As some context to the following review, here is a little bit about me: Accountant with 7 years of work experience under my belt, currently applying to three UK Schools (a Top 3, a Top 10 and a Top 25 ranked globally)

Before I continue, I think it is worth putting it out there from the get-go – do yourself, and your applications, a massive favour and sign up to the Admissions Consulting Services of Veritas Prep. I honestly believe I would not even have received an offer of an interview from my two target schools (my third one ding’d me) had I not signed up with Veritas Prep and utilised their consulting services. That is no exaggeration. I genuinely think Veritas Prep’s services and their consultants were/are that important to my applications.

So why did I sign up to an admissions consultant?

Put bluntly, my CV, work experience and academics are decent, but they are not stellar. I knew that I would be up against applicants who had cured cancer, climbed Everest unaided and built water wells in African villages, and who had also scored a straight 800 on the GMAT. You get the idea. I knew if I could get an interview with each school, I could put in a good performance. Getting an interview was always going to be the big obstacle for me. I realised I needed something to give me that leg up, that help and expertise to put forward the best applications possible. The leg up came in the form of an admissions consultant.

Why did I choose Veritas Prep?

Before signing up with Veritas Prep, I weighed up the services offered by the other Prep/Consulting providers. To be honest, there isn’t that much difference on the face of things. You really are splitting hairs if you go on their websites alone.
My decision was made when I read the reviews on websites like this. The reviews of applicants who had previously made use of Veritas Prep’s services were largely the same – the setup is almost military in its planning and organisation, the consultants and specialists are unrivalled and the results are tangible.

Would I recommend Veritas Prep?

In a heartbeat. Honestly, the whole package is unmatched, in my opinion. Though I used only Veritas Prep, I find it hard to imagine another Prep/Consulting provider offering as comprehensive a service as Veritas Prep.

The services offered by Veritas Prep are not solely aimed at decent-but-not-stellar applicants. I believe every applicant can make use of Veritas Prep’s services to some degree – yes, even those with an 800 on the GMAT and 6 months of charity work in some remote village somewhere.

I would first suggest visiting their website and reviewing their Consulting Services section for a basic overview - http://www.veritasprep.com/. If you want, give them a call or an email to get a more in-depth discussion of their offerings, and how they can really help you.

If you want to hear it from the horse’s mouth, this is how I would summarise the consulting services from Veritas Prep.

Upon signing up, applicants are allocated a head consultant based on personality tests, so ensuring compatibility. This person takes the lead in managing your relationship with Veritas Prep. They are your go-to person for all application matters. The head consultant is more of a coach – they guide you through everything from drafting essay responses, to compiling fantastic CVs, to contacting your recommenders for reference letters.

Once your application is progressed far enough, Veritas Prep then starts to involve school specialists and directors. That is to say, once your core applications are done, you work with people who are specialists in each school to whom you are applying. These specialists really know the schools well – the culture, what aspects they want to see in your application, what makes that school standout against others, and so on. This is where generic applications begin to become very honed and school specific. Having now made your applications school-specific, your applications go to School Directors for final review. These are people who know the school as well as the specialists, but who have hands on admissions committee experience. They review your applications and give you brutally honest, but constructive, feedback about where to improve and what ideas to emphasise. If they don’t like something, it is better to find out at this stage than get rejected for real, right?

Once your Director gives you the thumbs up, you can hit that submit button and pay your application fee. Now, rather than wait it out, your head consultant will shift your focus from applications to interviews. They will encourage you to think about the interviews you’ll soon be invited for, and how you are going to answer the standard questions all MBA interviewers ask. Once your interview invitation arrives in your inbox, school specialists will come back in to the fray, and carry out mock interviews with you, either over the phone or in person if possible. Of course, the specialists will ask the standard questions plus a few curveballs. Again, it is better to fluff your lines here and get the real one perfect.

At every stage of the process, I knew I was working with an expert. Not just some clever MBA Alumnus from that school, but people who work on admissions committees in real life. They know what schools want, what they look for, what areas will ring alarm bells, and so on.

As a note, there were no limits on the number of hours I could speak to consultants, or on how many emails I could send, or on how many iterations my essays could go through. This epitomises their approach, I think – they just keep going and going until you get that offer of a place. Ok, you can’t call your head consultant at some ungodly hour, but my impression is that they will bend over backwards to help you put forward the best application you can. And this, after all, is your main aim.

Finally, if you do sign up to Veritas Prep and are allocated Christine as your Head Consultant, thank your lucky stars. This woman is an absolute Godsend. She is my Head Consultant, and I couldn't be happier with being matched with her. She has coached me all the way through my three applications – from the basics like thinking about why pursuing an MBA right now is the correct path to take and which schools I should consider, to interview preparation and coping with being Waitlisted (at a Top 3 school in the world) over the Christmas break! – and I think she has been my secret weapon. Though I’ll never know for sure, I am confident I would have been ding’d at all of my three schools without her and her coaching.

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I’d like to add to the myriad positive reviews for Veritas Prep’s MBA admissions consulting services.

My background: male, white, circa 30, financial markets w/e, UK based but with quite a geographically diverse background, slim to no extra-curriculars, highly quantitative undergrad from a top 10 UK university with what would translate to a reasonably high GPA (1st Class in the UK) and a moderate GMAT – high 80th %-ile. Nothing particularly special relative to other candidates at the top schools.

I think the first thing to say is this: I got accepted to my target school with the help of Veritas Prep’s services. Simples! Could I have got in anyway? Perhaps. Did the admissions consultant make a considerable difference to my application? Definitely!

Two general points about Veritas Prep’s admissions consulting process I wish I had given more weight to before I started out. Firstly, Veritas adopts a multi consultant model. What this means is: you get access to a head consultant, a school specialist and if you wish an independent director review. This became hugely important because as I worked through the detail of the application with my consultant; edit after edit, review after review, we became so engrained in the story/essays that it was, at times, hard to see the wood from the trees so to speak. This is where having access to an objective pair of eyes is invaluable.

Secondly, and I think in hindsight this is very important, Veritas has on its roster previous admissions committee members. Choosing a consultant with actual admissions experience takes considerable guess work out of the equation. On countless occasions my consultant was able to draw on actually experiences from reading candidates completed applications and relating that to how admissions decisions were made. I can’t emphasize this enough, I really saw this as the biggest value add of the whole process.

Below is an outline of the various elements of the consulting process:

Personal MBA game plan
After an initial chat, which included various housekeeping aspects – methods of contact, reply times, target schools etc, I received my personal MBA game plan. My personal MBA game plan commented on each individual aspect of my profile and how it related to my specific school, and if that characteristic would be viewed as a positive or negative in the eyes of the specific school to which I was applying. For example, I’m a white guy with a finance background and I applied to some finance heavy schools, putting me in a very oversubscribed demographic bucket. Not a particular strong selling point. These insights gave me the framework to start to consider how best to address the essay questions.

Head Consultant
My head consultant, Christine, was absolutely brilliant. She has previous admissions committee experience which I greatly valued and her advice was always 100% on point. My original essay drafts were generic, verbose and bland. With Christine’s help we transformed my original material into three very streamlined, well articulated, to the point responses that really showcased my individual strengths and characteristics. Christine was always very quick to respond to my questions whether they be short, subject line only emails or long, rambling paragraphs. She even made time for me over Christmas to help me out with some niggling issues.

I felt Christine really went above and beyond. On many occasions I would get an email saying something akin to – Oh I’ve just been thinking again about what we spoke about 2 weeks ago I think we should actually do it like this. This really gave the impression she was committed to giving my application 100% attention.

I think it’s important to say you in no way get your essays written for you. If that’s what you’re looking for this is probably not for you. I spent a considerable amount of time thinking about material I wanted to try and use and examples that demonstrated characteristics I wanted to highlight. Christine really helped shape the material, providing perspective and context. She even got in touch the day before decision day to provide some calming words of encouragement.

School Specialist
The school specialists are chosen because they have attended the specific school to which you are applying. To that end they can provide insights only alumni can offer. For example, my school specialist, Milind, was able to suggest specific elements of the programme that matched well with my profile and thus should be emphasized in the application. Milind offered little tit bits of information that I could research further and comment on in my application.

The above is only one part of the school specialists role. The real value comes if/when you get invited to interview. And if you pick suitable programmes and listen to your consultants advice you probably will. MBA interviewing is, in my opinion, a bit of an art and practise really does make perfect. Things in my head that I thought I wanted to say I realised I couldn’t say when it came to actually speaking the words. If what you say sounds disingenuous chances are the interviewer will pick up on it and you’ll lose a bit of credibility. Having a school specialist that has not only done the interview process themselves but also, if you’re lucky, is still involved with the school, affords you a great opportunity to iron out all the little intricacies and inflections that make the difference between sounding polished and prepared and a bit of an amateur. I did a full mock interview with Milind and got very detailed feedback on my performance. By the time I actually had my interview the material was so natural it flowed brilliantly. Milind’s guidance was instrumental in this.

Independent Director Review
Yet another fantastic piece to the application puzzle. At the later stages of the application process when you’ve collected all your materials, completed the short answer questions on the application form itself and written your essays, an actual admissions director reviews your file cold. This is supposed to replicate the mechanics of the admissions committee at your target school receiving your file. The feedback is very objective, blunt if you will, but provides another angle from which to consider your application as a whole, making sure your entire application is promoting a consistent story. This was vitally important because up until this point I had been working on my application piecemeal and as a result it had become somewhat fragmented. This overall review allowed me to tie together the loose ends before submitting my application to the school.

Overall I was very impressed with the service I received and I would recommend Veritas Prep 100%!

As a final point, I actually used another prominent admissions consultancy for one of my other applications and I can honestly say Veritas Prep’s service was so far ahead on all levels. I’m not one to bad mouth on a public forum but I’d be happy to share that experience with anyone interested to hear more. If that’s you just PM me.

I feel this review has morphed into a bit of a general MBA application rant but if it helps one future MBA candidate have a easier experience I’d be happy.

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I'll start with a bit of background information - I had an above average GPA at a top 15 undergrad business school, I had a 650 GMAT, and only 2 years of work experience as a sales representative at a logistics company. I hired Veritas for their 3 school program.

Before I begin explaining how amazing my experience was with Christine Balzano, I need to send a warning to any of those planning on using Veritas to avoid being paired with Nick Kamboj. His introductory emails were arrogant and embarrassing, our first phone call he acted as a therapist and asked my about my relationship with my parents, ex-girlfriends, and personal questions that were embarrassing and completely irrelevant to getting to understand who I was as a person and applicant. He also dismissed my goal schools (all in the top 25) stating they were not worth the Veritas service's and told me to apply to a part-time program at Kellogg and Booth because "he knew the entire admissions committee." I made it very clear I wanted a full time program, so he allowed me to choose one of my full-time programs as a back up. After I submitted my resume, he assured me I'd have a response within 48 hours... three days later I had to email him on the status. I was advise by my father to stick it out because maybe he was just an intellectual that did not know how to communicate well with people. However, after he did not respond within 4 days of my first essay submission and blamed it on food poisoning. It was at the time I asked for a new consultant.

Veritas was extremely understanding and helpful with my transition with a new consultant. Within 2 days I was paired with Christine and I consider myself SO lucky. I know that without the Veritas GMAT Prep courses and consulting from Christine, I would never have been able to get admitted to my stretch schools, Vanderbilt and Georgetown. Christine was everything I was looking for in a consultant and more. Even with the time difference in London, she gave immediate and insightful feedback, was almost always available for a phone conversation, perfected my resume, and helped me form thoughtful essay responses. Christine was much more than a consultant during my process, she was my entire support system. With very few friends and no family receiving an MBA, I was completely counting on her to guide me through the process. I sincerely could not have done it without her. She took a personal interest in my life and where I came from, it was refreshing to think someone cared as much about my success as I did. I will forever be grateful for my experience with her.

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