Prep MBA Admissions Consulting Reviews

I began my search for an MBA consultant with endless questions and a lower than average GMAT for my target schools. Moreover, I came from an over-represented background having worked in banking since graduation. These qualities mandated that I find an experienced and effective MBA consultant to help me avoid common pitfalls and standout from a large crowd of qualified applicants. My GMAT tutor provided three recommendations of MBA consultants that had worked with his clients in the past. My initial communication with Alex of Prep MBA proved that he had what I was looking for. First, he was the experienced with 10+ years in the industry demonstrating successful outcomes with clients in a similar predicament to my own. Second, as a Harvard MBA himself, Alex could relate and provide crucial insider knowledge. But, most important, before signing up for any services, Alex took an hour out of his schedule to examine my profile, pinpoint areas to improve and outline his process. This initial interaction demonstrated that Alex would be a committed and thoughtful partner through this challenging process. After the initial consultation, I chose a two school package with hourly work on two other schools.

Alex was great at providing candid and effective feedback throughout the process. We started by examining my background from square one, highlighting areas of strength and weakness to help craft a compelling profile for my target schools. Alex’s strong understanding of current industry dynamics, banking and MBA selection criteria helped my profile steer clear of generalities and focus on particularities. Moreover, Alex’s attention to detail allowed each sentence in my essays to speak to my strengths and personality, highlighting my career goals and value add to the MBA program. However, I think Alex’s understanding of the interview process helped the most. Through in person, one on one sessions, Alex helped turn my interview style from nervous and impersonal to engaging and confident. In the end, I was accepted to three schools as well as one of my top choices, LBS.

Looking back on the process, I do not know how I would have fared without help from a consultant the caliber of Alex. His process helped me demonstrate a compelling profile despite my well represented background, his experience answered all my questions giving me confidence at every step and his sense of structure kept my essays impactful within the tight word limits. I look forward to recommending Alex to any of my former classmates and colleagues who wish to pursue and MBA in the future.

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I first reached out to Alex over the summer as I was getting ready for my round 1 applications. Like most applicants in the market for an admissions consultant, I scheduled free consultations with several big-name shops. Alex immediately stood out because he made it clear that I would be working with him one-on-one through the admissions process, and he had a track record of helping applicants with my background get admission into top programs. Most other consultants who I spoke with were eager to pass me on to the junior members of their teams, and I would have little to no interaction with the admission veterans who were extensively featured in their marketing material. During my research, I encountered consultants who thought that I was aiming too high and pushed me to apply to lower ranked schools, or they promised the moon and advised only applying to M7 schools. Alex gave me an honest assessment of what schools I should target and were worth spending the limited application resources on. After receiving decisions on my Round 1 applications, I can confidently say that his assessment was spot-on with regards to target and stretch schools.

One big area where Alex’s expertise immensely benefited me was in the crafting of my career goals. Since I was sponsored by my employer, Alex helped me brainstorm a few different career goals that made sense for my background and my sponsorship situation. He helped me identify aspects of my background that connected organically to a career goal that was not only unique, but also something that I was genuinely excited about. I am positive that this enthusiasm came across in my essays and interviews and played a big factor in receiving multiple admits.

Another area where Alex shone was picking the right stories for my essays. Often the stories I initially disregarded ended up being extremely meaningful in addressing the essay prompts. While working on a particularly challenging essay, I found myself in a creative block and ended up spinning my wheels for several days. Just a quick phone call with Alex gave me several different ideas to work with, and I was able to crank out a solid draft that I was happy with in a matter of hours. The mock interview with Alex helped me understand the finer aspects of my delivery that I needed to refine – things such as how to come off as a more ‘fun’ applicant, adding texture and color to my stories so that I don’t sound like the hordes of other applicants applying to top programs.

Oh, and did I mention that I was a reapplicant? I went from all dings and waitlists last year to multiple admits with scholarships at my target schools this year. This was made possible in no small part by the reapplication strategy that Alex helped me come up with. He helped me determine the right mix of reapplications and new applications for round 1 and advised me to wait till round 2 for schools that had denied me in round 2 the prior year so we could show substantial year-over-year growth.

All in all, I highly recommend Alex to B-School aspirants who are looking for a solid coach who will go the extra mile with them.

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Before contacted Alex, I had already called a couple consultants located both in China and United States. The feedbacks I received from those consultants were quite opposite, either a very negative feedback from Chinese consultant saying that I had no chance to get in a top 10 school or a very positive feedback from American consultant encouraging me to apply any schools I want. Coming from a very competitive pool with a moderate background (Chinese and average GMAT), I understand there are many hurdles I have to face. The initial conversation with Alex was quite pleasure, unlike other consultants who treat you just as another business opportunity, Alex was sincere, professional and passionate about his career. More importantly, Alex was very honest with me after evaluating my background. With his help, I targeted three schools and got in CBS, my dream school!
Working with Alex was a great experience, he is a Harvard MBA with more than a dozen years of experience in this business. His passion and expertise always help me think out of the box and have the chance to look into the “black box” of MBA admission. We spent a lot of times to work on my career goals and resume, when it came to the essays, Alex’s creative thinking about the structure and logic of essays really helped me to ace my application, and I believe that’s why I got in CBS.
Rather than just a consultant-customer relationship, working with Alex was also a fun and personal experience. We shared our lives during the calls and get really to know each other, I also recommended a couple Asian restaurants in LA I liked and gladly to know that Alex and his family like them too.
I would definitely recommend Alex to anyone who is planning to pursue MBA at top schools. Looking back at my journey, teaming up with Alex was the best decision I made when I decided to apply business schools.

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I was referred to Alex when I first began seriously considering pursuing an MBA. Despite indicating in my initial outreach that I was unsure an MBA was right for me, and that I was looking only for high-level guidance, Alex gladly took time to speak. The discussion led me to spend another year at my job and take my time with the GMAT. His candid advice and patience with my unfamiliarity with the application process were key reasons I decided to retain Prep MBA when I had fundamentally strengthened my resume.

After retaining Alex’s services, he and I got to work immediately even though we were months out from the “typical” application timeline. With Alex’s guidance, I narrowed a target school list – Fuqua, Wharton, Kellogg, McCombs and Anderson. We then worked collaboratively – including in-person meetings, phone calls and lots of emails – to prepare a compelling resume and strong core personal narrative that leveraged my family history, work experience and short- and long-term career goals.

When the time came to write my essays, I was well-prepared with my narrative and a great resume to support it. Alex’s support throughout the drafting process was timely and demonstrated a deep knowledge of my background and target MBA programs. In addition, his bank of resumes and school-specific essays were helpful resources. His timely feedback, creative and actionable directional guidance and digestible line edits were also extremely valuable. As a result, my applications painted a clear picture of me and my specific goals at each school and how I’d give to and take from each program to achieve those goals.

As my applications moved forward, Alex continued to be a critical resource for me. His interview prep, school selection advice and scholarship negotiation assistance demonstrated his commitment to his clients from start to finish. In the end, I was offered admission at Anderson, McCombs (both with sizeable scholarships), and Fuqua. I removed myself from the waitlist at Kellogg after deciding on Fuqua, but was confident I’d gain admission in the event I remained on the list.

Given I was offered scholarships at Anderson and McCombs, Alex and I decided to shoot for some scholarship assistance at Fuqua. He helped conduct back-and-forth scholarship negotiations with the school. After some time, Fuqua offered a generous merit scholarship, which has enabled me to attend my dream school!

Overall, Alex was immensely helpful through his commitment to helping me develop the strongest possible applications and ability to navigate the MBA application process at both micro- and macro-levels. I would highly recommend him to prospective MBA students.

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I spoke with a couple of consulting firms before choosing Alex. I wanted to gauge my chances at my target schools being a younger candidate coming from an over-represented demographic. What initially stood out was his candid feedback not only about strengths to highlight but also potential weaknesses and challenges. His honest feedback gave me a realistic sense of what to expect throughout the application process. I went with a 3 school package and utilized our work to apply to an addition 2 schools.

Once you sign on with PrepMBA, you will have access to Alex’s expertise as someone extremely familiar with every intricacy of the process. Alex’s method to get to know who he works with provides tremendous value. Alex helped shape my MBA goals and story in a way that set me up favorably throughout the entire process. This focus helped me craft a narrative that I used in all my essays and interviews. Additionally, his feedback on essays and my resume improved my writing significantly. From topic selection to essay structure, every sentence of each essay was meticulously considered. Alex definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone at times with edits and rewrites, but the hard work paid off with the final version of my essays. Additionally, after digging into my resume, I couldn’t believe the substantial improvements from first draft to final product.

Beyond all of this, I could be assured that I was well-prepared and composed throughout the entire process knowing there was a veteran Harvard MBA in my corner. With Alex’s help, I got 4 interviews and will be attending one of my top choices, Chicago Booth!

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I contacted Alex after working with another admission consultant and receiving my first ding in R1. I was disheartened and was looking at someone to provide a fresh perspective on my profile. I called a number of admissions consultants, however was reluctant to accept any. That changed with Alex. Soon after our call I knew that he can help me and said Yes! He does not have a group of consultants working under him, but works individually with each client. I could tell that he was passionate about his service and honest in his assessment. I handed over a very difficult task to him – to help an Indian IT engineer, arguably the most over-represented applicant pool, with silver work experience (not golden) land a ticket in one of the top-MBAs in R2 admissions.

As I had limited time, I took hourly packages with Alex. However, he ended up becoming my mentor helping me in every stage of application process – school selection, profile assessment, essay ideas and edits, resume review, wait-list help, and most importantly interview prep.
His essay brainstorming and editing style is unique. End results of my essays, unlike my previous essays, were true, candid and confident reflection. They were well structured and much more engaging than my previous essays. His turnaround time surprised me! He was super flexible within my strict time-frames, and sometimes returned the edits on the same day. However, one area where I think I benefited the most was interview prep. He changed my presentation style from sounding like a robot to presenting like a confident and genuine professional. I could see a huge difference between my first R1 interview and my following two R2 interviews. I’m sure his interview advice is going help me throughout my career. I applied to 3 schools with him and got into 2, including one of my top choices – Michigan Ross.

I would highly recommend Alex Leventhal . No wonder he has been featured in Poets&Quants as one of the top-10 MBA consultants. While his Harvard MBA is definitely a good enough credential, his philosophy undergrad, I think, also helps him connect with his clients on a deeper level. He is an amazing advisor with whom I look forward to staying in touch.

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I remember in October 2016, I approached numerous consulting companies. I had initial sessions with many of them. After several conversations, I noticed that the majority of these companies does not assign those with highest scores on forums to you. Indeed, they use lower level people and they claim that the higher consultants oversee the progress. However, I wanted to directly work with an experienced person. One who owns the business not a middle man consultant who does this job on side. That’s why I chose Alex. It took me three weeks to reach this conclusion, and I think if you listen to my advice you can save your precious time.
I did two school package with, and I hourly based consultation. My background is relatively complicated. First of all, I’m an international applicant with just 40 months of full time work experience. And before starting my MBA, I was pursuing my master in science as well as working part time. I bet you may think, schools shouldn’t admit me. And to be honest, I was thinking the same.
In the first step, Alex sent me a workbook and I was supposed to answer them. The questions helped me to delve deep in myself. I came up with several events and achievement that shaped my life. This workbook helped us through the next steps.
We started with Berkeley. As you know those self-reflection essays are super hard. We tried 12 times to reach the final idea and framing. But for the second one it decreased to 3 essays. As an international student, Alex helped me a lot to come up with appropriate and inspiriting sentences and well structured essays. For the general essay “Why school X? Why MBA? Why now?”, the strategy that he developed was really helpful. It helped me to connect my ideas and experience with school’s values, and come up with several solid reasoning. Therefore, admission committee could trust on me.
I really feel shy to show my first draft of resume to anyone. It was a total disaster. I believe we went over that more than 15 times. The final version was a one page resume with precise wording and appropriate formatting. Don’t risk on your resume.
Last but not least, for interview we had three sessions. He taught me to be more likeable, something that really matter for BS. We developed numerous stories with solid answers that made me confident in front of interviewer.
I got admission form my top three choices Haas, Anderson, and Tepper. As an international applicant, I strongly suggest you choose Alex. He really cared about me. He is prominent in storytelling and writing skills. He knows what schools are looking for in their essay, what they want to hear. It’s a reasonable investment, as you will probably get into one of the top schools.

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I had a great experience working with Alex. From our very first call while I was still deciding which admissions consultant would be the best fit, I felt at ease with Alex due to his honesty and openness about the process. Because I was a college senior, applying to only deferred admissions MBA programs, I chose to go with 1 full-school package, and then hourly services for additional applications.

Upon beginning the first application, Alex provided clarity to an overwhelmingly open-ended process by helping me narrow down my story. He was extremely supportive in helping me explore multiple potential “career visions” until I could find one that was unique, realistic, and exciting for me. I firmly believe that I couldn’t have fully progressed through this initial planning without Alex’s help and honesty.

The other reason that working with Alex was invaluable for me was for his help with my essays. Again, he provided honest feedback, taking the time to help me understand why certain themes in my early drafts sounded forced rather than genuine. He didn’t simply type up some comments and leave me to interpret them – he offered to chat on the phone and make it a live discussion. Ultimately, with his support and reaffirmation that I had picked a unique idea, I decided to write an essay about a highly unconventional topic. I can truly say that I would never have submitted an essay on this topic otherwise.

When I received an interview from the Stanford GSB, Alex continued to provide good advice on how to avoid over-preparing and sounding too scripted. A month later, I finally received the positive news: I will be off to the GSB in two years! I know that the unique essay topic made me stand out – the dean of admissions even wrote a comment referencing the essay in the acceptance letter!

Reflecting back on the process, I would have told myself not to hesitate in working with Alex (I had been debating whether it would be a worthwhile investment or not). Knowing what I do now about b-school applications, I can’t picture help any better than I received from him. Another tip – during the “busy” times (before R1 and R2 deadlines), he firmly sticks to 48-hour turnover times on essays (very reasonable), so you can typically plan ahead based on this.

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As I began to consider pursuing my MBA, I was overwhelmed by the daunting application process, and felt alone, not knowing many people who had been through it before. Alex was recommended to me by a close friend whose sister had used his program and got into her dream school, HBS. The way my friend spoke of him made me feel like if I really wanted to be competitive and put my best foot forward with my applications, Alex was the guy to work with. This became evident from our first conversation together. Alex walked me through the steps we would take together to thoroughly establish my story and MBA goals before even opening an application. He took the time to get to know me personally and answer all of my questions thoughtfully. It was clear that Alex had many years of experience that translated into impactful coaching tools to help me be successful.



While I was certain that Business School was the next step for me, I initially had trouble verbalizing what I wanted to get out of an MBA and narrowing down concrete goals for my post MBA career. Without feeding me answers, Alex gave me frameworks to think through my strengths, and work them into a unique plan for myself that would stand out as a thoughtful career path in my applications. With Alex’s help, before even starting my applications, I felt equipped to take them on and confident that I would be a competitive applicant. As I worked my way through a 3 school package with him, Alex challenged my thought process and never settled for a product that didn’t completely exhaust all opportunities to make me stand out as a candidate. He helped me completely re-work my resume and write thoughtful essays. He praised my work when appropriate that gave me confidence, but mostly provided constructive feedback that I would have never thought of if I had gone about the process alone. I called Alex on many occasions to discuss changes to my essays (big or small), and felt that I had him as a constant support system.

All in all, I got into 3 of the 5 schools I applied to: Kellogg, Tuck and Fuqua (+$100K scholarship), and I know that Alex’s guidance was an integral part of my success. His level of expertise, natural skill for coaching and genuine personality made for a truly wonderful experience with PrepMBA. I would recommend Alex for anyone who might be weary entering into the application process and is seeking a real competitive edge.

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Working with Alex on my MBA applications was a fantastic experience. He was recommended to me by someone at my firm who had gotten into all three schools she applied to the year before. Beginning with the first conversation I ever had with Alex, I could tell that he is a straight-shooter and someone I can trust. From the start, he explained to me my strengths and weaknesses and the need for me to stand out given my well-represented background and profession. Over his long track record of helping MBA applicants getting into top business schools, Alex has developed a tried-and-true system that was easy to follow but also required me to continuously challenge myself. Alex works by himself, so I was always getting first-hand opinions and advice from him, as opposed to a team of junior assistants. Alex worked directly with me to craft my essay and short responses over many iterations. The first draft of my essay looks nothing like the final version I submitted. Working with Alex, we added life and color into my essay, including a much more memorable introduction and ending.

I did the two school package and was accepted into my first choice HBS. Throughout the application process, I was in constant contact with Alex, going over the progress I’ve made and discussing the next steps. We would schedule 30-60 minute calls, often once a week or more when needed, to connect live on the specific topics we were working on. Not only could I count on Alex for his professionalism and his personal touch, he was also extremely helpful as a sounding board for creative ideas going into the applications. I would absolutely recommend Alex to anyone else who is thinking about applying to top business schools. In fact, I have already recommended him to my co-workers.

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