GMAT Club

Caryn (SBC) Reviews

Company: Stacy Blackman Consulting

Caryn worked as an Admissions Officer for Kellogg where she read and evaluated written applicant essays and recommended admission to Kellogg. She also conducted numerous applicant interviews assessing candidate fit and future potential at Kellogg and beyond. Caryn holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management.

Preceding her time at Kellogg, Caryn was a Senior Marketing Manager for Gatorade, leading Gatorade’s efforts to a variety of consumer targets. Concurrently, she co-led all of the Kellogg recruiting efforts for the PepsiCo Chicago office. Prior to receiving her MBA, Caryn worked in corporate finance and public accounting as well as obtained her CPA certification.

Outside of SBC, Caryn sits on the North Shore Medical Research Junior Board of Children’s Memorial Hospital and is active in volunteering in her children’s schools. An avid reader, Caryn also enjoys Pilates, yoga and playing tennis, as well as spending time with her two young children. Caryn has an exceptional success rate and is particularly good at helping clients define ambiguous career goals and develop a personal story.

And if Caryn looks a bit familiar, ask her what famous movie she (quickly) appeared in!

5.0 /5 Average Rating
Based on 79 reviews
January 05, 2016
Sherryli1115

Joined: Jan 05, 2016

Posts: 0

Kudos: 0

Verified GMAT Classic score:
740 Q50 V40

Highly Recommend Caryn and Stacy Blackman

REVIEWER IDENTITY VERIFIED by score report [?]

Caryn from SBC guided me through the whole Bschool application process from the beginning to the end. Without her help, i am not sure I could get such great results.

I was a reapplicant this year. I worked with another consulting firm last year and got all the Dings. The consultant at that firm was not patient and the service was not at the same level with SBC at all.

Caryn is very nice, patient but also a very professional consultant who knows what's going on in the application world. I trust all her advice and she clearly pointed to me every single details of the application.

I was born and raised in China and came to U.S. for the college. My written English was bad, and Caryn did so much more work on the basic grammars.

Caryn was very assertive on my application strategy. She was also very creative on crafting a package that is totally 'me'. For example, when I was writing the essay for UCBerkeley, the question is asking me to choose a song that best describes myself. I picked several, but all of them didn't sound right. it's Caryn at the end picked a song that's exactly who i am. Even my friends commented "wow, your consultant knows you very well!"

I got three rejections before hearing any great news. At that time, i was super stressful. But Caryn always had faith in me, and told me to sit tight and wait for the good news to come.

Applying as a Chinese citizen and competing with millions of applicants from China, I was really lucky to have worked with Caryn and SBC who helped me stand out of the poll.

I strongly recommend Caryn, and SBC. The process was smooth. Caryn was super responsible, patient, knowledgeable, experienced, and sweet!!

If you are thinking of applying bschool, i would def. recommend getting consulting service from SBC, and Caryn!

Read More

verify-zero-posts
This reviewer has not participated on GMAT Club but it is a REAL person and a REAL review. GMAT Club has verified this test-taker's identity through GMAC/Pearson Vue Score Reporting system and confirmed that this reviewer indeed took the GMAT, is unique, and has not submitted multiple reviews.
January 04, 2016
Anonymous

Posts: 0

Kudos: 0

Lots of successes with SBC

REVIEWER IDENTITY VERIFIED by school email address [?]

I first thought about working with a consultant for my application process when reading on Poets & Quants. It dawned on me that a ton of applicants used consultants, and with a few obvious weak points in my application I knew I needed something to help me look competitive. I ended up selecting SBC because of its historical success, and more specifically Caryn's historical success. I had pages and pages of material of people who loved working with Caryn, and when we spoke on the phone she seemed like a good fit.

Caryn was great to work with and very helpful throughout the application process. She was honest when I needed it and helped me select the schools that I would apply to, reviewed my applications, and helped prep me for interviews. I think I had the impression going in that the consultant would essentially do the work for me and tell me what my goals are - that's not what this is, it is YOUR application but Caryn and SBC are there to answer all of your questions and tell you when you need to work on things. Caryn is FAST at responding, every day I would get feedback on a draft and then every night I would send her a new one. She never took more than 24 hours to respond, which I really appreciated as I was doing 7 applications. More importantly Caryn is honest, when I came up with an idea that wasn't going to look good in adcom's eyes she would tell me to try again. Sometimes I would have 3 or 4 different ideas before we settled on something. In the end I have 4 admits, 2 wait-lists, and only 1 reject from my 7 applications. I'm going to Kellogg where I was even granted a $100K scholarship. I know that if I didn't work with Caryn to understand the MBA application process I wouldn't have received all of this. THANK YOU Caryn.

Read More

verify-zero-posts
This reviewer has not participated on GMAT Club but it is a REAL person and a REAL review. GMAT Club has verified this test-taker's identity through GMAC/Pearson Vue Score Reporting system or .edu email address and confirmed that this reviewer indeed took the GMAT, is unique, and has not submitted multiple reviews.
November 04, 2015
jtslbr

Joined: Dec 17, 2014

Posts: 0

Kudos: 0

Self-reported Score:
710

Personalized service

REVIEWER IDENTITY VERIFIED by school email address [?]

I was drawn to Stacy Blackman Consulting after extensive research, I wanted to work with a consulting firm that only took a few candidates and really focused on providing a personalized service. Stacy Blackman Consulting definitely falls into this category. Caryn was help me to identify the things that I wanted from my MBA experience and from that we defined a plan. After this, she worked really hard to understand what my strengths were and designed my applications in a way to best showcase these strengths. We also worked on some weaknesses in my application and she came to very realistic recommendations for those. I would definitely recommend Stacy Blackman Consulting, specially Caryn.

Read More

verify-zero-posts
This reviewer has not participated on GMAT Club but it is a REAL person and a REAL review. GMAT Club has verified this test-taker's identity through GMAC/Pearson Vue Score Reporting system or .edu email address and confirmed that this reviewer indeed took the GMAT, is unique, and has not submitted multiple reviews.
April 16, 2014
Anonymous

Posts: 19

Kudos: 0

Caryn Altman got me into Kellogg & Haas!

REVIEWER IDENTITY VERIFIED by membership [?]

There's no question in my mind Caryn Altman @ SBC helped me get into Kellogg and Haas (heading to the Bay area this fall!). With a mediocre GMAT score and no quant in my undergraduate transcript, she engineered a tailored, competitive application strategy that mitigated my weaknesses/accentuated my strengths. She's extremely strategic; she's extremely knowledgeable about the entire application process (Full Time, Part Time, etc.); and last but not least - she's extremely hard working and professional. Specifically, my essays were bullet proof after 6 to 8 rounds with her. She's straight forward and says it the way she sees it (it stung a few times, not going to lie!). But during an extremely stressful and confusing process, you need a trusted partner - someone who can guide you honestly and confidently. Working with Caryn was the best decision I made throughout my application process.

Read More


25 Older and Non-Verified Reviews for Caryn (SBC)