Maria Wich-Vila Reviews

I have recently used Applicant Lab's services for my application process. We all are aware how much a normal admission consultant would charge - at least a couple grand. Unlike a normal consultant, Applicant Lab charges just a fraction of it and actually guides you to prepare your application process, this whole process actually a good experience or a good introspective session that one needs. Maria would help you if you are stuck anywhere, provide you good insight on what actually the Ad Com looks for, help you tailor-make the essays and responses for different questions that they might ask and train you for interview. Overall, I would highly recommend their tool and the process it lets you go through. Trust me it's value every buck you pay for.

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I had the most amazing learning experience from ApplicantLab. The idea to curate your essays and recommendations from well thought out story ideas, which finally YOU can stitch together is invaluable! Nothing gets the adcom notice you more than a story which has 'heart'. Applicantlab tool enables just that! Writing your stories, with your structures, your tone & tenor makes your essays genuine & standout - a very crucial aspect of the application process. Maria's easy to understand tips & tricks, well structured modules 'gamifies' the otherwise mundane & exhaustive application process. Smooth structure, Super useful tips/tricks is an amazing way to get your work done!
Needless to say, in the world of Pricey admission consultants - ApplicantLab is a blessing. Exceptional service at an affordable cost!
My recommendation to fellow students will be to try it & you wont regret it. Made my admit to Stanford & INSEAD a breeze!

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I have applied to 5 universities in the US and have been accepted in all of them: Berkeley, Ross, Cornell, NYU and UCLA. ApplicantLab's advice and expertise have been critical to me for 2 main reasons. First, it provided me a efficient way to lay down my life experience, and therefore, a way to rediscover parts of my life/experiences that made me shine in my essays. Second, ApplicantLab's explanation of different schools' essays helped to improve their quality and understand better what the admission committees are looking for.

Finally, I totally recommend watching the sample videos in her interview module. It really helps understand the purpose and focus of those interviews.

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I was applying to business school while working for a non-profit space, so paying $8k (cost of a 4-school package from most consulting companies) wasn't feasible. However, I was worried about competing against other candidates who were taking advantage of such services, and I really needed a formal way to think through all the story ideas spinning around in my head.

I was able to go through the entire application process from resume to essays on my own time, without having to worry about scheduling calls (although after going through the module, I did end up taking advantage of ApplicantLab's editing services, which were phenomenal as well). The advice that the module provided was identical - if not more personalized in some instances - to advice I'd heard that my friends received from their consultants.

The platform provides a great way to organize all of your stories, link them to values, and pull them into cohesive essays. They will stay organized and be there waiting for you every time you need to take a brain break and come back. Such a cost effective way to de-stress the application process!

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MBA admissions are complicated, to say the least. It isn't always a matter of being extraordinary rather extraordinarily telling your story. That is where ApplicantLab excels; it provides you a framework to put your best foot forward.
When I started my MBA prep, I availed different profile evaluations offered by top MBA consultancy. However, the result was more or less the same. They gave a general feedback and enticed me with the so called limited time discounts to avail their services. On the other hand, there is no sales pitch by ApplicantLab rather a sense of empathy. I was fascinated to see how simple it was to start the free trial. Not only this, I got a complete profile evaluation based on my ethnicity, job function, industry, future goals, etc. Needless to say, I opted to go ahead with ApplicantLab.
I honestly believe that the work Maria does for her clients is worth far more than the price of ApplicantLab. ApplicantLab without a doubt demystify the MBA admission process. It provides a framework that is thorough in its research and details. Not only this, Maria is super friendly and always ready to answer the questions. She answers each question with intent to help her clients, not for the sake of answering.
Above all, ApplicantLab is the way forward for MBA admissions consultancy. It eliminates the veneer between consultants and customers and presents a sequential framework that is intuitive and comprehensive. Not only it helped me to put my best foot forward but also allowed me to introspect and understand what I truly wanted from an MBA.
Finally, I will recommend ApplicantLab to any aspiring MBA candidate. You will not find a more dedicated and helpful consultant than Maria. I am grateful to her for allowing me to understand my strengths and secure admission in a top ten ranked global MBA program.

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I’m a regular guy from Latin America who wanted to pursue an MBA at a top school. After sitting for the GMAT and getting a 700+ result, I THOUGHT it was over… And then I started to get acquainted with the “admissions game”.

You can read my detailed review below, but I want to start with my conclusion: Applicant Lab is REALLY worth to use. Take my advice and use the free trial they offer: It’ll give you a sense of how powerful the system is, and after ½ hour working with it, you’ll realize that it is THE best option. I actually enjoyed a lot during the whole process working with the Applicant Lab. I promise you, you won’t regret it =).

So, let’s go to the facts. Do you have any clue of the size of the “admissions consultancy” game? I did my research, and turns out it is a 35M US$ yearly market. And the reason for this is that there are plenty of consultancy firms out there, and they all operate the same way: at first, they will “take a look at your stats”. After this assessment, IF you ROUGHLY look good enough, they will charge you A LOT of money in advance, and then start working with you. Be aware: If your stats don’t look good enough, they will tell you something such as “they have no consulting vacancies”: no one in these kind of agencies likes neither an unhappy customer nor a black spot in their records.

Your stats may not be exactly perfect (e.g., no volunteering), but you know both that you will be an unbelievably good fit for a top Business School, and that this HAS to be your next step in your professional career. So, the key question is… How will you tell your story to your dream school and be accepted if you can’t even pass the “high performance admissions consultancy firms” barrier?

Well my friends, I have good news!! María just created the perfect solution: The applicant lab. It’s really simple. It starts with a diagnostic tool: you will be asked to input information about yourself, and the Applicant Lab will tell you where you stand in the 4 pillars of your application: Academics, People Skills, Post-MBA employability and whether you can prove you have can be a “Leader”. After this assessment, it has customized advice to your actual profile. And the greatest thing is that through this advice it will not only teach you how to look into your college / work experience to find facts to counterbalance what might worry an Admissions Committee, but also why such things matter to an Admissions Committee.

This fact repeats itself all over the applicant lab advice for all portions of your application, and believe me: it makes the difference to know what an Admissions Committee is looking for. In case you get an interview, you’ll feel SO much more confident if you have used the applicant lab: you will know what the person in front of you might be thinking or may ask you based on your profile, and you’ll already know how to tackle these concerns.

It’s going to sound weird, but Applicant Lab not only taught me everything I needed to know to apply to a top business school: it actually taught a lot to me about myself. After 1 week working inside the Applicant Lab I had a clear image of what I wanted to do after Business School, what were the key “hits” of my career that could make me be accepted by a top Business School, and it broaden my spectrum of schools, i.e., after reading the applicant lab’s specialized advice for other schools that I had previously not considered, I realized that there were many other options beyond those I had considered at first.

And the best part is that everything is organized in a REALLY easy to use, on-demand tool. You can access it any time you want, it is full of videos (which not only contain the core of the great advice, but are brightened with Maria’s exceptional sense of humor), examples and explanations that will make the whole application process actually enjoyable.

I was accepted to a top 5 FT Ranking school. I met other people from my country who was also accepted to this school, and while having a drink with them and talking about each other’s road to Business School, I found out that they had used a traditional consulting firm. And guess what? They not only spent 10 times more money than I did, I actually think that the advice I got from the Applicant Lab is SO much better than the advice they received from the consulting agency they used.

The bottom line is that there’s no better alternative out there. The “value for money” ratio of the applicant lab approaches infinite. Use their free trial, and believe me, you’ll understand why I say this.

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I applied and got accepted in Round 3 at MIT. That I got the entire process done (and eventually admitted) is a testament to Maria's superior know-how as encapsulated in her ApplicantLab online tool. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Even though I had top grades from an elite college and a 730+ GMAT, I had waited too long to take the GMAT test (after Christmas) and so missed the round 2 deadlines. As I started researching how tough it is to get in during Round 3, and as I realized that I had some other “red flags” in my profile, I started to feel pretty hopeless about my chances.

In comes ApplicantLab, which helped me feel that not all hope was lost. First things first was to come up with an angle with which I applied. ApplicantLab (the website per se) broke the process down into many small parts, each of which seek to establish a story and elicit a personality trait from my professional experiences. These were usually done through short, informative video tutorials that Maria hosted on her site. Not only did this simplify the process, but it also made me see the reasoning behind each part (aka - kinda like knowing how the Adcom would think in each process). With her guidance and assistance, I was able to craft a coherent and pertinent narrative. This made me have hope as it gave me a unique story to compete against the equally qualified candidates that exist in Round 3.

Then came the essays. The video essay for MIT stumped me. It was difficult on two fronts - actually coming up with an interesting story, and the technical skills to capture and edit video. After watching some video tutorials on ApplicantLab, I learnt how to edit video and synchronize audio through Camtasia. The video tutorials even go so far in depth as to direct users like me to find license-free audio clips too! With all those resources available, I found the video essay process a lot more manageable. And it was published without a hitch.

Following an interview invite, Maria's website delineated the stories that I was to prepare. Seeing that the website helped me out so much, I decided to schedule some one-on-one time with Maria herself to do a mock interview. The process was very smooth and the feedback was pertinent. Best part? She recorded the entire session, both interview and feedback, in video, along with minute breakdowns. This was extremely helpful as it gave me a reference point to go back to the night before my actual interview.

Needless to say, I was ecstatic when I received the offer. After all, Sloan was the only school I applied to. I owe my success to ApplicantLab. This is a fabulous product with detailed and personalized service. For the price I paid, I think this was a much better alternative than all the other products elsewhere right now.

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I was accepted by both Stanford GSB and HBS. ApplicantLab helped me so much to make my dream come true. I sincerely recommend ApplicantLab to the future applicants.

I read 6 books about applying to the MBA, and I searched hundreds of articles and videos on the internet in order to learn how to apply for B schools. After I started to use the ApplicantLab, I realized there’s no need to use other materials anymore. The ApplicantLab provides the best content available anywhere – free or paid -- about the MBA application.

Some people may say the advantage of the ApplicantLab is its cost is cheaper than those super expensive admissions firms. However, in my opinion, what makes the ApplicantLab special is not the cost but the quality of content.
Take resume editing as an example, I couldn’t find anywhere else such detailed and professional guide in writing a resume. My friends who hired famous consultants told me they just got some sample resumes and essays, but not many tips on how to write them. Also, the content in the ApplicantLab is accessible to us anytime, anywhere. It’s just more efficient than the service of traditional consultants.

As an international student, I wanted to have a consultant who went to the top business school. Maria went to HBS and Princeton, and she has helped many applicants to get into top business schools. Maria’s videos with advice in the ApplicantLab were precise and witty. She is so efficient when giving me feedback on my resume, essay. She is so patient when helping me with the mock interviews. I see professionalism in everything Maria did.

I feel so luckily that I could work with Maria. I appreciate Maria to bring the ApplicantLab to the world. In summary, Maria and the ApplicantLab are the premium and efficient service with affordable price.

If I were to apply to MBA again, I would choose ApplicantLab even the cost is three times higher! Thank you Maria!

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I am a very happy customer of ApplicantLab and recommend it a 100% to anyone looking to get into a top school. Maria is a real pleasure to work with and I really enjoyed the process of MBA applications due to her.

I was worried about getting in because I am from an over-represented group (e.g. Indian Male Engineer) and have more work experience than the typical candidate.

The tool is very well structured and reflects the founder's deep understanding of the MBA admissions space. All the modules are very well designed and flows seamlessly. The tools focuses on the the important aspects of each segment.

This tool was easy to use, transformed my essay strategy, and got me in to 2 top programs and an Interview from HBS. The fact that it costs so much less than a traditional consultant is icing on the cake, but it's perfect for people who like to do things themselves.

I found ApplicantLab through a friend who had used Maria's services to get into Wharton.

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Let me start by saying Applicantlab is a great product which helps those who dont want to spend 1000s on MBA school admissions. I feel like it removes the "hype and flashiness" from all those expensive consultant programs and gives you whats needed for a great application at a very affordable cost.

Now for the details -
I heard about the lab on a e-gmat webinar. I was still not serious about my applications since there was lots going on at work and in family life. Eventually, I reached a stage where I decided a full-time MBA is not an option and my choices narrowed down to a few schools on West coast.

I joined the Applicantlab just to get some help and more to get some discipline to my otherwise disorderly application process. First thing you will be super-impressed by is how responsive Maria is - I had some issue signing up and I literally heard back from her in minutes! Not only did I get access, she was also inquisitive about my background and what schools I was applying for etc.

Second thing you will realize, the lab structure is actually very neat and innovative. It might seem simple - you are just jotting down your life history (personal and professional) and having a software arrange it for essays, recommendations and what not. But its much more than that. You dont just list your strengths and weaknesses, you decide where to use what, how not to repeat yourself, where which experience makes sense. In a way it is a continuous polishing of your application but one story at a time.

Third thing, if you are new to this application process like I was - you will realize it is very very important to have a set of impartial, professional eyes evaluate every word of your application. MBA application, for good or bad, needs a lot of introspection and sometimes the things you decide to present to the application reviewer about yourself, even though important to you, may not show you as "leadership material" which is what they need to see. Maria brings a wealth of experience in this regard. The way she asked to restructure some of my same stories made them much polished. The difference between my first and final drafts, even though they had same content, was phenomenal and I am sure improved my odds of selection by a lot.

I already mentioned Maria is very responsive, but she also goes above and beyond. When I mentioned I am applying to Berkeley Haas but to the evening, weekend program (the requirements, essays are different), she posted specific, new videos for this program within a couple of days. If you tell her you are working towards a deadline, she will make sure she gets back to you in a very reasonable time, some times even in the middle of the night.

To summarize, I definitely recommend Applicantlab. I never joined any super expensive firm for admission consultation. I used the initial lab and added 1 hour of time for personalized essay review (trust me, the 1 hour allowed me to have like 5 drafts of each essays and Maria worked well over the 60 minutes with me). I had decided to apply to only one school (so it was became my dream school :)) and Applicantlab helped me get into it. Hope it can do the same for others!

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