Rachel helped me find my authentic voice!

Rachel was always focused on what was best for me. In our first couple of meetings, we began by exploring why I wanted to go to graduate school before even getting to the where or how. With her guidance, I ultimately decided that applying to less schools was a better fit for my circumstances despite the obvious incentives to apply to more. Her integrity made it easy to trust her, a trust that made the rest of the application process so much more comfortable because of its inherently personal nature. Rachel is also why I found my authentic voice during the application writing process itself. She was uncanny at helping me identify, highlight, and expand on the pieces of my journey and ambitions that are core to who I am. In our brainstorming sessions she listened intently and asked incisive questions that helped me uncover insights about myself that I had never considered. In the writing phase, she had an instinctive feel for which pieces of my writing were sincere and which were banal, and never hesitated to push me to promote the former and cull the latter to the tune of almost 40 drafts of one of my applications. From the macro broad themes of an essay to single word choices in a resume, she was a patient partner, never letting me compromise on sharing the most sincere version of myself. Even if I had not gotten into school, I was proud of the journey because I knew that we had left it all on the table. Fortunately, in large part because of her steadfast support, I was accepted into the Harvard Kennedy School's and Harvard Business School's joint MPP/MBA program.