Review : Admission consultants in India!

Question

Do not know if this is the correct forum to post this , if not i apologize The review is based on my experience with these consultants and might differ from person to person . I hope many people from India who hesitate to spend 3000$ on a US admission consultant will find this useful and can then make a call to spend 3000+ USD( if at all )! I do not work for or endorse any Admission consultant . --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- K ..for last one and a half month i have met at least 5 admission consultants in INDIA and i must say the experience has been saddening . Wisdom mart ( delhi ) and APPhelp consulting , are the two companies i took help from and here is my take on them - 1) Wisdom Mar t - I was charged Rs.8000/- for 2 schools , they charge Rs.20,000/- for 5 schools .They just edit your essays and by editing i mean just your grammar , style etc . People are really helpful , but they are not well informed and can neither guide you on with your essays . YOU write THEY edit ( correct your english ) The only good thing about wisdom mart is that the person incharge is really helpful , if you are not happy with your reviewer give him a call he will get some other guy to work with you . I for instance worked with three reviewers ; (they were good for nothing )........

2) Apphelp consulting -Here is how there process works ( contrary to what they write on thr website) - Pay 10,000 Rs for one school ( essay editing only) - once the payment is made , they will send you an email with a contact number of the reviewer- smone frm ISB ! - send them your essays , and forget thm for about 3-4 days ; they WILL NOT CONTACT YOU ! you have to make all the phone calls to track there progress . - It's either these people lie about there reviewers or the reviewers they assign are either too dumb or are too busy to work on anything you send them . In my case i was assigned to a reviewer , who was frm ISB . After 4 days i sent my essays , the only change she made was to change the last two sentence on one of my essays tht was it ! It took me another day or two to get another reviewer and thn another 3 days to get 15 minutes of tht guy's time , i felt i was talking to sm friggin CEO of sm company ! He was again frm ISB , the guy after 3 days used sm track changing features ( As if i am suppose to be impressed by his MS word skills..) in MS word document and sent me an edited version , did suggest a couple of points ( i did not use them though , because they were crap ) ... So the bottom line is -spend 10K on them if you want a guy frm ISB ( they say !!!!) to take a LOOK at your essay ( LOOK not EDIT or SUGGEST anything ) ! so after wasting 18000/- still no help

And yeah here is a brief review of other consultants( i did not take there services) .. 3) CHOPRA'S( gurgaon branch )- -The consultant there was hilarious !!! This is what happened: me: Hi , does your company provide essay editing services for MS finance in US ? consultant: MS finance or MSc finance - I don't think there is such a course as MS finance .. me:Well, in US MSF and in UK MSc finance.. consultant: all right !! ohh yes yes we do ..... see the we help you with the visa interview ,follow up with the universities you have applied to....yata yata !! me: So yeaaahhhh or neaaaah on essay editing ? consultant: ohh ..yeah we do we do !! have you given your GRE exam? me : No i gave GMAT consultant :Well universities ask for GRE so you have to give tht .. m e : and i ran as fast as i could : ) In conclusion - As with most of the things in India you cannot sue these people even if they do not live upto there end .So , if you are looking for an Indian consultant it's better you ask ur frds to have a look at your essays else spend 2500-3500USD /-( u can make a down payment on an apartment in India

). I would love to hear other people's experience on Indian / US consultants. Via this post i did not intended to throw dirt at any consulting firm , this is wht actually happened with me and i have the edited drafts of my essays with me and can prove the same

vaibhavtripathi · Answer

I tried my luck with PrincetonReview/ManyaAbroad or whatever the name is, but you got the idea.

If I were to draw a chart of my experience with them, I'd draw a mountain the way I used to draw it in 3rd standard. Steep climb, steeper fall.

After scoring a 660 in the month of Dec, I knew my score was low and I was late in app process. Still I went ahead and submitted my application to 5 schools of my choice. After a month and 4 rejections, I was desparate to save the year and so approached them asking whether they could help me save the year. The beautiful lady at the reception asked me to wait and explained my case to I-dont-know-who, and said they could. They charged me 18K (INR) for 5 schools, with a guarantee that I will get atleast one interview call (that's right, Interview call, not admission), else I would be offered the same package the next academic year. And thus began my tryst with ManyaAbroad which ended almost as abruptly.

The editor they first assigned was really really good. She not only edited my essays, but also suggested points I could add in my essay - really good points. I never had to follow up with her, she took the most personal interest in the essays and executed them in most professional manner. Always notifying in advance when i could expect her next call, and calling on the specified time. I finalized essays for 2 of the schools with her and then...... she quit the company.

From there the graph went down. The new editor was as bad as the previous one was good. He just changed (I am not sure for good either) the structure of most the sentences in my essays and cried DONE. He did not take or return my calls (always busy in meeting) unless I escalated the issue. Things went fine for few days and then back to square 1.

Meanwhile, I got an interview call from the 5th school (which I had applied to before contacting Manya) and asked my counsellor for a mock interview, which he did conduct. What I heard next from Manya was that since I did recieve help from them for an interview call from a school, the offer to carry forward the package to next year was being termed null and void. Now, beat that.

That was the end of tryst with PrincetonReview/ManyaAbroad or whatever the name is, but you got the idea.

rajeshaaidu · Answer

Dear Friends,

I am also having very  bad experience  with  Princeton review Manya abroad . One year back, I had taken their help in applying to US and paid them 30,000RS./ for their service. They have promised me same things as mentioned by one of our friend here. I was trying for PhD in life science in US. But, after availing their service, I came to know that these people don't know anything about the admission process in the case of PhD (Maybe they can help you for MS or Undergraduate courses- Not sure!!!). They have selected five university without considering anything about my profile that it is suitable for that or not (NOTE- I have not given any preference list to them that I want particular university, I was ready to go to any university). Their editing team was horrible. She was trying to make my SOP short and in that process she has made logical errors and when I have complained about this, she told that she is not from technical background, so it can happen.

In conclusion, I will request anybody who is thinking to take these people help in application process-  please don't waste your money!!!  For any graduate application do by yourself online, especially for PhD. If you want help, then better than going to these people, you take help from some of your friends or go to the free sites like essay forum, where you can paste your essay and sop for comments and suggestions.

If this post will help even ten people then I will think I have wasted 3000 not 30000Rs (30000/10=3000. Quite simple- ya!!!).  I have worked for a year to save 30000, but these people have taken this in the name of Princeton review. In reality these people (Manya abroad) are Indian partner of Princeton review who doesn't know much. These people are spoiling the name of princeton here, nothing else, but anyhow princeton is also making money out of it by selling its brand name. Please inform as many people as possible.  In the start of the process these people will take signature from you on 8-10 pages thick legal document with so many clauses that you will not abuse them, not fight with them, or not give any nonsense mail etc... Now, I understood why???  Anybody after getting cheated like this will loose his temper and in turn revert to things which are classified as bad behaviour. But by doing this we are wasting our energy. I find this kind of forum are better places to expose these people and save few of our friends from these big cheats.

Hope to hear more experiences about these kind of admission consultant!!!

Thanks and regard,
Rajesh

bizschoolprep · Answer

Everyone,

In India, a lot of fuss has been made on writing the essays "the American way". This is utter nonsense and consultants who are mushrooming everywhere are using this pretext to offer a cheap service to entice you and in return will do a nip here or a tuck there. Listen to what the admissions committe director are saying all over the world - Content is the king. Having a proper structure, no doubt, is important but don't break your head over writing it in a certain manner which you don't know. In most of the schools, your application will be read by a 2nd year MBA student from India itself! So stop wasting money and time on words and get the content right. Use an MBA consultant who has been an MBA from a reputed institution himself and not some admin staff. You may probably need the most help even before starting to write essay - in clearing out your goals, and thinking about why MBA, why now, etc. The real value of an MBA consultant is not correcting the Grammar or spellchecks, but it is in pushing you to get the best out of you and then translating that on your application. That is why, always be cautious whenever someone say we edit essays - No, you need someone you can look at different part of your application right from your workexperience, extracurricular, goals and passions, etc and ensure that these qualities are reflected the right way in your resume, recommendations and essays.

MBA Admissions may not be the best blace to cut corners for quality. Don't forget that you will probably be spending more than $100K on your MBA program. If you can get the right person who can help you to get into a better school, your cost gets recovered even during the internship (just compare the average internship salary of a Tier 1 v/s Tier 2 B schools). Moreover, what business sense would it make in spending Rs. 30,000 for nothing v/s Rs. 60,000 (for e.g.) for something substantial!? Start thinking like an MBA now !

We are  BizSchoolPrep , a team of MBA Admissions Consultant who are MBA grads from the top US business and Ivy League schools and have actually evaluated MBA applications and conducted interviews towards actual admission to the full time MBA program. Check out our Homepage to know what makes us different. To sum it up - We don't just edit essays, we use our allround - 360 degrees bottom-up approach to provide the knockout punch that your application deserves.

Also, check out  Our Blog post titled - How to select the right admissions consultant, to make sure that your time, money and efforts are not wasted.

Good luck!

- BizSchoolPrep
-------------------  
 About Us  |  Know What Makes Us Different |  
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AugustAcademy · Answer

Hi

We are a Chennai based company founded by a Stanford alum. - we would be happy to help you out. Please visit our website at https://augustacademy.in for more information.

We've had extremely good results in the 2013 - 2014 admissions cycle - we are now looking to capitalise on the momentum that we've built up.

We offer extremely personalised service - we don't impose any limits on the number of hours of contact - we take as much time as is required to perfect your essays. Please call us for a consultation: +91 94455 89969 - so that we can assess your profile and talk about an effective plan of action.

Regards,
August Academy

ruchi857 · Answer

SUGGESTION/EARNEST REQUEST/WARNING/RED ALERT: DON’T USE SERVICES OF VIBRANTURE. BLACKLIST PRINCE PETER.

1 ZERO VALUE OF SERVICES: Vibranture can dupe you under the warps of providing brainstorming session where really there would be nothing of value except discussions on who motivates you and why. There is no focus on essays and whatever is shared is total crap available anywhere online. Might as well read some strategy books, AVAILABLE FOR FREE ! Basically his service has no value and his extremely overpriced.
2. ZERO CLARITY: This person mentions I provide comprehensive services – essay writing. At time of delivery mentions, please read my bad font/non updated useless website to dig in what lies underneath
3. EGOSITIC: Prince peter thinks highly of himself. As if he was the Dean of Harvard. The guy thinks of himself too much and that he can get a crack at anything. Extremely non cooperative person and very difficult to work with when you already have a burden of working on applications and would like to work with reasonable people who would care to follow=up
4. EXPECTS SMS/PHONE CALL – Who in this today’s world doesn’t check his Emails? This person wants people to SMS him or give a phone call whenever an email is shot to him. All he does is travel and he only wants to talk about his life of travel post Feb and before July. He seems to be just feeding of poor souls hard earned money, purely for his travel adventures.
5. RUDE: Super bad experience. He went to extent of mentioning am not a serious candidate and his time is worthy of prime minister’s seat. He also goes to extent of labeling me as someone who is insane. Just remind this man that I am paying him and he better keep his cock in his mouth.
6. Confrontation: Approach he adopts to confront is : A) He will pocket all your money also of services that he didn’t give. B) He will shout like a big fat lady C) He is whiny and retorts back as someone who needs a lot of ass licking d) Doesn’t have bandwidth with his 48 hour throughput plans and will retort back like a barking dog if you confront him in any manner
7. Services: In my specific situation, when I figured he doesn’t write essays and the brainstorming will not be followed up with more clear discussions and more ideas for content writing. I told him what value am I getting out of this? To which his ugly and vengeance filled approach was that we can cancel this transaction. He said he will only provide two reviews and edits and won’t be giving any ideas. He said” though your services allowed you to have another half an hour brainstorming session, but it is my choice not to work with you”. So for Rs 48000 that I signed up with him on Resume and Comprehensive services, he went ahead and deducted Rs 20000. He said he spent time on resume and he needs to be charging for that. And though the 100minutes we used for brainstorming had only 60 minutes for brainstorming and initial 30 minutes for guidelines discussion, he would still charge me for two hours equivalent to Rs 16000. There all in, Rs 20000 went right in the air. Thanks to this man who thinks that money grows in air and his mouth really spewed out anything better than gas.
Following is his reply:
Also, there is no 'strategy' session  - there is just brainstorming TIME: as I mentioned before, if you had bought a standalone brainstorming service the clock would stop at 60mins; the rest of the time was spent on you because you reiterated and promised your status as a full service client. And there is NO question of ANY further input from us on ANYTHING, certainly not on the resume: in case you want a standalone resume service the balance would be Rs.21,000. (Orange font was his reponse. Whereby he is saying that he though spent some hours on Resume for which he will still charge and won’t send anything for me to decipher why is he making me spend money?)
In case that is acceptable to you, we would be happy to bid you farewell and make the refund minus Rs.20,000.
Please let us know if the refund of Rs.28,000 works for you ; because while we will wish you the best post this episode, we really would be happier not to communicate with you further, after the refund.
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Review : Admission consultants in India!

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