I was referred to mbaMission by my GRE counselor a few months prior to submitting my application to Stern's part-time program. I was a bit reluctant to spend more money on my application, but I decided to sign on for a starter package, and I'm so happy I did (I ended up extending my time). My initial hope was that I would receive guidance on my essays and other components of my application. I ended up receiving indispensable counseling on most/all components of my application, but my counselor, Jessica, also helped me to prioritize tasks for my application. She was also very responsive and helped answer all of my questions regarding the application process, etc. (truly all of my questions). Highly, highly recommend this service...well worth the investment.

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A year ago, I was really not sure if I could get any offer from S16 MBA programs, especially considering my low undergrad GPA and work experiences in non-traditional industries. Jessica trusted in me and helped me discover, articulate and fully utilize my unique strengths. As a result, I got full scholarship from NYU Stern, partial scholarship from Michigan Ross and an offer from Berkeley Haas.

Jessica fully captured who I really am right at our first call. This builds a very strong foundation for our collaboration afterwards. She helped me put my best steps forward by letting my most authentic self shine through while keeping in mind what the Admissions are looking for, a balance not so easy to find. The brainstorming sessions with her before I drafted my essays were very helpful—it gave me that initial momentum to get started and a clear direction which saved lots of time and efforts. What's more, her timely feedback and response was such a great gift, especially when I was under very tight schedules.

I also learnt a lot from Jessica throughout this process—her amazing writing skills, her efficiency and effectiveness, her direct communication with empathy. I am so grateful to have her as my consultant.

As far as I know, Jessica got fully scheduled by applicants quite early. So, if you are lucky and still have a chance to invite her to be your consultant, do it now!

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Although this review is based on my personal interaction with Jessica, my goal is to keep it as objective as possible to better serve its purpose.
Before going with Jessica as my admissions advisor, I had conducted several 30-minute consultations with other consultants/companies. What made Jessica standout was twofold: (1) her ability to establish a connection with me straight away and make me feel comfortable sharing my life stories and (2) her determination to add significant value to my application process within the initial consultation even though she wasn’t sure if I was going to commit. This showed me that she genuinely loves her job and excels at it, and that she cared about the applicants she takes on.
We all know how stressful the application process can be with deadlines looming right and left, recommenders to follow-up with, essays to write, resumes to fix, etc. Jessica’s organization, guidance, and help in prioritizing tasks tremendously reduced stress and anxiety levels. I felt more and more comfortable the closer deadlines approached.
In my opinion, the best way to qualify Jessica’s work is effective and efficient, in hindsight those are the best qualities for a consultant to have in an MBA application process. By effective, I’m referring to Jessica’s keen ability to link all the right dots out of ALL your life stories to sculpt the best possible story to get you into business school. By efficient, I’m referring to Jessica’s ability to come up with the best story for you in record time, saving invaluable hours to focus more on the development and refinement of the essay and on the multitude of tedious tasks involved in the process. I developed my best story with Jessica, that got me 50% acceptance into the business schools I applied to, within the first 30-min consultation!
You can’t go wrong with Jessica, thanks again for your invaluable help in achieving my goal!

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I’m 30+ years old. I went to a small state school. I was out of a job for 15+ months. Before my current career, I worked blue-collar jobs. My GRE quant was <65%. I had a family tragedy in the middle of the application cycle.

Despite ALL that, with Jessica’s extraordinary guidance, these are my results:

Applied: Stanford, Harvard (MBA & MPP), Wharton, MIT, Berkeley, Yale, Virginia, UCLA, UNC, Georgetown
Interview invites: EVERY. SINGLE. SCHOOL!
Outcomes: 9 admits!!! 1 waitlist & 1 ding. Candidly, both non-admits were cuz I screwed up the interviews. C’est la vie :)
Funding offered: $257K (from various schools)
Attending: Joint Stanford MBA and Harvard MPP (with amazing named fellowship)

The results speak for themselves, but I'd like to share more about Jessica.

At heart, Jessica is a storyteller. She took a block of stone (over 30 pages of my stories/vignettes and hours of phone calls), and helped me sculpt a masterpiece.

One story highlights many of her strengths: for the GSB essay, I was struggling for an opener. Jessica mentioned a short phrase I’d written in my 30+ brainstorming pages. And voila, I had an intro which tied the whole essay together.

This small story shows her eye for detail, her work ethic, and most importantly, her tradecraft of shaping narratives that both tug at the heartstrings and engage the intellect.

To me, the goal of an application -- something more subtle than the explicit goal of getting accepted -- is getting the Adcom members to be YOUR advocate. Jessica understands that. And that is exactly what we did. The amazing and humbling outcomes I’ve had were only possible with Jessica on my team.

I enjoyed working with Jessica so much that, crazy as it sounds, I actually miss the hellish application process! That speaks volumes in itself.

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Jessica was the only consultant I felt truly understood me through the innumerable free consultations I did, and she was the one I decided to go for when the time came to apply. She proved to be quite a good resource through my application process. My biggest concern was my essays, and she gave frank feedback, and really pushed me to dig deeper and introspect when necessary. She always met her deadlines and through her diligence, I developed a really good schedule for myself as well. She is a really good consultant for mbamission and I recommend her to anyone looking to get help through the application process.

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From the first time I spoke with Jessica, I could tell that she genuinely cared about not only helping me get into a great business school but also letting my true character and personality come through in my applications. I realized immediately that I was working with a professional and I found it particularly reassuring to be receiving guidance from someone who really understands the admissions process and the expectations of the schools' admissions teams. I knew generally what I was going to write about in my applications but the advice Jessica offered on how to structure my ideas and concisely articulate my story was extremely valuable. I also have a pretty unconventional professional background and Jessica helped me to navigate this in my applications and highlight my unique work experience and qualities. By the end of this long and crazy process I was admitted to one of my top choice schools, thanks in large part to Jessica's help!

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I attended a mbaMission webinar about Harvard Business School's 2+2 program. It was a fairly small group (less than 10 people) and it was at 9PM but Jessica Shklar was able to keep the presentation engaging and relevant. She provided specific examples to show the differences between a strong and weak essay. She was extremely attentive to the specific group's needs by answering all of our questions.

I felt like she was able to provide immense help to my application despite the fact that I had done an extreme amount of research on the MBA admissions process at Harvard Business School, especially the 2+2 program. I decided to follow up with a 30-minute consultation with Jessica to discuss my profile. Within that half hour, she was able to help me craft a narrative for my holistic application and even provided me with structural tips on my essay - without even reading my essay. She wasn't afraid to point out the weakness of my application, which I'm glad she did because I have heard of some admissions consultants who do their best to only make their clients happy. I wanted someone who was honest and catered to my profile, which she was able to do!

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The 30 minutes spent with Jessica Shklar were, by far, the best 30 minutes spent in my whole MBA application process. I was astonished by how prepared Jessica came to the consulting session. She not only read thoroughly my resume and application details, but also prepared recommendations based on what I requested advice on prior to our meeting. The meeting was highly effective, touching on every single concern I had. I obviously wanted more after that meeting, and joined her 2+2 HBS presentation webinar. What can I say, she gave all the information I’ve been struggling to put together over the past 5 months in one hour. The presentation was both informative and practical, as every other interaction I’ve had with her. I’m very glad I found Jessica, and would highly recommend her to anyone.

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I'm one of those people who like to do a lot of research before committing to a company/service/etc. I spoke a quite a few consulting companies and I'm so glad I was able to find Jessica and MBA mission in the end. As an "older" applicant, the other companies that I spoke to seemed to be using this "fear based" model to sell their services - making me feel terrible about my odds and my candidacy at the top schools first, then offering their services to help me out. I didn't realize that's what they were doing until I had my first phone call with Jessica, who was so enthusiastic, encouraging, and genuine about her thoughts on my candidacy. I knew right away that I’d want to work with her. She didn’t have any spots available for R1 so I signed up to work with her on R2 on two of my dream schools, which was the best decision I made during this application process.

From day 1 of working together, I could just tell that Jessica is an absolute genius. For several months I had been trying to come up with a thread for my essay, but I just couldn’t figure out how to connect the dots and I felt lost. But Jessica was able to do that in ONE DAY - I sent in my brainstorming document and the very next day during our phone call she was able to come up with a genius thread that connects all the dots and showcases my strengths in a very compelling way. She goes so deep during the brainstorming part and asks the right questions to uncover all the aspects, then on the spot she could come up with a theme for the essay. I was blown away by how good she was. I remember getting off that phone call feeling super excited about writing the essay (which is very rare because I always hated writing) and I had to call my best friend to share how thrilled I was to have found Jessica and how great her ideas for my essay were.
I always thought I had to write 8-10 drafts of essays before I could get it to a “top school quality”, but I was wrong on that because Jessica is so good at helping me frame up the essay (paragraph by paragraph) that I got to a final version quality within only 3 drafts. She’s just that good!

Jessica is very professional and caring. She always turns around things and answers questions very quickly. When you are working with her, you can just feel that she’s not just another consultant for you, but she’s truly on this journey with you – she cheers you on during the tough and stressful times, goes above and beyond to make your application shine, she was like this awesome big sister that I never had and I’ve never even met her! Just a few days before the applications deadline, I had a family emergency, everything was like my worst nightmare. Jessica was an angel and helped me out so much during those days. Her comforting words really helped me grieve during the most stressful time. She turned around my items just a couple hours after I sent them to her to allow me to focus on my family and grieving. I was in such terrible shape and I honestly don’t think I would’ve gotten my applications through without her help.

Perhaps the best part of working with Jessica was that I have learned so much about myself throughout this process. She really helped me see myself from a new perspective and get more clarity on who I am and what I want to do with life and not just with an MBA. In the end, I realized crafting the essays, the stories, the post MBA goals wasn’t just about getting into the dream schools any more, it was more about asking the deep, tough questions to myself and figuring out who I truly want to be. And I’m forever grateful for Jessica for that. I got interview invite to my dream school and now working on the interview prep.

Jessica is all around top-notch. I still can’t believe how lucky I am to have worked with her.

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Words cannot express how amazing Jessica was during my business school process! I had applied the year earlier to schools and did not get into a program that I wanted to attend. Having worked with a consultant in the past I was extremely skeptical of what mbaMission could bring to the table. Jessica was introduced by a friend who was ecstatic about getting into Booth when he originally had been targeting schools in the 10-20 rankings.

The 30 minutes complimentary phone call was a game changer. Jessica was on point, had a clear strategy, and it was immediately apparent that this was going to be a different experience. I wish I had known her one year earlier. I quickly recognized that if I wanted to get into a business program it would only be with Jessica’s help. I had a very mediocre application. I had a solid 10 years of work experience but a low GPA and a low GMAT! Jessica was amazing during the brainstorming and essay writing sessions that identified a clear message and story we wanted to share. Jessica was extremely responsive, thoughtful, and supportive as we tracked multiple applications. She pushed me and held me accountable throughout the entire process.

In the end, it was Jessica's recommendation to add another program to the list that landed me at the Stanford GSB. I would not be at the GSB if it had not been for Jessica’s help and guidance, for which I am endlessly grateful.

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