Thanks Red Pen team

Would make the product better:

A standardized template for interview questions prep.

I had a great experience with the Red Pen team. Through the Red Pen team’s guidance, I was admitted to Kenan Flagler with a substantial scholarship and waitlisted at Cornell. I finalized Red Pen after speaking to a number of other consultants and burning my hands in the application cycle in the previous year. The thing that made me finalize the Red Pen was the level of interest that their team showed in the introductory call. While other consultants were trying to sign me up and finish the call as fast as they could, the Red Pen team was genuinely interested in my story. I was a general engineering male candidate with an average GMAT score who was working in a very niche industry in a company that no one would have heard of.

The onboarding process was relatively quick, and I was assigned my lead consultant (Gunjan Jhunjhunwala) and LOR & Resume specialist (Manan Maheshwari). I would like to specially thank Manisha Jaisingh and Prerna who handled the operations and onboarding. After the onboarding, I was asked to fill the Getting to Know You Questionnaire (GTKY questionnaire) which was a good starting point as it covered everything from my past experiences to strengths and weaknesses.

I consider myself to be an introvert, so getting me to open up can be challenging. This is where Gunjan shines. We spent countless hours identifying and fine tuning my STAR stories, an activity that felt futile at first, but I realized its importance later. Gunjan will probe you, question you and counter question you to understand why you did what you did. These STAR stories formed the basis of almost all my essays and interview questions. This approach and level of personal attention is what truly sets Gunjan apart as you are not merely answering the essay questions but introspecting and weaving your life story. The professionalism that Gunjan exhibited was also exemplary as nothing felt rushed and all the essays were finished way before the deadline.

Manan was my LOR and Resume advisor. He helped me refine my resume to the point that the final result was unrecognizable (in a good way) from the resume I had submitted in the previous application cycle. Each and every point in the resume was meticulously crafted with ample information to remove any ambiguity. Coming from a company where no one was familiar with the concept of an LOR, Manan also guided me how to effectively approach and pitch the idea to my recommenders.

Kudos to the Red Pen team for helping me out with my admissions!