I hired Square One comprehensive consulting service last year and it was a horrible experience.

the Consultant back then was Erik Yazdani. I never found a smooth cooperation with him. Sometimes he got pissed at me reaching out to him at some thing i need him to answer quickly. I got an interview from wharton and wanted his advice on choosing the time slot. He was pissed that i reached out him without advanced notice and refuse to return my call.

I got into none last year with Square One and interestingly, I heard no words from either Kathryn or Erik after that.

This year, i hired Stacy Blackman and my consultant was Caryn. I got into both schools i applied - University of Chicago and Kellogg with 100k Scholarship. the process of application was super sweet and smooth. Caryn offered very insightful and professional advice. I trusted her on all her advice.

If anyone is considering hiring a consultant, please stay away from Square One. I had horrible experience and they were not responsible. Lack of structure.

I am still reeling from the second denial notification I received from NYU Stern (which follows the rejection from Columbia just few weeks before) two weeks ago and as such, my dream of attending an MBA in NYC has been wiped out (at least for this year). Now, if I told you that I applied with a 650 GMAT score , you may say that I should have expected such an outcome. Fair enough. But what you may not know is that I hired the consultants of SOP Advisory service to help me through the application process. I fell for their wonderful website where they brag about their incredible, high admission success-rate for their clients as prospective MBA candidates. Unfortunately, I experienced that their service was not wonderful at all: I can't know whether my poor GMAT score was the deal breaker in my application, but I can definitely say that the SOP ambition, to make your application as strong as possible and make up for other weaknesses in your profile, (among others a low GMAT score, it is one of first mentioned...take a look at their website under the most common application challenges list) has totally failed.

On top of this, every time I sounded the consultants out on any advice, I was treated with haughtiness and talked down to, both in the emails sent to me and during our Skype conversations. For example, I sent an email to my consultant last week saying that I has also been rejected from NYU and I am still waiting for his reply!!
On the other hand, the monthly payment reminders were sent like clockwork.

All in all my personal experience with SOP has been disastrous, not only for the very questionable service standard but also because of the poor customer care .
The service was very expensive and not value for money at all (LORs, essay and resume advisory for two business schools totaled 5,700 USD). Furthermore, the service should have included interview training as well. In the end I was rejected and did not benefit from the service. On top of this, I have never received even a partial refund from them.
I discourage future applicants to resort to this service: in hindsight I would never ever hire them!

Summary in one sentence: without Kathryn my MBA application success would not be possible.
Before I started my MBA application with Kathryn, my target school was any of the S16 schools.
But at the end, I received Columbia Business School's admission!

I did research on many consultants and used their free consultation. Kathryn was the first one I contacted. During the 40 minutes of the consultation, she didn't waste even one minute talking about her or her company: every minute was spent on me, on MY case. She listened carefully when I talked about my background, career goals, target schools and so on, taking notes. And her immediate responses on my case were already deep and thoughtful. Most importantly she provided her truthful analysis without any hesitation, even I was not her client yet.

Later on, I contacted at least 5 other top rated consulting companies on gmatclub for free consultation, expecting the same kind of services as provided by Kathryn. However, none of those free consultations came even close. For some of them, they might spend the first 15-20 minutes talking about their "superb" services and then another 10-15 minutes asking about me. For one of them, the consultant was only selling their services for almost 30 minutes! And I had to interrupt to redirect the discussion to my case!

At the end, the choice was quite obvious. I contacted Kathryn again to use her service. When Kathryn asked me if I would use her or one of her consultants, I said "you" without any hesitation, although her price was quite a bit more expensive, because I knew she was the only one that I can trust 100%!

The choice proved to be absolutely correct and worth it. From the 3+-hour deep walk-through of experience, to resume editing, to essay brainstorming and editing, to recommendation strategy, to interview mocks, every single time, Kathryn was so professionally accurate, sharp and efficient, with great care and thorough understanding of my case. She made sure my story is complete and logically making sense, and I don't divert from it, especially in my interview. I think this focus made the core message much stronger to the admission officers and the interviewer, a key to our success.

At the end, I would like to thank her again. As I said, without her, CBS is not possible for me. And I would recommend her to any MBA applicants without any hesitation, as actually I already did to a couple of potential applicants in my real life.

After deciding to apply to b-school with less than a month before deadlines and with an extensive target list of schools, I quickly was overwhelmed with the application process. I reached out to Square One and from the initial consultation through each school's deadline, I was impressed with their ability to help me navigate this complicated journey. Kathryn and Collin provided honest and real feedback (with a quick turnaround at any hour), while consistently making sure that my application had a clear narrative that uniquely represented me. Their ability to help me connect a career trajectory that was disjointed along with their ability to push me to think past the superficial details of my experiences enabled me to not only grow personally, but also prepared me incredibly for business school. I could not have asked for a better partner and I highly recommend them.

I hired Square One after doing due diligence on 6 different admissions consultants (Scott at Personal MBA Coach, Debbie at MBAMission, Judith at Fortuna were the other top contenders for me). I needed help telling my story in a concise way (public ivy, 5 years in consulting and tech, 3.4 GPA, 740 GMAT).

I'm happy to report that, with Square One's support, I was accepted into Wharton's Lauder program (MBA/MA International Studies joint degree). This is a program I've been dreaming about for the last 5 years, and they made it happen.

Before Square One, I actually started working with Stacey Blackman, who set me up with Paul, one of their veterans. The guy was totally unprepared for our first call - he was late, did not set an agenda, and was reading my resume for the first time as he rambled. I bailed after he completely missed our second call. Unforgivable at $300+ per hour.

Thankfully, Square One was another level of professionalism. I was set up with Josh, who was really patient and spent hours with me to refine my business school story.

Key areas that he excelled in, in order of importance - helped set up my recommenders so that their letters could thoughtfully add more to my story, completely reformatted my resume, and shared essays from a ton of previously successful admits to my top choice schools (inspired my own writing).

Key areas that he needed to improve - Josh wasn't a huge value add for my essays. Writing these are more of a personal journey anyway, but it would have been better to have his frequent input. Josh became less and less available as time went on, often taking days / up to a week to respond (when we started, we were in touch over text and he would have updates for me within literally seconds), as he had a side business that he worked on while advising me. When Kathryn got this feedback, she let Josh go. I then worked directly with Kathryn, the founder. She helped me get through the finish line, and she is by far the best admissions consultant I have worked with. Her insight on what's important to the schools really showed. If you have the chance, work with Kathryn.

One area that I went to someone else for - Judith at Fortuna ran an incredible mock interview for Wharton's Team-Based Discussion. Judith previously worked at the Wharton adcom, and it showed. A group of us jumped on a conference call, and walked through a real-life TBD facilitated by Judith. She gave us really solid individualized feedback after the fact. If I had not done this, I would not have had nearly the same confidence in the real TBD. Kathryn at Square One did not offer this service - I wish she did!

Final takeaways - I think the polish on my rec letter requests, resume, and interview prep all contributed to getting my acceptance letter. My advice is to spend a lot of time finding the right consultant who is backed with the right resources. I found that with Square One, and am pretty thankful for it.

Prior to working with Square One Prep I interviewed numerous other consultancies and went with SOP as it was clear that it was the best place to get the most individualized advice to get into my dream schools. I cannot reaffirm strongly enough that my initial rationale was validated after working with the SOP team. I worked numerous hours hand-in-hand with both my consultant and Kathryn herself. This includes spending hours on the phone with Kathryn from my hotel in Evanston the night prior to my interview with Kellogg. I can unequivocally say that working with Kathryn helped me open the doors to getting into my dream school. I received such tailored advice to highlight the uniqueness of my qualities despite coming from an overrepresented demographic. I was pushed to soul search and write truly genuine essays that actually helped me progress personally, in addition to getting into Kellogg.

Key takeaways:

I had subpar performance on my GMAT and was able to get into Kellogg despite the unflattering score. Kathryn helped me articulate my unique story in such a way that adcoms were able to look past my GMAT score to see the valuable addition that I would be to their class and their alumni base.

I was waitlisted originally yet, once again, Kathryn gave me the insight to navigate the process from everything to writing follow-up correspondence with the admissions department to getting additional and follow-up recommendations. Had it not been for her guidance, I am confident that I would have made missteps that could have resulted in me not getting off of the waitlist.

I cannot recommend a partner to help you navigate the entire process from resume construction through waitlist follow-ups more strongly than Square One Prep.

I shopped around quite a bit before choosing SOP and working with Kathryn and Kunal, and I am 100% sure I made the right choice. Thanks to them, I got interviews at all 5 schools I applied to (HBS, Stanford, Wharton, Booth, Haas), and I got into 3 of them (Wharton, Booth, Haas)!

Some highlights about my experience:
- Going in, I did not really have a clue about why I wanted to pursue an MBA, or what I wanted to do longterm. Kunal and Kathryn took an incredible amount of time to get to know my story - personally and professionally - and helped me brainstorm in order to get to fundamental truths about myself and what I was passionate about. This then led to a much more compelling story I could tell in my application, with pride and authenticity.

- Kathryn planned a thorough schedule and really helped me stay on track so that I would not be scrambling last minute to submit applications. As someone who is a compulsive procrastinator, I was particularly impressed by how they were able to push me to meet their deadlines and make sure I wouldn't be overly stressed as the school deadlines approached.

- Kathryn and Kunal provided honest feedback on my essays throughout the process, and only signed off on something when they thought it was truly ready. In one case, I had to go through 7+ essay revisions before they were happy with the product, and that made me feel very confident in what I was submitting.

I highly recommend working with SOP - they helped transform my candidacy into one that was competitive for the top schools, and they helped me learn valuable insights about myself in the process!

Yale SOM!! I still can’t believe my dream has just come true!!

When I started thinking about my business school application, I knew the process was not going to easy. Fighting the battle yourself could be very intimating; therefore I decided to work with a consultant. I did weeks of research and due-diligence, calling more than 10 admissions consultant firms. I finally decided to work with Square One Prep! Starting from the first call, Kathryn is the only person that showed genuine care about my application. I felt confident like never before going into my application. Just by speaking with me for 30-40 minutes, she spotted highlights in my life/career and came up with a great theme for my application story.

Here are a few instances that show Kathryn and her team is unbelievably amazing:

1. Coming in with a fairly strong academic background, I thought I was not going to have any problems with the GMAT. Turns out that was not the case. I took the GMAT several times and the highest score that I could achieve was still about 40 points below the average at the schools that I wanted to apply to. While other firm consultants may advise you to go for a less competitive school, Kathryn encouraged me to still apply to my interested schools! Both Kathryn and Faryn worked with me to strengthen all other components of my application and minimize my weaknesses. At those extremely competitive schools, there is usually no room for errors. Kathryn reviewed everything Faryn and I created and definitely made sure that my applications were as perfect as they could be!

2. Waitlist Experience – Another wonderful experience with Square One Prep! Kathryn and her team never, never give up on you!! Kathryn, Faryn and I immediately jumped into action! There were hours spent with me during the 4 months of waitlist period for additional interest letters, and waitlist advice! Not once did I feel like they were giving up on me. I had submitted several various updates to the school and every single one was right on time, before the school conducts another waitlist reductions. Kathryn’s guidance on timing was just incredible! And the additional materials that I submitted were all high-quality (my admission confirms it). They really meant it when they said they are there to guide me to success. Their sole purpose is to help clients reach success, not to beat around the bush and try to earn more profit.

For business school applications absolutely go with Square One Prep!
In the years to come you will realize that it is one of the best decisions you have made for yourself!

I worked with Melissa from the Square One Prep team for hourly services on 3 applications in Round 2 (Booth, HBS, Kellogg). She was meticulous in her work and gave guided inputs. I enjoyed working with her. She exceeded my expectations. We did most of communication through e-mails which was very effective. I got interview calls from Booth and Kellogg. I also did practice interview sessions with her. The whole process was a learning experience for me as well. She was helpful and at the same time pointed out my mistakes and kept correcting me.

I would surely recommend her and services of Square One Prep.

Square One Prep has been phenomenal in helping me understand how to structure my supplemental material to get off the waitlist for Haas and Anderson. I reached out to them after being rejected from 3 schools, and waitlisted for 3. After hearing about my situation, Kathryn quickly jumped into the tactical questions about where I would want to attend between the schools I was waitlisted at. We eliminated one school to focus on the schools that were higher priority. After listening to me share my story, she talked with me in detail about what I should address in my letters and what else I could do to compel the adcoms to take another serious look at my applications. After this, she suggested that Julia would be a great mentor to help me through the process - and she was not wrong.

Julia quickly got up to speed about my status and understanding which parts of my application were lacking and helped me brainstorm of ideas to make them my strengths or address them in an appropriate way. Within 2 weeks we had an action plan, supplemental letters completed, and submitted. With Julia's and Kathryn's help and contributions, I will be attending Haas.

Square One Prep helps tailor the application based on the individual and his/her circumstances - and that is what makes them unique and you - the applicant - successful. I would highly recommend SOP to anyone - preferably starting at the beginning of the application cycle rather than when you're on the waitlist/rejected.