being verified (which it was.)
Again, if you proclaim that MNC86's post is fake, then you trying to discredit me (which I can deal with) and my clients (which is absolutely not acceptable to me - hence, the time and effort I am spending here.)

one more point - GMAT Club does verify that reviews posted to each consultant's forum is accurate and true. They do this by asking both the client and the company to verify the details of the business relationship. They will also ask for receipts/contracts, correspondence, and acceptance letters/emails. It's not a conspiracy, it's transparency.



this puts me in a tough position, and I wished we could have handled this specific part away from the gaze of other forum members, and any admissions representatives that may be here. But since you want to discuss this publicly, I will oblige your wishes. In addition to the reasons I listed above, I wanted to speak with you in private because I wanted to urge you to take immediate steps to remove your public profiles, very personal information, and other questionable online content that you are posting under your actual name and username. The adcom can put 2 and 2 together, and they do comb through LinkedIn and other public sites. If you Google your full name or your forum name, any adcom member will see the pictures, comments, and habits that are not part of the picture you want to paint for your b-school candidacy. My advice to you is to immediately take those down. If we spoke offline, I would have emailed you the links that you should not be in public view because they discuss matters that fewer really needs to know. This includes links to dating and steroid websites. please - it makes no sense to have this discussion in public view. Although you encourage full transparency, you do have things to hide and I will refrain from posting these links.



I understand you are upset and are venting. I would urge you to put aside emotion and take a step back, please.
It does NOT make me feel good to hear that you were not accepted to CBS or that you were waitlisted at Cornell. However, I believe you are misguided in your actions and anger. This is why - you are attacking me (I did not work directly with you) and my client's (not fine). Additionally, you did not even use Amerasia for your Cornell application - this is an important point. If you review this post - best-admission-consulting-companies-92923-360.html#p1150445 - you clearly state that you used a former Cornell admissions committee member (and not Adam) for your Cornell application. Yet, according to you, you still had the same critical flaw with Cornell that you did with CBS - your goals and your explanation of career switch. You blame Adam for it, then you proceed to attack my credibility, and that of my clients. Again, I know you are upset, but that does not give anyone the right to shift blame by (clearly) fabricating facts (such as removing your post or Amerasia's influence on your Cornell app). Adam and I have had lengthy discussions regarding your profile and I have reviewed all email correspondence between him and you. I did see the emails you sent him describing the alumni interview, how you "stammered" and the very straightforward feedback that the alumni told you point blank (regarding your answers) during the interview. At no point then did you blame Adam for that misstep.

we should have had this conversation offline. While this may serve as entertainment value for others on the forum, this whole episode make me genuinely sad to be a part of. Please, let's set up some time to speak over the phone, mono e mono.

Respectfully,
Paul Lanzillotti

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The admission process for top MBA program is not like anything I knew before. Not only it is prolonged and exhausting, it's simply conducted in a different language. I wasn't used to presenting and marketing myself, and in this game, where you compete with many other people who are as successful and impressive as you, the contribution I got from Aringo was substantial.
Starting from building the strategy – how to market the story and ambitions of each candidate the best way possible, selecting the right schools for him and walking him through the application process until the interview. During this process, Aringo's added value makes the difference between success and failure. Their professionalism, dedication and the ability to see the bigger picture is what I'm grateful for. Without them I wouldn't have ended this process with 2 offers from top schools – Berkeley and Chicago.

I'll address your points one by one.



Point taken. I'm not trying to personally target you, like you said we've never worked together. I was just bringing up a point that could be true or could be false. If it is false then I apologize for being wrong. However readers have no way of knowing as it was stated in the quoted post above. I'm certainly not trying to defame the work you do, I even commended your company on the response time and excellent writing style.



The initial content from the post still remains the same:

Joined: 09 Jan 2013
Posts: 1

Unless I'm missing something here, I wrote that to insinuate that a user created a profile on the same day, logged on just to write a review that could be questionably real or fake. I don't believe I went into any more detail than that. I left it up to the reader to decide what's real and what's not. As for the credibility of the post, GMAT Club states here that even they are not sure whether or not the reviews are credible:

verified-reviews-125793.html



Unless I'm mistaken, the whole verifiable aspect relates to GMAT prep companies, not admissions consulting (as stated in the link above).

[/quote]



Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Yes I did create a profile on a dating website after a bad break-up put me in a state of emotional vulnerability. I did post questions on a steroid website after I was diagnosed with low testosterone and the treatment from the doctor caused too many negative side effects - causing me to seek feedback and advice from people who suffer from a similar medical condition. I'm glad to know that you're willing to go above beyond to highlight irrelevant issues of your company's clients. I hope your future clients can all expect to receive the same high level form of customer service.



Ok I do want to clarify that I don't blame you or Adam for the result of my Cornell application. The point I was trying to make was that I used the similar goal from my Columbia essays on my Cornell essays and in both cases it seemed that both interviewer's main concern was the drastic career goal transition (I do wish that my Cornell admissions consultant would've picked up on it and advised me not to do it, my third consultant actually did advise me not to use it because it just seemed to not make any sense).

Yes during the alumni interview I did stammer when I was thrown an curveball questions - I later re-interviewed with a member of the admissions committee where it seemed that the main concern she was worried about was the transition in my career goal.

If you'd like to speak on the phone I am open to it. It does neither one of us benefit to go back and forth like this. You can PM me a time of your earliest convenience.

I really think a larger piece of advice would be to not let anybody else tell you what your goals are. Doesn't matter if they are an admissions consultant, your best friend or the dean of Harvard Business School. Only you can know what you want to do with your life. If your sole goal is getting into business school you probably should be re-evaluating why you want to go to school in the first place. B-school is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. Yes any school in the Top 15 will open lots of doors but if you don't know what you want to do it is going to be very difficult to figure out which school is right for you. Schools don't care if undergrads are trying to "find themselves" but business school are looking for motivated people who are actively pursuing a career goal. That doesn't mean you can't change your mind or do something different once you get to school but you will have a tough time getting into a top program if you are wishy-washy on your long-term goals.

100% right on!!!!

Yikes. Guys is this really the place to be airing out your dirty laundry? It's entertaining to read the drama but still...

**This is a long and in-depth review**

Let's face it - US business schools, especially the elite ones that you and I aspire to be a part of, have some extremely stringent acceptance criteria with an almost blackbox-like process to boot.

Before admissions consultants became mainstream (mainly thanks to the penetration of the Internet), applying to business schools was a lonely, nerve-wracking activity - especially if you were from an over-represented demographic like India or China. Nerve-wracking because you had no idea of what constituted a good or bad response to an essay question, or how to go about structuring it; Lonely because at the most, you had a couple of friends who had even heard about the schools you were applying to, and even then, they wouldn't have enough in-depth knowledge to help you write compelling essays.

I began researching MBA programs in 2005. At the time, the only ‘consultants’ I had were Montauk (‘How To Get Into The Top MBA Programs’) and Strunk Jr and White (‘The Element Of Style'). By 2011, when I began the application process, I decided that in addition to my due diligence (attending events, chatting with alumni, professors, etc) I could use the expertise and perspective of a non-Indian who was on the pulse of the admissions process – someone who could look at my essays from the perspective of the admissions committee and help me paint a clear picture of myself. And thus began my hunt for the ‘Best’ admissions consultant.

After two months of initial consults with 10 different admissions consulting firms – Clear Admit, The MBA Exchange, Accepted.com, Stacy Blackman Consulting, Forster-Thomas, MBA Crystal Ball, MBAApply, VeritasPrep, MBAMission, and Amerasia – I finally decided to work with Paul Lanzillotti at Amerasia. Don’t get me wrong – I didn’t pick Paul because he painted the rosiest picture during the initial consults; he didn’t. I picked him because we connected, and we connected well. My reasoning was simple – I need to not only be comfortable sharing details of my personal and professional life with my consultant, I needed someone who would push me, probe further for details, and not pull any punches when critiquing my essays. I saw all this in Paul, and over the course of our engagement, my gut instinct was proven right.

This is not to say that Paul and I didn’t disagree on anything – in fact, we frequently disagreed. But therein lay the beauty; every disagreement would result in us coming up with something far better than what we started with. We had different perspectives, and kept hammering at each sentence in each essay till we were both satisfied with it. Sometimes, simply flipping the order of sentences in a paragraph would work miracles. Sometimes, we’d scratch everything and head back to the drawing board. Some essays were born ready (took a couple of edits to finish) whereas others had to be sculpted and refined multiple times (more than 8 edits).

Paul’s knowledge of various schools is extensive; more importantly, he has a skill for converting life experiences into strong essays – and this is where I knew I was getting my money’s worth. There were experiences that I did not think much about, but were potential essay responses in his perspective – today, some of those have actually made their way into my essays for multiple schools.

Additionally, Paul was always available on call or mail, and would respond within a few hours at the most. He was upfront about delays (if any), and made sure that I had his undivided attention when on a call.

Ultimately, we worked together for 4 schools, and I was waitlisted at 2 of them. Since two of the schools were R3, Paul honoured his R3 guarantee and helped me craft 2 R1 apps this year. Additionally, I retook the GMAT and took extra courses to boost my GPA. The result? I applied to 4 schools and have been invited to interview at all, and so far, accepted at Tuck (and looking forward to the rest).

So is Paul/Amerasia the best consultant/company?
I can’t say; that’s like asking whether HBS or Stanford is the best business school – its really down to personal choice. Yes, he was the best consultant for me. Ultimately, its your application, and your hard-earned money that will be spent on a consultant, and you need to take a well-thought out decision based on the initial consults. I did my research and chose Paul, and did not once regret it.

My experience with Paul was extremely good, and I would gladly recommend that you consider his services when scouting for an admissions consultant.


You may now return to your scheduled programming ☺


Cheers,
MBAWanderlust

PS – I’d be happy to have this review verified by moderators.

I admittedly did not read through the 22 page feed but my $.02 is that a fantastic admissions consultant is a current student at your target school. After I got to HBS and now "see behind the curtain" on a daily basis I have a much better feel for what admissions is/was looking for. Not to mention $$$$ - there are a TON of my classmates who would take 1/10th of what full time consultants charge. Tap your networks and talk to students!