Review of SBC Comprehensive

When I initially started looking around for admissions consultancies, I began searching around gmatclub and Poets & Quants looking for the best company to use. Based on some high-level research on those sites, I came up with a list of consultancies (think Stacy Blackman, MBA Mission, Fortuna, Stratus, etc) that I wanted to have a “free consultation” with, specifically asking to speak with the consultant who I would be working with.

After speaking with 5 or 6 different consultants, I quickly eliminated 3 of them after I was told by each of them that I ought to lower my expectations and apply to schools that were lower in the rankings than where I was planning to apply. While I lacked the blue-chip names on my resume in terms of undergrad school and employers, I had a solid GMAT/GPA scores and knew that I had a unique, compelling story to tell. It was only during my call with Margaret Strother from Stacy Blackman Consulting where I not only felt encouraged about my chances at the likes of Booth/Kellogg/Sloan, but also felt inspired to shoot for the stars. Having only seen my resume and GMAT score, Margaret had a “right on, let’s do this – we can make this happen!” kind of attitude. After a 30-minute conversation with a consultant from each company, my gut told me that Stacy Blackman Consulting was my best bet.

So, I decided to trust my gut and went with Margaret from SBC. Looking back, that was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. There is no way that I could have gotten accepted to my dream school without Margaret’s help. Margaret helped me every single step of the way: from crafting my resume, finding what was unique about me in order to come up with my “story”, interview preparation, essay revisions (sometimes up to 7 rounds of revisions for a given essay), encouragement when fatigue started to set in, to the calming voice of reason whenever I entered crisis/panic mode.

Margaret has a very efficient, proven method that very obviously works for bother her and her clients. Her experience has allowed her to streamline the revision process to make the most of each party’s time and energy. She also has an uncanny ability to elicit ideas from you and take you down thought paths that you never would have explored without her help. Further, never once did I feel like I was one of many clients. I always felt as if I were her top priority. She was extremely patient through the entire 8-month timeframe during which I worked with her. Margaret took time to get to know me as a person.

I cannot stress how wonderful Margaret is and how satisfied I am as a client of hers. It was my pleasure working with Margaret and I recommend her as a consultant over and over again. While the upfront cost for an admissions consultant seems steep at first, Stacy Blackman Consulting and Margaret were well worth the money. Not only was Margaret alone worth the cost ten times over, but the additional resources (i.e. background info on schools, mock interview prep, sample essays/resumes, etc.) that SBC provides are also invaluable.