Review of Admission Gateway and Pythagurus

I had a couple of free consultation sessions with (Admission Gateway)Rajdeep Chimni in which he helped me identify issues with my previous years application.
The issues identified made a lot of sense and helped me gain a lot more perspective on the admission process as a whole.
In my personal opinion, i found him very frank and not condescending.

It would be really helpful if other fellow GMATclubbers can share their thoughts on this topic.

I am not someone who used a consultant for my admissions. However, I did speak with a number of friends who landed in top B schools. Two of my close friends, one who landed in Warton and the other who got admitted to both Warton and Booth, were of high praises for Rajdeep and completely vouched for him. He is someone who wants to set realistic expectations and motivates people to achieve their best. Hope that helps!

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Rajdeep is a very helpful and approachable person. He went out of his way to give me 1-hour with him (out of favor since I know him through few connections) to help me prepare for an upcoming interview. The insights and advice he gave me on how to tackle my B-school interview were very insightful and personal to me. I think his experience with so many successful applicants over the years has given him an excellent understanding of the overall applicant pool and what responses would be considered ordinary, good or excellent by the interviewer. He has plenty of anecdotes and examples to give around how to maximize an answer and quite obviously he knows about all the typical questions that are asked in the interviews as well. I was particularly surprised and impressed by how he is able to structure the responses.

Apart from my experience with him, I know quite a few friends of mine spanning NGO, startup and consulting sector who have consulted Rajdeep and gotten through top 10 B-schools, so I would recommend Rajdeep highly to anyone who is looking to apply to a B-school.

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Cannot tell about Admission gateways but i would like to share my end result of working with Pythagurus for MBA admissions. i got 0 interview invite out of 5 schools i did with Pythagurus after paying around 2.5 Lacs INR in fees.

Have just started with pythagurus 15 days ago so will post a detailed review after the completion but I know applicants in Maruti Suzuki( my first company) who have gone to top schools( INSEAD, Tuck). Know another close friend who referred me to Jatin and he is going to Ross with 70% scholarship. I was not sure if I needed any consultant but eventually thought I will take someone's help.

pm me if you need any details. I travel a lot for work so please expect a delay in response. Will give my review for sure after ( or If) I get an admit or dings.

correction: In the post above, I have mentioned 70% scholarship. it is 70,000 Dollar scholarship and not 70%.

I posted my application experience with Rajdeep from Admissions Gateway a while back, you can refer to the detailed post here - https://gmatclub.com/forum/from-indian- ... 38243.html (I will be attending Kellogg 2Y program starting August)

I don't have any experience with Pythagurus and neither does anyone I know of who is going to business school this year (and I am in touch with 50+ such folks attending top 6 schools) but in an attempt to give objective assessment, would also like to add some more numbers here.

- In Kellogg https://gmatclub.com/chat group there are about 40 Indians - 15 of them were Rajdeep's clients
- Know of at least 4 each for Booth and Wharton, 1 from Harvard (I am sure there would me more)

I think somebody on the group mentioned about the AG's claims not being verified or something like that. I can certainly verify this year's results and if anybody needs to get more information, please DM me and I am happy to get on a quick call to give my 2 cents.

Hope this helps.
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Pankaj

[Update] - Update the admit numbers again post double checking on the https://gmatclub.com/chat group

Hey,

You can read my MBA admission story here https://gmatclub.com/forum/admitted-to- ... f688715b7c

I worked with 2 different consultants in 2 years and definitely saw improvement in my second year with AG. The most important improvement was in the Resume and networking with current students and Alums. I have to say that Rajdeep is one of the best when it comes to the guidance on essays and Resume. Once your school selection is done, there are very few who are better than Rajdeep at advising on the applications for the schools.

You can always PM me for any help.

I will be attending Fuqua this year. If you require any information about Fuqua, I will be more than happy to assist you.

All the best !

I worked with Jatin on 5 schools and have 4 admits with a total scholarship of 3.17 crores( USD 500,000) . Every school I applied to came back with an admit and a strong financial aid( some schools with tuition and insurance and some with tuition and living). My initial drafts of almost all the essays were rejected by Jatin- like, not a change of flow or language but the stories were rejected- . he will also ask you to not accept his drafts readily and is very open to changes and alterations. It was important for me as that allowed me to write freely- I could actually experiment a lot. He maintains a two way communication to let the essay evolve with iterations. My reasons for "WHY THIS SCHOOL" were rejected outrightly and the entire learning curve was very very steep. There is no limit to the drafts. We did not lie on any of the essays. there was no exaggeration but I realised that I was picking very wrong stories initially. But He completely changed the pressure points- The whole story building was magical. I also want to add another important point. He was blunt in the interview prep. Will get to the point quickly and tell you to shut up if you are just rambling and not communicating. I was also a GMAT Student in Pythagurus before starting with him for admissions consulting services and I know a lot LOTTTT of students in Pythagurus who have gone to top Schools across the world and I know Jatin I will definitely encourage you to speak with him. if he cannot do something for you he will not over promise. It was a great experience working with him.

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From Tepper/UNC in 2016 to Duke ($) in 2017

Hi guys, this is what I felt working with AG this year.
After working in Maruti Suzuki for three years I worked with technology start-ups in leadership roles. I wanted to undertake an MBA to gain a product management skill-set and get a product management experience in the US.
My plans to apply for an MBA program in a top B-school formed in mid-2015. My objective was to get into a top ranked school (USA top 15). Since I appeared for my GMAT in October 2015, I had to miss round 1 of applications. After applying to 7 schools in round 2, I ended up getting offers from Tepper (CMU) & Kenan-Flagler (UNC). I would advise everyone to start early and plan your GMAT accordingly so that you can do R1 applications.

Tepper is a good school for tech recruitments but somewhere I felt that I could do better. I had conversations with Rajdeep Chimni after hearing positive reviews about Admissions Gateway from few people going to the top-10 b-schools. Rajdeep assessed my chances fairly and told me both the risks and the upside. I took the tough call to apply again after taking various inputs and reflecting on what I wanted to.

I joined Admissions Gateway as I wanted significant improvement in my application and was expecting to face this next application cycle in a systematic manner. I changed my approach to applying early in the first round. Also, I felt applying to fewer schools with better quality would increase the conversion. Re-applying after a year added leadership experience of working in a growing startup, making my application stronger.

I first introspected on my previous applications with my consultant and identified few areas of improvement.

a) Better portrayal of my job accomplishments. Everyone knows the STAR format but there are different levels of applying it. Bringing out the leadership and strategic aspects of the work
b) Detailed research on goals
c) Reaching out to and talking to students at target schools and then keeping notes and seeing how those could be used in the essays to personalize. This helped a lot.
d) More insight and polish in the essays. Picking the right examples is very important so think a lot before you start to write. (Warning - The iterations may seem endless but they do bring out that level of insight) The initial research and chats with students helped me refine the essays and focus on the depth of key points such as collaborative experiences, opportunities to contribute within specific clubs in business schools etc.
e) More focused interview prep. Start preparing for your interview early because there could be only 7 days between the invite and the interview which may not be enough for people who have never interviewed before

The result of this was that I secured an admit from The Fuqua School of Business (Duke University) in Early Decision round with a scholarship of $9,900 for 2 years ($19,800 in total). The scholarship was definitely a bonus being an Indian male. Duke has a great college culture and focus on consulting and tech sectors.

Hope you find this useful in making your decision. Good luck to all applicants out there.

Hi Everyone,

Happy and qualified to answer the topic:

I posted my Admit Journey in MBA Journey forum a while back, where I mentioned the immense role Admissions Gateway played in my application. You can refer to the detailed post here - https://gmatclub.com/forum/indian-autom ... l#p1853342 (I will be attending Kellogg 2Y program starting this fall)

No experience with Pythagurus, but haven't heard anything special about them from any of my MBA friends. On the contrary, some of them had good experiences with AG, hence started working with them.

Got through to Kellogg and McCombs(with hefty $$)!
These guys know this stuff in and out. So yeah, I'd highly recommend admission Gateway to anyone and everyone.

To add context, Pankaj has mentioned some numbers about Admission Gateway's admits to top-5 B-schools. I totally vouch for the same, and more.

For rest of the colleges too I'm pretty sure Admission Gateway is the biggest contributor.

Somebody on the group mentioned AG's admit numbers being fabricated. Really sad to hear this, since I can personally verify most of their results. Happy to connect on DM if anybody wants specific info.

Hoping the aspirants end up making the right choice. Again would love to help out if anybody is still confused, I know how it feels in that situation.

Best,

Hi Anshul,

I, Jatin( Founder PythaGURUS), am writing to respond to your critique and am asking for your help as I want to make our process better. It is easy for an applicant to report a problem and tell the world that “They did not receive a single interview Invite even after paying 2 lacs etc. “ or call up a consultant and get him to refund the fees.

I am writing as we need your help in making our process better.
I am choosing to respond after exchanging several emails with you- and I did not intend to take this public- but considering the fact that you are sharing your side of the story everywhere, I decided to write on this forum and ask for your advice.


I am willing to furnish necessary details to show HOW WE TOOK AN ACTIVE STAND for you( and you have supporting emails for all the facts shared below) and ask for your advice and understand how to make things better in such situations in the future.


1. Despite Repeated follow ups from our side( I had to motivate you, scare you of results, warn you – and do whatever it took to get you to send your inputs) when you were 26 days away from the submissions- and you made me run after you for 20 days for your letter of recommendations. And your process of admissions consulting did not start 26 days before the deadline submissions. We started roughly two months before the deadlines and the initial effort went in building goals stories + making you network with the B-school community. Roughly a month before the deadline submissions, we got you started on “Recommendation best practices” and asked you to collaborate with your recommender, and get him to share his draft. After weeks, you sent blank recommendation questions, and asked me to generate the recommendations from scratch. I refused to write your recommendations from scratch as that was a mal-practice. Moreover, I had not worked with you for 5-6 years and was under no capacity to critique on your professional capabilities. Whenever you hire a top school consultant Anshul, you are not outsourcing the process. It was not our job to RUN AFTER YOU or tell you that I am NOT GOD! I need time to work on your stories Anshul- and for that- I need YOUR INPUTS.


2. Why was I following up or sending “WARNING EMAILS” to you till a week before the deadline Anshul? I had not even seen the first draft- and I was running after you, as I did not know how well written will the first draft of your recommendations be. As I had anticipated, the next version I got from you had ONE LINERS for every recommendation question- and this was 3 weeks after we had gotten you started on recommendations. Your first draft was blank- and your next draft had one liner responses. If an applicant sends a below average input just before the deadline, a consultant has very limited time to critique.

3. Essays: You should also know that you were informed repeatedly that you are READILY ACCEPTING ALL THE ESSAYS THAT I AM SENDING OVER TO YOU. I sent you repeated emails telling you that you are making this a one way communication. You were told that a story evolves only when a DOCUMENT goes back and forth between the applicant and a consultant. We do not put limits to the number of drafts Anshul and you knew that. Now, I need your help to understand “How can I refine this process further so that I am able to create great success for applicants who are reluctant to participate in this process?” For every school I did with you, I proactively sent out emails to you raising a concern that communication with you is ONE WAY and you are not actively critiquing or editing any of the essays that I am sharing. You were readily accepting all the drafts. Well, if you look at it, a one-sided communication was easy for me- and I could have ignored you. However, I proactively started asking you to “NOT ACCEPT ANY ESSAY READILY – and LET THE STORIES EVOLVE WITH TIME- Let the energy flow between you and me. However, you never responded to any of those emails( NEVER). Our goal was to bring the best out of your life on that document. Unfortunately, that cannot happen without your involvement. I am sure that the admissions process was draining for you. However, in our case, in addition to working on your stories, I was exhausted running after you. Check your emails.

4. ISB Deadline: ISB Would not have been difficult for you. You could have sent the inputs for ISB ahead of time, but I followed up with you on the 8th asking you “WHAT DO YOU PLAN TO DO FOR ESSAY 1 Anshul?”- and till that date- I had not received any inputs from you. Despite that delay from your side, you also told us that you will be doing the submissions on the 13th as you wanted to attend your marriage anniversary. Looking at the feedback that was given to you a day before( check your ISB essay 1, and 2 both Anshul), I was under the impression that you understood that your essay needed rework but we did not have enough time to send it again for rework as you wanted to do the submission on 13th, and not on the deadline day and you had made that very clear. This left us with only 5 days for ISB- and I hope it is acceptable to give a professional 1- 2 days to work on your stories. Out of these 5 days- essay one was with you for three days. Moreover, you had sent your ISB recommendation just a day before 13th- and then you did the submission on the 13th.



You can blame us for whatever happened, but we are still trying to understand “How can we make it better for future applicants?”

Do not be pretentious. Real you is person who accused me of extortion and threatened of legal proceedings
I too can write long posts putting the complete blame on you, starting with going for wedding and honeymoon vacation mid session.Why did not you inform before hand that you would be getting married mid session.(off from 26th jan - Round 2 candidates). I choose not to. I do not have energy and time to waste.

As i already mentioned in my mails to you, I do not want to be connected with you anymore through any means so do not expect any further reply.

Have another good season. Best of luck.

Your last deadline was Jan 20th Anshul. It was way before I decided to celebrate in my life.

If I have made you upset in anyway, I take responsibility. Thank you and have a wonderful life ahead Anshul. Best of luck to you too.