Reviews:

GMAT 710, GPA 3-64, East European male, Analyst at Big-3 management consultancy.
I enrolled in one full Interview Prep session, which included a mock interview in the style of Booth, followed by a comprehensive feedback session. The session was scheduled for 2 hours and 30 minutes; we ended up going for 3 hours and 45 minutes.

This experience greatly deepened my insights about interview process and helped me structure my mind and my story. I was able to communicate key ideas in top-down way and Greg helped me shape my ideas in an easy to digest way.

I signed up for this session because of an expected beyond average level of care. My hopes were fully fulfilled: I received unparalleled help in terms of amount of structured frameworks and of tailored support – Greg a great length to support me – well beyond expected hours and to much greater personalization.
It included extra time, emails before and after, examples, results of research, specificity and attention to detail during interview prep, similarity of the style to the real Booth interview.
I felt much better prepared than to any previous interview.
Result was a very personal and friendly engaging interview with a top manager of an India oil and gas corporation. My interview was very happy to see “Booth” mindset and other aspects of “fit”. I am waiting for the final words from the AdCom.

**********************************************
The result of my effort was a waitlist. And I am very passionate about support Greg provided to me. I worked on Booth waitlist updates in 2 stages - video update and written update.

Video update - a core requirement of Booth. I worked with him in a couple of steps - 1)Brainstorm 2) First draft 3)Second draft. During the brainstorm, Greg helped me pick those themes and topics, which matter for the school the most, focused me on how to create a story and develop content. It was extremely important, because a video is only 60 seconds, so I needed to make every work count. During the review of my first draft, Greg pressed me to dig deeper and deeper in terms of specificity and authenticity and uniqueness: how my values map to those of school, how to add details about examples and learning, what special value I see in Booth and how my knowledge and background would uniquely contribute to Booth. During the last step, Greg helped me decrease a whole video essay with 500 words to a 60-second video script, add flavor and style to words, and helped the language flow easily and words sound simple.

After a month, we worked on the next update - Written Letter. I connected with many students to discuss how I can contribute to clubs and what will be most impactful. Additionally, I gathered a couple of anecdotes about the experience of Booth MBA. Greg helped me turn this information into 1000 words essay, teaming with extremely specific content about how my long-term goals and Booth academics uniquely match each other and how my passions are connected to Booth community. Greg helped me find and polish examples, develop details, change wording, clean structure and make my story more coherent with vales of Booth.

Greg spent countless hours over the requested amount of services because of his passion to help. He honestly wanted me to enter Booth, thus he continues to review my texts, polish and clean them without additional payment. His effort to go an extra mile turn my written update into something special.

And I fully recommend him as great partner in waitlist process because of his passion and knowledge of business schools.

Read More

I first heard about Avanti Prep from a coworker that had worked with Greg. At the time, I was considering applying to an MBA program and reached out to Greg for a free consultation. I was blown away by his thoughtfulness and thoroughness during the initial call, which lasted nearly an hour longer than scheduled. Though I hadn’t decided to apply, I knew I would work with Greg if I did. A few months later, I had pinpointed the perfect JD/MBA program at an M7 school. To his credit, Greg was upfront with me that as a “cookie-cutter” candidate (white male, solid GMAT, financial services background), my likelihood of being admitted was not exceedingly high. Nevertheless, I decided to go for it.

After I presented a few potential essay topics, Greg asked the poignant questions that allowed me to delve levels deeper into my experiences and extract meaningful takeaways. While writing, I peppered Greg with questions and appreciated his quick and detailed responses. He never showed any frustration as I second guessed decisions and changed course. Greg was especially helpful in strategizing my approach to recommendations and preparing for my interview. Having started the application a month before the deadline, I worked non-stop with Greg, who willingly accelerated his typical consulting process to ensure that a submitted a high-quality application. When I was notified of my acceptance, Greg was one of the first people I told. I would highly recommend Avanti Prep to anyone applying. I can’t imagine a more effective, pleasant, and thorough consultant.

Read More

Profile and Background

I am a 30-year-old engineer, am from an over-represented group, have two degrees in electrical engineering, and have pretty average stats. I have worked in the energy industry for almost 7 years at a pretty niche company with some promotions but no direct management experience.

• Age: 30
• Demographics: White American male
• Electrical engineer in energy industry
• GMAT: 710 (Q49, V39, IR6, AWA6)
• Undergrad GPA: 3.3, Graduate GPA: 3.9
• Small, non-target school barely scraping the T-100 (bachelor’s and master’s)
• Work Experience: ~7 years w/ no direct management experience
• Applied in Round 2 to only one school (will explain this later)

I have a pretty basic profile, and had been preparing 2+ years for the GMAT. Summer 2019 came along, and I still had not hit my target GMAT score and had little idea of where to even start with applications or how to transform my goals and passion into a cohesive story for my application. My goal is to transition from an engineering/market analyst role to a renewable energy-specific project finance/development role.

Choosing a Consultant

A good friend referred me to Avanti Prep at a time when I was both lost on where to start and skeptical of admissions consultants. I spoke with about 5 different consultants but found that Greg, during our Free Consultation, was the most forthcoming and honest as well as the most personable. He managed expectations but also had the energy and tenacity to make me feel confident that, despite any obstacle, I could put my best foot forward and deliver the best, most optimal and representative application I could. He made no promises except to be the best possible partner along the way and to give my application the time it needed.

Summary Recommendation

I enrolled in Avanti Prep’s Tier 3 Package, which covers everything, and my experience with Greg was fantastic. MBA applications can be incredibly daunting and, paired with GMAT/GRE prep, very stressful. Greg helped transform the application into a very detailed step-by-step process that made it much easier for me to balance writing the application, preparing for my GMAT, and working on some of the auxiliary parts of my application (outreach, etc.).

Greg’s reviews were very meticulous, methodical, and detailed. He answered my questions quickly via email (we had 3+ email threads going at any given time with a LOT of back-and-forth) and empowered me to put my best foot forward in each component. He put a lot of effort into understanding my background, story, and goals. He emphasizes working through the application as partners, and he does not fall short. He was invested in each component of my application as much as I was – and it shined through in each task, call, and review along the way.

Honestly, no amount of Reddit posts, ClearAdmit/GMATClub/P&Q blog posts, or Admissions "Application Tips" posts would have prepared me to deliver the level of application that Greg helped me deliver. I'm incredibly proud of it. Two years ago I had all but given up on the idea of getting in to a Top-20 program but now, with Greg’s help, I'm headed to my dream school with a scholarship award (that the school doubled from their original offer)!

Step-by-Step Process and Detailed Recommendation

The Tier 3 Package covers everything, including: 1) school selection and story development, 2) essay brainstorming and review, 3) resume review, 4) recommender selection, strategy, and review, 5) interview prep, and 6) scholarship negotiations (plus other auxiliary elements, as noted, like Q&A and guidance regarding how to reach out to and connect with schools). For those interested in the details, I’ll try to touch on each step below.

School Selection & Story Development: I had narrowed my list of schools down to about 5 before meeting Greg, but decided to shoot my shot on just one that I thought could deliver me the MBA program I felt I needed. Greg listened to my goals, suggested other potential school fits, but ultimately respected my decision to apply to just 1 school – something other consultants advised against. Story development was incredibly thorough; Greg left no stone unturned and actively searched for different breadcrumbs that could bring my essays and application to life.

Essay Brainstorming and Review: After our initial brainstorming call, we settled on a few themes to focus on for my first essay. The initial draft felt like an unsurmountable challenge, but once I submitted it to Greg, we engaged in a very fluid and dynamic development and iteration process. In the early going, we were circling around the right themes and delivery, but we weren’t all the way there. To Greg’s credit, he never let us settle for something that wasn’t fully clicking or telling my story, even if it took more time or back-and-forth. It took 5 reviews, but Greg helped me deliver a really good, authentic, and representative essay.

The second essay required a lot of school research and outreach (something Greg strongly recommends his clients to do) and creativity. Greg gave me the freedom to inject my personality into the essay and helped me deliver, what I think is, a pretty creative essay that I was immensely proud of. Greg also helped with my Optional Essay that buttressed any soft spots in my application.

Resume Review: This was one of the first things Greg and I tackled, since it seemed to be the easiest way for me to get the ball rolling. Greg was able to help me extract information from my professional and personal experiences and inject it into bullet points that worked together to maximize different parts of my experience and also echo my post-MBA goals. He also helped me translate things from technical engineering parlance to clear bullets with business relevance. Honestly – the resume looks very sharp and I’m going to be scared to change it!

Recommender Prep: I already had a decent idea of who I was going to ask write my recommendation, but Greg worked to vet my thought process regarding my choice. He reaffirmed my decision to go with a recommender that wouldn't deliver a flowery review, but instead one that would deliver an honest review that highlighted new topics, echoed the strengths of my application, and even reinforced certain areas of potential concern.

Interview Prep: After receiving an invitation to interview, we started off with a call where Greg walked me through the overall interview experience, steps to prepare for a wide-assortment of different interview questions as well as ones that were typically asked by my target school. After my own prep, we had a mock-interview that road-tested each of my answers. He provided clear and methodical feedback and gave me a roadmap to address any shortcomings in my initial answers. After that, we had a follow-up call to practice a couple of questions one last time and to tie up loose ends.

Scholarship Negotiation: As Greg pointed out, Goal 1 was to get in, then Goal 2 was to hope for or attempt to get scholarship money. On an Admissions Officer’s recommendation, I had mentioned in my Optional Essay that I only applied to their school. Greg and I had weighed the pros and cons of saying this – the pro being that it would help show commitment and interest (Goal 1), and the con being that it left me with very little leverage in any type of negotiations (Goal 2).

However, after being admitted and awarded a small chunk of scholarship money, Greg advised me on how to craft an email to Admissions that addressed my decision to apply to only one school, highlighted all of the efforts I had made outside of the physical application to connect and engage with the school, and basically attempted to transform my deep commitment to the program into scholarship leverage. They ended up doubling my scholarship award!

Read More

Profile:

- Indian Male with Engineering background
- GMAT – 660 (Q50, V29); GRE – 315 (Q166, V149); GPA – 9/10
- 7 years work experience in Data Science and Advanced Analytics with exposure to several impactful projects; Fortune 25 firm
- Domain knowledge in Retail and Healthcare
- Acquired knowledge in Finance through reading books and attending conferences


A step backward on my own:

I had my scores by the end of June and started out to apply for various business schools in Asia, US and Europe to meet the Round 1 deadlines. As I navigated through the application process by drafting my own essays and resume, I received reviews from my friends that the essays lacked punch and subsequently realized that I had wasted more than a month of precious time to create a below par application. It was at this instance that my friends directed me to seek the help of Avanti Prep and I decided to opt Greg as my admission consultant by initially leveraging GMAT Club’s moderator benefits, and then signing up for additional services beyond that.


Nature of our work together:

We began working together in November and Greg scheduled a free call to understand my interests and also explained me about how we would work during the course of my application. I decided to opt for his Hourly Services and we worked together for 17 hours encompassing a range of topics including School Selection (1 hour), Story Development (1 hour), Resume Reviews (4 hours), Essay Brainstorming (1 hour), Essay Reviews (5 hours), Recommender Strategy (1 hour) and Interview Prep (2.5 hours). Additionally, I also opted for Greg’s Scholarship Strategy (1.5 hours) to increase my scholarship amount in schools that I did not secure a full scholarship.

Although the official duration of service was 17 hours, the actual value derived from Greg’s reviews and my interaction with him was way more than the mentioned numeral, both in terms of benefit and even in terms of the actual time provided. Given the 17 hours invested, we utilized Questrom as the main focus of the Essay Reviews and Interview Prep, as it became my top choice and gave me the best chance to apply our work together to the other schools that I was applying. Through the process, Greg helped me to show my strengths, communicate detailed career goals and school interest and overcome my low verbal score through my essays and interviews.


Results:

I applied to 9 schools overall and received interview invites from 7 of them. I received admit offers from Questrom (full scholarship for MBA + MSDT), Katz (large scholarship), Cox (large scholarship) and Mason (large scholarship + GA). I was also waitlisted after interview at Simon, Maryland Smith and Krannert. Given my scores, our School Selection process was very meticulous. Using Greg’s direction to research various schools, I started to love Questrom, and we based our future work keeping Questrom in focus. Since I had already secured an admit from the school that I wanted to graduate with full ride, I did not make an effort to convert any of my waitlists.


Experience working with Greg:

The first thing that comes into my mind when I think about Greg is ‘Above and Beyond’. He did not let my scores be a deterrent for applying to Top 50 U.S. business schools. When he evaluated my profile, he conveyed to me that I have chances of securing an admit to the respective schools that I had shortlisted and began focusing on my strengths. He pushed me hard to bring about the experience that I had gained by working on several different projects and helped me leverage those insights to craft a brilliant resume and an impactful essay. Several weeks of deliberation over my essay with Story Development, Essay Brainstorming, Essay Reviews and tremendous attention to detail transformed my essay from a naive one to a sophisticated one. Looking at my final Questrom essay, I believed I had a chance.

I parallelly used Greg’s offered insights and advice to draft essays for other shortlisted schools and I was able to answer a variety of questions by referring to the time we had spent on Story Development, Essay Brainstorming and Essay Reviews. I am immensely happy to say that I received interview invites from almost every school that I had applied. I was even surprised to receive an interview invite from Cox within 90 minutes of submitting my application.

During the Interview Prep, we did a realistic Questrom mock interview and then a methodical feedback conversation covering every question, ranging from the main questions to the easier questions to the tougher questions. Greg gave me a chance to answer all the questions in a real interview format and then explained me how my answers could be improved. The Story Development and Essay Brainstorming played a crucial role yet again to connect my experience and strengths to answer the diverse questions that could be targeted at me during the interviews. Greg even pointed me to use the skills that I had gained outside of work to improve and diversify my interview responses. This helped me to get accustomed to the variety of questions that could be asked and I felt very confident during my interviews.

Finally, for an Indian applicant, the Hourly Services may seem expensive but Greg’s services are one of the most affordable you can obtain from an International Admission Consultant. The value you derive from Greg’s expertise is unmatched and you will start appreciating your results even before you reach the finish line. When I did reach the finish line, the return on my investment was already worth several multiples as I received a full scholarship to the school I loved the most despite my scores being only around average for that school.

Read More

Background:

• White Male – US with military experience
• 5 years work experience mostly in military and <1 year engineering
• GPA: 3.5 Engineering from large public university
• GMAT: 730
• Reapplicant to both schools

Greg’s Dedication:

I fully recommend Greg to any applicant to business school or any person looking for professional advice. I was connected to Greg through the recommendation of a mutual friend and his help guided me through an incredibly stressful time in my life. Beyond gaining acceptance to two of the best MBA programs with large scholarships to both schools, he also helped me through my transition out of the military, navigate several different job offers and strategies, and provided professional advice to help me achieve the best outcome for my situation.

This allowed me to make a significant career move nearly doubling my salary while also completing my applications. This assistance was outside of the terms of the Tier 3 Package, but it is representative of the dedication and excellent service Greg provides. Even before I enlisted his services contractually, Greg had already spent 3 hour-long phone calls strategizing with me to determine the best time to apply to school, free of charge. I highly encourage anyone who is remotely curious about business school to contact Greg. He will tell you honestly what he sees is the best option for you.

Our Work on the Application Process:

Specifically when working with Greg on the application process, the Tier 3 package is truly all encompassing. We worked on the two M7 applications together, and they were the only schools to which I applied. I would categorize our work in two phases: pre-application deadline and post-application deadline.

Pre-Application Deadline:

We started with filling out a comprehensive worksheet and then moved into Strategy and Brainstorming calls. After Strategy and Brainstorming, we attacked the process in 5 distinct streams: School Engagement, Resume, Essays, Recommendations, and Short Answers / Application Questions. In each of these streams Greg and I meticulously went over each detail and tried to highlight different portions of my background, experiences and passions to give a complete and honest view to the application reader.

Greg is not only extremely detail oriented in proofreading grammar and word choice, he is also an expert at bringing out nuances in your experience that might easily be overlooked. He can help you discover not only why a certain program is best for you, but also how you would uniquely contribute to that specific program. All of this comes out during several detailed reviews, phone calls and countless emails.

Greg is even a master at helping advise you in your communications with recommenders, thank you notes, and any other correspondence that might be crucial to your application. He is extremely timely in replying to all correspondence and has great organization maintained through independent email threads and calendar invites. And he is active in preparing you for on-campus visits, which can be a key part of an application and play a role in essay questions or future interview questions.

Post-Application Deadline:

Once the applications were submitted the work and Greg’s dedication did not stop. Almost immediately we had to prepare for the next phase of the application, the interviews. The first hurdle was the Kellogg video interview, with three one-minute questions. For the videos, we brainstormed, I mapped out thoughts that Greg reviewed, and then we had a one-hour mock video preparation session until I was comfortable with the format and ready to answer the questions.

We then started preparing for in-person interviews. Greg was extremely flexible when working with my schedule and navigating our time difference. We prepared with 10, one-hour sessions over video call, generally taking the form of 1 mock interview followed by 2 feedback sessions. The mock interviews and questions Greg prepares you with are targeted, detailed and specific to each school. Greg also provided a bank of potential questions, also specific to each school. We spent a long time discussing key points of each question and question type to ensure I had quality and genuine answers. I did not memorize any answers, but when I was in the interviews none of the questions caught be by surprise, and I had very positive experience. Having prepared with Greg, the interviews felt more like a conversation, and I felt 100% confident and prepared.

After completing both interviews, Greg encouraged me to reach out to the connections (current students and alumni) I made during the past few months to update them on my progress. When the results finally came back I again turned to Greg to help navigate the admission offers I received. My first-choice school originally did not offer a scholarship, however my second choice did. Greg helped me shape an email to admissions and encouraged me reach out to my contacts to help get a match from my top choice. The strategy worked and I am excited to start at my top school with a large scholarship in Fall 2020.

Overall:

Working with Greg was an absolute pleasure. He was always on time and responsive, and the personal attention he afforded me was unparalleled. From the time I we first spoke in April 2019 until being accepted almost 12 months later, Greg has always been honest and available. He truly provides a comprehensive service with the Tier 3 Package, and I believe it is absolutely worth the money. My results in going from applying to these schools and others last year and receiving no admission offers to being accepted with a scholarship to two M7 schools speak for themselves, and those results more than justify the investment.

Even still, I believe there was more value to Greg’s service than just a better application. I learned about myself. I discovered what my career passions truly are and focused my professional goals. I improved my writing technique, my interview skills, and my business communication acumen. In those ways enlisting Greg’s services gave me crash course in pre-business school preparation. I feel ready and excited to start in Fall 2020, and thanks to our work together, I have developed crucial skills to help me in the recruiting process.

I give Greg my highest recommendation and could not be happier with the experience and results.

Read More

I come from the military, graduated middle of my class from college with a double major and sub 3.0 GPA, and scored below 700 on my GMAT. I’ve had good military experience, but my low scores, condensed GMAT preparation and lack of familiarity with the professional landscape and business school process didn’t quite set me up for success in my applications. Working with Greg at Avanti Prep helped me overcome all of this and land a spot at my dream school.

I signed up for Avanti Prep’s Tier 3 Package and was thoroughly satisfied and impressed. Over the course of 9 months Greg comprehensively interviewed me to understand my life story and future goals, and assisted me with transforming those personal and professional stories into compelling essays and resume, strong interviews and a complete package to my schools.

From the story and process planning, school selection, school engagement (Greg helped me connect with veterans groups), essay brainstorming, essay and resume reviews, and hours upon hours of video calls and interview prep, Greg was there and fully committed every step of the way. I wholly recommend the Tier 3 Package, as Greg went above and beyond his obligations consistently throughout the journey and put in even more hours to assist me preparing for my interviews for which I had had little to no prior experience. He also helped guide me over countless resume iterations from having essentially no resume to one that’s received superb feedback from senior alumni and admissions personnel along the way.

I cannot stress enough how invaluable Greg was to the process. It takes a lot to win my trust, but through his skill and commitment Greg did just that, and I hope this conveys how highly I regard his work. Greg not only took time to understand my story, but to understand me. My goals and aspirations for school and my future quickly became his. Between my busy work schedule, Greg kept me driving to meet the deadlines I needed to meet. He lives and breathes through his clients’ stories, and he was without a doubt attached emotionally to the success and failures of my application process as any professional would be with their own work. If I could do it over again or recommend him to anyone, there is nobody I trust more to deliver than Greg.

I wholeheartedly endorse Greg to anyone looking to secure an admissions consultant and have already referred several friends to discuss their way forward on their business school journeys. If you are looking for top-tier quality and total commitment, then I recommend you do the same.

Read More

My background:

Indian male, 30 years old, first-time applicant
Undergrad: Engineering from an IIT (top 10 in India)
Postgrad: PGDM in Marketing and Communications from a Top 20 Indian school
5.5 years of work experience in advertising, branding, and product marketing roles
GMAT: 750

When I decided to apply to business schools, my profile had a few obstacles that usually end up crushing most applicants’ dreams - a highly competitive demographic pool, age, no blue-chip employers on the resume, lot of job switches, and what some schools would consider a second MBA situation as well. Still, I knew that this was my ‘one and done’ shot at business schools, and so, I decided to give it my everything. I targeted one M7, three top 10, and one top 15 school in R1.

Things I worked on with Greg:

I had the opportunity to work with Greg through the GMATClub moderator scholarship. At that time, I had already finished interviewing with the M7 school, had been denied by one T10 school, and was waiting for interview invite results from the other two T10 schools and the T15 school.

Greg offered to set up a free 30-minute consultation call to understand my profile and goals better. Even though this is somewhat standard practice with admissions consultants, what really stood out for me was that Greg offered the same level of support to a ‘non-paying’ (scholarship) client like me as he would have to a paying client. For me, this spoke highly about the level of support I could expect from him going forward. By the end of the call, I felt that he had a great understanding of where I was in the application process and accordingly suggested the service that would benefit me the most.

Shortly after, I received interview invites from all the remaining schools that I was waiting on, and Greg and I decided to work on interview prep for the two T10 schools. We decided to do two full-length Interview Prep sessions, each of which included a 1-hour school-specific mock interview session followed by a 1.5-hour question-by-question analysis and feedback session, which in reality lasted longer than that (at no extra cost).
Besides this, Greg also went above and beyond and offered free advice and tips for my T15 interview.

Based on my positive experience of working with Greg and the results (see below), I also additionally took an hour of Greg’s service for scholarship negotiations, and was not disappointed there as well!

My results:

I got into one of the T10 schools with a 40k scholarship, and the T15 school with a 50k scholarship!

(Even though I did not get into the other T10 school that we did the interview prep for, it’s worth mentioning that that school is one of the most selective ones and was a stretch school, to begin with. I definitely felt much more confident going into the interview with Greg’s insightful help and preparation than I would have otherwise.)

Further, I used Greg’s help to negotiate scholarships at both the schools where I was admitted. For this, I took one hour of service with him, which involved one strategy discussion call and one review of negotiation emails for each school. It was heartwarming to see that Greg didn’t just stop at helping me secure admits but wanted me to get the best possible outcome in terms of scholarship as well, and he ended up spending more than 1.5 hours providing thoughtful feedback and edits.

And while the T10 school refused to negotiate (which I came to know was the response that many other admitted students received as well), the T15 school came back and offered 10k more!! That is a 40x ROI and even that doesn’t speak enough of Greg’s expertise!

What made working with Greg awesome:

Right from our first interaction, I felt that Greg was really invested in my success, even though we hadn’t worked on my applications from the start and I was essentially availing his Interview Prep services for free. Having heard stories of how controlling and money-minded some admissions consultants can be, it was refreshing to see Greg’s commitment to ensure that I achieved the best possible outcome.

His Interview Prep sessions were extremely thorough and tailored to the specific school in question. For both the Prep sessions, not only did Greg conduct a one-hour mock interview, but he also followed it up with well-researched and comprehensive guides of questions for each school. Beyond that, his experience and knowledge of what specific schools and AdComs are looking for immensely helped my response preparation.

During the feedback sessions, Greg’s attention to detail really stood out. He was able to provide laser-sharp feedback which helped me work on specific areas in my responses. Again, during all this, I felt there were many times when Greg went above and beyond our official engagement - whether it was spending 3 hours instead of the originally committed 2.5, or accommodating Interview Prep in his schedule on short notices as soon as I received interview invites, or even taking the time to provide detailed responses to my questions over email as soon as he could.

Similarly, I credit his communication expertise and meticulous feedback on my negotiation emails with the 10k bump that I received from the T15 school.

Overall, I consider myself lucky to have had the opportunity to work with Greg and achieve two great admits with scholarships! I would wholeheartedly recommend Greg for his thorough professionalism, personalized coaching, attention to detail, and an unmatched level of dedication and commitment to the applicant’s success.

Read More

Indian female - 730 GMAT - Engineering graduate with a 9/10 GPA from a tier-1 college - 5 years of work experience in Education and Ed-Tech

While researching ways by which I could bolster my application process, I came across Avanti Prep and signed up for a free consultation. Greg’s opinions and insights during that introductory call were honest, practical and really useful. He gave me a good sense of my chances of securing an admission in my desired Universities (all in the top 10) and the effort I’d need to put in.

I signed up for hourly services with Greg (5 hours) to work on Story Analysis and Planning, Story and Career Goal Development, Essay Brainstorming, and Essay Reviews for 3 schools. As a result of our working together, I secured an admission to a Top 10 Program and was waitlisted at another Top 10 Program - one that has a very very selective process.

Our collaboration started off with a detailed plan for the way we’d split the total time across different pieces for different schools. Greg’s school-specific insights were truly amazing! He would help me understand how to present my story and my goals more effectively for each school. This truly helped shape my thought process while working on the essays and significantly informed my presentation of self in the applications. His essay reviews were also extremely detailed. It was evident that Greg had spent more hours than planned on reviewing each essay. This brings me to my next point of how incredibly accommodating he was, evidently focussing on quality and results rather than clock-watching to the minute. Despite enrolling in only 5 hours (very limited to cover various application pieces for 3 schools), he graciously spent a LOT of extra time on every call and every essay review. Over and beyond that, even after our time together was over, he replied to every single email/question of mine in great detail making sure to offer any help he could.

I had such a positive experience with Greg that I referred two of my friends to him.

Apart from everything mentioned, something else that stood out to me was Greg’s nature to never be overly optimistic or overly pessimistic. He strikes a balance between being honest, realistic and being extremely encouraging, which comes as a great emotional/mental boost while you’re navigating through the taxing, strenuous and difficult process of applying for an MBA in the US.

Read More

I reached out to Avanti Prep once I received my interview invite from Columbia. Having been rejected from M7 schools in the previous application cycle with almost the exact same profile (extremely competitive demographic, 740 GMAT, 6 years work-ex), I wanted to make sure I converted my chances this time around.

I had already given a couple of interviews with other schools and my preparation was decent, but after my Columbia mock interview with Greg, I felt confident that I was going to do well in my interview. For starters, what was scheduled to be a 2.5hr call went on for ~4hrs due to the level of detail Greg dives into while not only analyzing answers to each question – but also helping me stitch through a cohesive story across all questions to create a solid narrative.

Greg customized the questions and mock interview experience so they were ‘Columbia–like’ which was extremely valuable to me. Columbia interviews tend to include questions that focus on industry trends, key focus of the industry etc. that are unlike questions asked in other business schools interviews which can throw a candidate off-guard if not prepared for questions like these. Greg covered how to approach these in detail.

Another key highlight for me was how Greg was able to emphasize on key points (passion for Columbia, my contributions to Columbia) I had to convey during the interview. It so happened that my interviewer did not end up asking me the question on how I wish to contribute to Columbia, but because of the strategic prep I was able to turnaround a related question and convey my thoughts on how I would contribute.

Lastly, a big takeaway for me was how Greg was able to help me understand how I was being perceived. On a couple of instances, Greg recommended I not use certain words or change my delivery of certain phrases because they could be perceived unfavorably. This level of feedback I thought can only come from a seasoned interviewer and greatly improved my confidence because I now had almost no second thoughts about anything I was going to say.

Greg is definitely someone I would recommend working with; I think his greatest quality is in working to get the absolute best outcome for you without being bothered by how much additional work he will have to put in. So much so, that after a 4hr mock Columbia interview, Greg chatted with me for almost an hour helping me decide between Darden and Fuqua and which school I should go for – he hadn’t even helped me with the application for those schools. The good news is that the Darden versus Fuqua decision didn’t end up mattering because I got into Columbia!

Read More

I found Greg / Avanti Prep throught he GMAT Club consultants review and reached out for a free consultation. I had applied to a lot of top schools in round 1, but didn't get any interviews except for MIT Sloan. Wanting to maximize my chances, I did an interview prep session with Greg. During the free consultation, we clicked immediately, and Greg offered a lot of great advice beyond just the interview related ones. During our interview prep session, Greg conducted an elaborate interview in the MIT-specific style. We then spent even more time for him to give me even more detailed feedback for every single question. For the actual interview, I felt very confident because we had practiced almost every single one of the questions asked. I ended up getting into MIT Sloan!

Read More