According to my experience, applying an MBA program is a tough job that requires not only hard work but also a strategic and focused approach. Before deciding which consulting service to use, I talked to a few consulting companies and tried their free sessions. I do suggest to “shop around” and you will find the right one. In my case, I found mbaMission was very impressive. After I provided my profile and answered a couple of questions, the consultant outlined an overview of my strength, weakness, and which schools I should target. It was simply, professional, and focused! After signing up the product, I chose to work with Pamela, a very experienced consultant. Now I have got the offer from the school of my dream. I must say I did the right choice and found the right person!

I was very happy working with Pamela. She was methodical. Everything was so well organized that I knew exactly what I would expect down the road, and I could plan my tasks down to every single day! Although the service was delivered online, the communication and collaboration was thorough and effective. During the whole process, I didn’t panic at all! What a surprise! I suggest to carefully read the documents they send over after you sign up the service. They are very useful!

Essay editing is important part of the whole service. I felt I was fully supported. For each essay, she walked it through with me from analyzing the topic to editing revisions to completing the essay. In addition, when I was stuck somewhere, she always provided a high level guidance that forced me to think in a “macro” perspective. I see this is a great approach to allow me to reshape my thoughts and restructure the content. This approach worked for me very well. I suggest writing essays on your own – you will be the person who takes the interview and you have to think a lot in the whole process!

At the post offer stage, when I was deciding which school to choose, she made sure I had full information to make the decision and provided valuable and unbiased advice. This is also an important stage, especially when you have multiple choices. For me, Pamela is an expert in this area – she knows the top B-schools well and has great knowledge in the post-MBA fields. So her advice helped me a lot!

In summary, I am very impressed and do appreciate her help and work during the whole process. I definitely recommend mbaMission, especially Pamela, to anyone who wants to apply to top B-schools. Finally, I want to say when applying an MBA program, you are not doing something for fun. You need to be serious! It is your opportunity to change your entire life! So make your choice wisely!

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Decision to Hire Angela

When I first decided to apply to MBA programs, I had no idea how competitive I was, where I had a shot of getting in, or how high I should reach. While I had good stats (3.9 GPA from a top 20 liberal arts school, 760 GMAT), I worked in accounting for 3 years and I didn’t know how to differentiate myself from the other good applicants who were applying. I didn’t feel like I had a particularly interesting story. I was intrigued by the idea of hiring a consultant but, frankly, couldn’t fathom spending that much money only one year before I would be taking out upwards of 150K in student loans.

When I got an email from mbaMission inviting me to have a free 30-minute consult live in my city, I figured I had nothing to lose. I went in thinking that if a consultant would simply save me time – tell me things I could find online, save me calls to admissions offices, etc – edit my essays, and set a schedule for me, I would skip it. But if hiring one would actually increase my chances of getting in in ways that I could never do myself, then I would consider it.


Free Consult

In my 30-minute consult, Angela assessed my competitiveness at all the schools I was considering, helped me with my resume, told me I didn’t need to take the GMAT again (despite getting 70% Quant and 67% IR scores) and helped me with my “story” – my reason for going to business school and my post-MBA goals. I remember leaving that 30 minutes consult feeling already like she’d added incredible value to the process. I no longer had to stress about whether or not I should retake the GMAT or figuring out what schools I should apply to.

I realized that if I thought an MBA was worth the cost of tuition and opportunity cost of not working, it was definitely worth another $3.75K to have a consultant help me with one school. After all, applying to one school would mean perfecting my resume, my “story,” and, if I picked the right school, I’d probably be able to use the essays for other schools. So I decided to use Angela for one school.

My next dilemma was which schools to choose. I had decided to apply to Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton as reaches, Booth and Kellogg as fit schools, and Fuqua as a safety. And I couldn’t figure out which one hire Angela for. If I chose Harvard to increase my chances of getting in, I figured I could still end up rejected everywhere. If I chose a fit school, then I thought my chances at HBS/Stanford went out the window. If I was only going to get into my safety, then I thought it was worth using a consultant to see if I could get scholarship money. In the end, I decided if it was worth using her for one school, it was worth using her for all of the schools. And that $8K when compared to the cost of an MBA was a drop in the bucket, especially if I could get a scholarship that would make the consultant more than pay for itself.

Hiring Angela was the best investment I’ve ever made. I ended up with full tuition scholarships to Booth and Fuqua, a partial scholarship to Wharton, and admission into HBS. I’m not at all saying that I don’t deserve admission or scholarships at these schools, but I can say without a doubt that I would not have been this successful in my applications if I had not hired her.

One of the biggest values that Angela brought to the admissions process was making me realize how strong of a candidate I was. When I first spoke with her, I thought I was a weak candidate and that Booth/Kellogg would be a reach. I wasn’t even thinking of applying to HBS/Stanford. But Angela recognized aspects of my candidacy that made me exceptional and pushed me to be as successful as I could.


Essays

She knew what I needed to highlight in my applications. At the beginning of our work together, Angela and I had a long brainstorm session in which she got to know ALL of my stories, personal, professional, and from undergrad. Because of this, whenever we started working on a new essay, Angela was able to pull from my life stories to know how I should best answer the question. Throughout the process, I was amazed at the extent to which Angela was able to tie together stories from my life that I would not have pieced together. She was able to find themes that portrayed parts of me I hadn’t identified. For someone who believes she has lived a very normal life, I didn’t think I could put together an inspiring essay. But Angela got to know me well enough to find the things about me that would make me shine in the eyes of the adcoms.

As I wrote the essays, Angela pushed me to do what she knew I was capable of. We went through 12 versions of some essays. In the first versions, she would often tell me to scratch it and start over. While I’m a perfectionist and a hard worker, Angela pushed me farther than I could have pushed myself. She often asked for more insight into what I was thinking, what my motivation was, and what I learned in a way that helped me discover things about myself that I never would have learned without her. Also important to note is that my essays (and the rest of my application) were entirely my work. She asked questions and pushed me to success, but didn’t make direct edits or in any way embellish the truth. Still, looking at the end product, I couldn’t have written the essays on my own.


Interviews

When it came to interviews, Angela delivered a workshop for all her clients with a really novel and refreshing approach to interviews. Then for each individual school interview, she helped me feel thoroughly prepared. She not only helped me come up with answers to specific questions during mock interviews but more importantly, taught me a methodology for how to answer questions, so I would never be stumped. She built up my confidence, which is perhaps the most important part of an interview. She even sent me a youtube video of an interview with a movie star so I could learn by example how to show in an interview that I’m human without apologizing. She taught me how to highlight my strengths without sounding full of myself. These are lessons I will take with me and apply to future job interviews, and I have even begun coaching my colleagues based on what I have learned from Angela.


Overall

One of the most incredible things about working with Angela is that I always felt like I was her only client. One of my hesitations in hiring a consultant was the fear that they would give the same advice to everyone. Angela’s advice was completely tailored to me. She also responded to my emails sometimes instantly. Even when on her holiday vacation, she responded within a couple hours to any and every question I had. She could not have been more devoted or available.

Coming from an industry where we track the time spent on each client, I was also nervous that if I got a package, the consultant would cut corners and try to spend as little time with me as possible. But on the contrary, Angela went above and beyond to give her time and energy. She pushed me to write more drafts of essays. After I was accepted to schools, she initiated a call with me to discuss my thoughts and offer advice on where I should accept. After I visited schools for their accepted students events, she reached out to me to hear how they went. I truly feel like Angela cared about my success and in finding the best fit for me almost as much as I did. She was there every step of the way.

For me, as a type A perfectionist, working with Angela also considerably reduced the amount of stress and anxiety I felt during this whole process, largely because instead of worrying over details, I trusted Angela. While I had been freaking out over whether to retake the GMAT, Angela said no, so I didn’t give it another thought. There are countless questions that you will have during the application process, any of which could cause considerable doubt and anxiety. Working with Angela took all of that away. If she said to use story A instead of story B I said okay and moved on instead of second guessing myself. Angela’s fees were worth it if only because working with her during this year-long period made my life a lot easier.

I can’t express enough how valuable Angela was in this process. My friends can attest to this as I can’t count the number of times I said to them “I don’t know what I’d do without Angela.” I’ve raved so much about her to everyone I know that my friends have already referred their friends and colleagues to her.

So if I had to give those of you applying to business school one piece of advice, I would say hire a consultant, and hire Angela. The value you will get far outweighs the cost.

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I'm an over-thinker, so I had a ton of questions all the time. When I wanted to speak on the phone, we would schedule a call. More often though, to make the best use of the expensive time, I would organize multiple questions in a big email. Dan was always helpful and got back to me within a day or so. I also asked him to review several essay drafts for me. I didn't use any of his exact words because it wasn't really my voice, but his advice on structure and general direction helped me improve my writing. If I could go back, I might've tried harder to find answers to some of my questions elsewhere to save a little money, but would've still used him and benefited from his wisdom to an extent.

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I had a fantastic experience with Monica Okrah’s mock interview session. I received an interview notification from HBS and thought I had done everything in my power to prepare (bought the Harbus, wrote answers for every possible question I could be asked, prepared with HBS students.) After reading about the intensity of the HBS interviews I decided to hire a consultant a few days before my interview- Although the services are expensive, it is definitely worth it in order to be as prepared as possible for the most important interview of your life!

The mock interview session was a complete game-changer. We simulated an actual HBS interview experience – Monica asked for my application materials before the interview in order to ask questions that were relevant to my application. After we went through the questions, Monica thoroughly reviewed each of my answers, carefully pointing out strengths, weaknesses, and areas of improvement. More importantly, Monica made me aware of the lack of structure in my responses and gave me feedback on how I should structure my answers in order to provide context and effectively relay the message I needed to get across in a timely manner. After my conversation with Monica, I re-evaluated my story and my brand (with her feedback in mind!) and was able to reframe my responses in a way that truly reflected my best self.

Also, going into this process I was less than confident in myself given that my GMAT score is slightly lower than HBS’ average score. Monica was so incredibly positive and reassuring, which really allowed me to walk into the interview and express myself confidently and focus on all the positives instead of any perceived negatives.

My only regret is not working with Monica sooner – she is fantastic!!

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I recently used John Sisk at MBA mission on an hourly basis for assistance with the business school application process. John is a responsive, professional, and very well informed consultant and was enormously helpful throughout the process. I chose John based on his straight forward and honest style - he tells you want you need to hear about your background and the schools you are applying to - not what you want to hear. John's insights and suggestions for my resume and essays where quite helpful, but where I found him most valuable was his knowledge of the application process and admissions committees. Applying to business school is a unique experience and one that most people don't have much background knowledge about, and John is a wonderful guide and mentor throughout the process. John was instrumental in helping me to craft a stronger application and to effectively illustrate my personal strengths on paper, and I highly recommend him.

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I did not have the best GMAT score, and I had hoped to overcome that obstacle with a strong resume and strong essays. Debbie from mbaMission helped me to write stellar essays. We worked for a couple months back and forth via emails and a couple phone calls. She helped me to get specific and concise with my experiences highlighting the stories that made a real impact. Debbie emphasized a "show don't tell" attitude in my essays. It took some time and effort, but it paid off. I ended up with multiple offers from the top schools I had applied to, each one with a scholarship or a Graduate Assistantship offer. I attribute much of my offers to the work of mbaMission and Debbie.

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I worked with Rachel Beck on my business school applications this fall, and I was accepted to all 3 of the schools that I worked on with her (all 3 are top 10 programs, 2 are top 5).

Rachel was instrumental in helping me find and tell my story. Having somewhat of a traditional business school applicant background, Rachel helped me identify my unique qualities and experiences, and worked with me to craft a story that was engaging and distinct. On top of that, Rachel was also a pleasure to work with - responsive, constructive and encouraging. She was a great sounding board throughout the process as I often bounced ideas off of her to get constructive and thoughtful feedback.

I signed up for the complete package and this was the best choice for me. By going this route, I did not feel rushed during any of our conversations and could set up phone calls as frequently as needed. This allowed me to really dive into brainstorming conversations to develop my story. I also liked that working with a consultant provided structure to the process and helped me stick to timelines, so I never felt pinched for time.

The end result of the business school application process was overwhelmingly positive for me. I have a handful of amazing programs to choose from (and many come with scholarships which may point to a potential ROI from working with a consultant).

I highly recommend working with a consultant as it provided structure and enabled me to find my story, and I would recommend Rachel to everyone. I can not imagine going through the application process any other way.

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Hello,

I retained consultant Adam Grossman for hourly services through mbaMission. I initially went with the hourly service option because the full service option at over $3,000 was above my budget, but thanks to Adam's great help, I am very confident that I made a good decision. When I reached out to Adam for assistance, I had already reached out to my recommenders and received my letters of recommendation, I had already taken the GMAT, and I had already selected the school I was going to apply to (I only applied to and got into Chicago Booth's Evening MBA program), so I primarily needed help on my essays, my resume, and the application itself. Adam did a fantastic job in each one of these areas. I had a 690 GMAT score when I reached out to Adam, which is above the mean for the Chicago Booth Evening MBA program, but my GPA was below the mean for the school, due to a bad semester. For my application, it was critical for me to be able to be direct and yet try to spin this in a positive way, and Adam did a tremendous job on both counts. He also helped me really maximize the story behind my work history in my application, as my work history is where I have really excelled, and I was able to communicate experiences at work that showed that I didn't allow myself to be defined by a bad semester in college. Not only that, but Adam was extremely efficient with regard to the hourly services, and he always kept me up to date on the amount of time we had used. I ended up using a significant number of hours, but still ended up spending less than I would have for the full service option, in large part because Adam did such a great job of efficiently using our time. I would definitely recommend Adam from mbaMission, as I couldn't have gotten into my school of choice without him. Highly recommended.

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Hi all,

I was very hesitant about using consultancy services when I first started investigating them. However, after completing a bunch of free consultations, it wasn't really a tough choice to choose mbaMission after talking to John Sisk.

I applied to Booth School of Business for the Chicago Business Fellow program and chose to use the hourly services of mbaMission. John was nothing less than amazing in editing my essays! I was very eager every time I sent an essay to John for review. Not a single time was a disappointment and never did I have to send it for another review! He is the best in clearly highlighting the purpose and then using our stories to build the best essay around it. He is very honest in giving feedback and encourages you to think relevant stories along with all necessary guidance.

All in all, I can say, he is the one whom you can rely upon!

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Working with Angela was such an incredible experience that it makes me want to apply to business school again. She is incredibly thoughtful and positive - helping you discover yourself, your strengths, what makes you unique, and reminding you of how great you are when you're full of doubt about the entire business school application process. Angela never tried to get me to be someone other than my authentic self, further enhancing my self-confidence and enjoyment of the process. She was attentive and available, made time to chat when I needed it, and provided invaluable feedback on my essays and overall story. I would HIGHLY recommend using Angela for anyone who's nervous or just wants a leg up in the process. And, school results: I applied to HBS, Stanford, and Kellogg, got in to HBS and Kellogg, and waitlisted at Stanford.

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