Admitted to Columbia and Yale

Applied to 4 schools and admitted to 2 of them.

I was going through a lot of changes in my life during the application year and I needed a mentor to help keep me on track of my MBA plans. I had evaluated about 7 to 8 admission consulting firms before choosing SBC. Fast responses (Esther at SBC responded to me on weekends), a focus on my profile during first profile evaluation call (rather than promoting their packages, or trying to “gauge my budget” for their services), and unique prospective on my profile were the reasons I decided to choose SBC.

Paul was introduced to work with me once SBC evaluated my profile and school selection. I was very impressed by Paul’s background: Harvard undergrad and Stanford MBA, worked for P&G and GS and now president of an M&A advisory firm. Despite his impressive background and experiences, Paul was an approachable and humble person. My first GMAT test was only 700. Paul encouraged me to retake and dream big. Once I got GMAT out of the way (760 in my second attempt 1.5 months later), we decided to work on HBS, Stanford, Columbia and Yale.

I felt very comfortable talking about all relevant aspects of my life and experiences with Paul. He would push me enough to unearth why and how rather than just knowing what and when. There was a lot of soul-searching for me. These open conversations during brainstorming helped a lot because we would have a lot of ideas to work on for the essays. Paul also thought highly of me for self-awareness. Thanks to his experience with MBA admissions and applicant pool, Paul guided me to focus on experiences that would differentiate me from other applicants. He would give me high-level advice on my essay content, themes, structure and tone and allow me to work on many iterations so that the essays are of my own work, before helping proof-read final versions.

Sometimes we would have disagreements on what experience to include. But every call was an intellectual discussion – we could share our opinions, try to understand each other’s perspective, be enlightened by each other and come to an agreement. Working on essays with Paul was like painting an artwork. Watching my artworks taking shape after each iteration and seeing the final results was inexplicably satisfactory.

Because essay writing was such a deep soul-searching journey, my interview practice became a natural and easy process. We spent most time working on HBS and Stanford essays and we both felt I had a good shot for the two. Although I wasn’t admitted to these two, I am very pleased with Columbia and Yale admissions. Thank you very much Paul.