Worth every penny - truly the gold standard!!!!

Strengths:

Deep investment in understanding your full story before a single essay is drafted. Surgical editing that preserves your voice rather than overwriting it. Honest, direct feedback — she’ll tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Long-memory partnership that extends past admits into the school decision itself.

Would make the product better:

None

Background: I studied finance at Tulane, graduated with a 4.0, scored a 329 on the GRE, and spent 2 years in IB and 4 years in climate-focused private equity in New York. I got into every school I applied to: HBS, GSB, Wharton, and CBS. I’ll be at HBS in the fall, and feel confident crediting my success to Liza’s brilliance.

Telling my story was not intuitive for me. The “what matters most and why” essay nearly drove me to my wit’s end — it felt like a code I simply could not crack, which is strange because surely one must know their answer for what matters most to them and why. I’d send Liza a draft and she’d come back with some version of: “this isn’t authentic to you — but this part is working.” We’d continued to iterate and talk it through until one day it just hit me. A consultant can’t answer the question for you, but Liza knew me well enough to help me get to my own answer, which is a much harder and more valuable thing. By the end I felt like she knew me as well as I knew myself, maybe better. She invests real time at the beginning of working with a new client to learn your full life story, and it pays off in every essay after.

The GRE is another example of how she works. I had a 324 and did not want to re-take it — I was tired, it felt good enough, etc. Liza told me I had the time and that I should push myself. I didn’t want to hear it, but she was right — I retook it and scored the 329. It’s one of many instances in which she told me what I needed to hear, not what I wanted to hear, and I was better for it.

The story doesn’t end at admits. Once I got into all four schools and had to decide where to go, I reconnected with Liza, and funny enough she remembered parts of me and things I’d said I wanted out of an MBA that I had forgotten about myself. That conversation ultimately helped me decide on HBS. It’s a small thing, but it captures who she is as a consultant — she’s paying attention the whole way through, not just until the acceptance letters arrive.

An unexpected upside of the whole process: Liza made me a dramatically better writer. The way she edits — surgical, in the margins, preserving voice rather than rewriting — taught me things about my own writing that I’ll carry well past the application cycle.

If you want a consultant who will get in the weeds with you, push you when you need it, and help you find the story that’s actually yours, work with Liza. I truly cannot sing her praises enough