Hey, everybody!

I want to write couple of words about my experience with Admissionado. As I have issues with my profile and have never had an experience of writing any kind of motivation letters or essays about my background, I needed consulting services to even get a sense of what to write in my essays.
So, before I started my application I had a free 30-minute consultation with 7 different companies. I tried to choose consultants wherever it was possible and chose Uyen Tang in Admissionado, because she lived and worked for couple of years in Tajikistan and it was important for me that consultant would know the culture and society and understand overall situation in Central Asian countries (it's where I'm from).
All other consultants, except Uyen, having learned my profile and my target schools, in one or another way told me that I should probably reconsider my list and include some 2nd tier schools, as my profile is not strong enough for H-S-W. Uyen was the only one, who told me that I should try whichever school I want and that I have all the chances to be admitted. She actually told me that she believes in me and I needed to hear that from someone, except my dad :) So to hear that I have a solid chance to be admitted by super top schools from a person, who has expertise in evaluating MBA applicant profiles professionally, was a decisive moment.
I eventually chose to go with 3-school Junior Deluxe package and Uyen helped me to identify my application strategy and to craft all the essays to 3 schools. The process of writing essays wasn't easy at all for me, but Uyen made it as easy from her side as it was possible. Closer to deadlines she was very quick with editing to help me meet the deadlines on time.

I am very happy with the outcome of our cooperation, as I was admitted to Wharton two days ago! And I honestly think that Uyen played a great role in my success. I would strongly recommend Admissionado and particularly Uyen Tang for anyone, who wants to achieve their dream of a top MBA admission!

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Before I start Admissionado, I was skeptical. Personally I don't believe that someone could get me into the place that I cannot get myself into, especially with my own professional service background. However, Claudia spent so much time talking to me answering my questions to get through my hesitation.

I was in a tricky position before I apply to CBS - I DIYed 2 applications before this and none of them ended with even an interview. I quit my job for personal reason so I was applying without a job. On a candidate strength level, my GMAT is border line ( I retook it 3X but ended with even lower scores every time) given the competitive demographic I was in and I was not involved in any leaderships in NPOs.

Phillip spent more than 1 hour on the phone with me to analyze the strength and weakness of my candidacy. He provided a detailed analysis over my strength, including some I did not even see for myself such as I had some great involvement with people in my side business so that compensates any lack of extracurricular after I started work.

The essay went back and forth more than 5 times. Phillip really provided meaningful comments in terms of giving evidence to support the sentences that I was writing. He also provided the sentence structures that I can start with for the examples. For a English-as-second-language candidate, those comments were so helpful for me to write concise but well- supported paragraphs throughout the whole application.

Overall, I only applied CBS and got into my dream school. I would have not done it without Adminssionado.

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I chose Admissionado based on the positive feedback from my friend, and also the online reviews. I am very pleased with their services, and highly recommend them to anyone looking to give that boost to his/her application. I opted for the Jr. Deluxe package. Yaron was fantastic, and I couldn't have asked for a better consultant. He was very thorough with his comments, responded promptly to any questions, and prepared me well for the interview. The rates at Admissionado are also very reasonable compared to other consultants out there, which is also a bonus if you're mindful of the budget.

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I purchased a 3 school junior deluxe package from Admissionado. My perspective is one of someone who doesn't have much disposable income, and who comes from the nonprofit sector. Based on my experience, I feel that the junior deluxe package was a good fit. For someone on a budget, I really wouldn't see needing more than this in order to give yourself the best chance of admission into top schools. As an additional way to save money, I would recommend working with Admissionado on a handful of schools. From there you can easily tailor the essays you developed into essays for other schools. In my case, this meant working with mark on essays for 3 different schools, but using those developed essays to apply to 9 schools total. This fall I will now be attending Harvard on a $51,000 per year scholarship. I won't go so far as to say that working with Mark got me into HBS. What I can say, however, is that working with Mark brought my essays from good to amazing. The benefit of working with Mark is that you have someone who reads dozens of essays and knows what it takes to have an amazing essay. I can unquestionably say that working with Mark was a tremendous experience. He was patient and took the time to fully understand my unique background. At the same time, he was honest and didn't sugarcoat things. He was willing to ask difficult questions and in some cases flat out tell me that an essay idea that I had was a bad move. In my opinion, being willing to give these tough answers is what makes working with Mark such a pleasure. In the end, you will unquestionably give yourself the best chance for admission into business school. Whether this marginal advantage is worth the high pricetag is an individual decision, however. In my case, I believe it was worth it. I really cannot recommend Mark more highly, and if you've already made the decision to invest in admissions consulting services, I really don't think that you'd regret going with Mark!

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After I failed my GMAT 20 days before R2 deadline and scored only 680 (lower than mean score of any school I applied to), he was the man who helped me to believe in myself again and told me not to consider tier 3 schools. He firmly believed that I should not look outside of top 15 schools. Yaron walked me through the whole application process, reviewing my resume and essays, giving advises to my recommenders, practicing interview with me and advising how to respond to all the questions in application forms. I believe he is the main reason I was so successful with business school applications. We managed to complete 3 applications to Ross, Fuqua and Tuck in 15 days time. After that I applied to Kenan-Flagler on my own, using information from the essays written with Yaron. As a result I was admitted to Fuqua, Ross and Kenan-Flagler and waitlisted at Tuck (because of my GMAT score). On top of that, I received some merit based scholarship at Duke and Ross. I think that the fact I was granted some money even with below average GMAT score shows the strength of the application we were able to put together with Yaron. I’m happy that I chose Yaron and Admissionado team, but not another consultant.

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After extremely disappointing and disheartening R1 results with another consultant, I didn't want to give up and tried another 3 schools for R2. This time, I'm so glad I had Yaron on my side! I had a relatively low GMAT score (sub-700), so I knew I had to give it my all in my essays. Yaron was extremely attentive, detail-oriented, and strategic with the resume and essay writing. Yaron helped me rediscover the depth of my stories and really adhered to the "show not tell" principle, every time he would come back with feedbacks that asked me to dig a little deeper, to give more details in my examples. He also gave me a lot of confidence through mock interviews. In the end I got into INSEAD! I couldn't be happier with the result. I highly recommend Yaron to anyone who wants to put forward a stellar application.

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I am a re-applicant and used a different consulting firm the first time I applied. The first time I thought the essays were very well polished, but I think what I wanted from an MBA and what I had to offer wasn’t as clear. The second time around, I had a better idea of what I wanted out of an MBA and wanted to get a different perspective on the MBA process. I talked with several consulting firms and Admissionado seemed to be able to relate to my background the most. Additionally, since I already applied once, I didn’t need a full package from a consultant. I only needed help on essay editing and picking the correct topics to build the proper story. In this sense, I needed a more flexible program and Claudia at Admissionado was quickly able to tailor a program for me as a re-applicant. This allowed me to save money while still getting the support I needed.

Claudia was also able to match me up with a consultant, Mark Lellouch, who could really mold my background, engineering, into what adcoms are looking for.

Mark was quick to respond to any questions I had, no matter how dumb they sounded, and gave me good feedback on my essays, which topics I should write about, and prioritize what I should include in my application (hobbies, extracurriculars, etc).

On the first round application, I received interviews from every school I applied to. I received acceptances from all except one, which I got waitlisted. I am still waiting for my second round results.

After all my experiences applying to business schools, I think Adcoms are always looking for someone who is different and adds new insight/perspectives to the class, so the key to applying is to build a story about your background that sets you apart and would help diversify your class. Mark at Admissionado really understands how to build that story and to get the right messages across to the Adcoms.

I would highly recommend Admissionado and Mark at Admissionado to help you to get to your dream school.

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Read more at: http://topdogmba.com/2015/01/01/fixing-a-hole-admissionado-review/

I am a re-applicant so writing this from the perspective of someone who has been through the pain once before and didn't want to make the same mistakes the second time around.

I first learned about Admissionado as their founder, Jon Frank, hosted a free webinar about 'Dealing with a Ding'. I was one of the lucky few chosen to be critiqued in the webinar and, while not a pleasant experience, I really appreciated the straight talking, no nonsense approach employed by Jon.

This is not a service for those of you wanting someone to praise you constantly and tell you what a good job you're doing - this is tough love! My consultant was a former Admissions Fellow at my top choice b school. We had a great free Skype session which overran the allotted time, but I just had a lot of questions and she was in no hurry and did not rush me.

After the call, I tried to imagine finding time to not only figure out my strategy, but also to write my resume, essays, manage my recommenders, all while having to check my own work and try to find friends who would help me out and review it. I decided I wanted a paid consultant, someone I could jump straight in and start discussing my stories with, someone who was always available and would push me to do more and better.

The Junior Deluxe package was great for this, it wasn't cheap but in line with other leading consulting firms. Best of all, I could bolt on additional services like Skype calls and urgent reviews of my essays (sadly, I did have to resort to this once or twice!), all in a very transparent way.

If I had any negative comments to make, I'd say that it took several days to get comments back on essays. This is because not only my consultant was reviewing them, but also an editor who added a lot of comments on how to improve the writing style, what else I could talk about, how to build the story more effectively etc. It was only a problem because I was busy for weeks at a time (with non-MBA stuff) and when I was free I liked to focus in on my essays for days at a time. If you're like me, then just make sure you spread the essays out - one school on Monday, another on Tuesday etc. - once I figured this out it was easy to adjust my schedule. Like I said, this is really not a major issue but I struggle to think of anything bad about Admissionado.

And, now for the results: well, I applied to three schools and got three interview invites. One is converted into an offer(!) and the other two I'm still waiting to hear from. Could I have got the same result on my own? Possibly, but why take that risk for the sake of 1-2% of the cost of your MBA programme!?

Thanks to Admissionado I am going to be doing my MBA next year, no matter what.

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Long story short, I got a 710, solid GPA, but weaker than avg experience. IT Proj Mgr in biotech with some exposure to strategy, but nothing like consulting or i-banking.

Shawn and the team tailored a story and strategy around the fact that I couldn't compete based on raw strength or quant ability against others looking to get into a Top 20 school. There's no way I would have got into my dream school if they hadn't helped me form and completely revise my strategy. I'll be honest, I had a "good" story before, but they pushed me to make sure everything aligned: my past exp, why I want an MBA, and my future goals. It sounds basic, but it needs to be immaculate.

Once I got my big interview, I felt super confident about my entire story, because it truly did all add up. I was able to tell it very naturally, because each piece lined up, all the way to my 20 year plan. And I didn't even use them for interview prep!

The whole team was very laid-back (not a bad thing), and it allowed me to really divulge every piece of information about myself. Some of which I would not have told many people, but that ultimately became an important part of my story. Also, I got a late start (began in mid-Aug for Oct 1 deadline), and the editors turned my drafts around literally every 3-4 days.

Can't say enough great things about Admissionado, would highly recommend for anyone looking to get into a Top 20 school. If it looks expensive, well...you're about to invest $150-200k. Do you want to spend that getting in a "mediocre" program, or would you rather be in your dream school and freakin' stoked on where you're spending the next 2 years, and WHO you're spending them with. I can't even explain how excited I am for the school I got into, such a great feeling compared to "settling" for a backup school and attending because, "well, now is the time" and "I don't want to go through that process again".

If anyone has questions about my experience, I'd love to answer, because I seriously owe it to Admissionado for the milestone that I've reached.

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I enrolled into the 4-school deluxe package with Admissionado and I'm thoroughly delighted with the exceptional service that the Admissionado team (Lauren, Emily, Claudia and Kyn) have provided me over the past 8-9 months. I truly lovvveeeddd working with Kyn, who is a professional through and through, and whose expertise and skills truly helped me get admitted off the wait list to one of the schools that I applied to.

My first interaction with Kyn was during an essay writing workshop and I was so impressed with his insightful essay-writing tips and comments that I immediately set up an initial profile evaluation with him and signed up for four schools. The entire admissions process right from writing the GMAT all the way until landing an admit is an extremely exhaustive and tiring process but Kyn made sure that we didn't lose steam one bit during the process and ensured that we submitted the best application we could to all our schools. Also, Admissionado has invaluable resources (resume tips, school guides and interviewing tips) that helped me maneuver through the maze. I found Kyn's (and Admissionado's) services extremely useful, far exceeding the expectations I'd initially set. Their entire team is extraordinarily dedicated, professional, courteous and prompt (I observed this during some of the free workshops I attended).

PROS :- To me the biggest gain was gaining insight into the AdCom's decision making process, rationale behind wait listing, and, most importantly, tips to make an impression during an interview in spite of belonging to an oversubscribed pool of applicants. I was able to successfully be admitted off the wait list ONLY because Kyn helped me understand what would work and what wouldn't when wait listed. The comments and feedback on all my edits were extremely helpful, precise and positive through critical.

CONS :- I initially found it difficult to adjust to the 3-day turnaround time for every edit but, I eventually realized that it was to be fair to other applicants.

To summarize, if you're fine with the 3-day turnaround time (i.e. you plan and strategize your applications well), I'd highly recommend Admissionado and Kyn to everyone applying.

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