I approached Kathryn after I was rejected in the earlier application cycle. My GRE was low, and many consultants refused to even speak with me until I raised my score. This was NOT the case with SOP! Since our first call, Kathryn was very supportive, and told me I was not delusional about applying to some of the top schools in the world. Within minutes, she pointed out where I went wrong in my past written applications, highlighted my professional accomplishments, strengths, and community involvement. She knew I was working hard to improve my GRE, and she explained how she typically does not take clients with my score, but knew she could help me craft a strong, compelling story.

I signed up for a 4-school package, and my first application deadline was due in one month. Kathryn warned me that it would be very intensive, but if I was up for it, SOP was ready to go. She sent me a few day-to-day advisor profiles that she felt would be ideal with my career goals and personality. I hopped on a call with two of them, and it was an incredibly hard decision to choose between both – but I continued with Ram.

The first month was incredibly intensive, but within 2 weeks, I felt more confident about my career goals than I felt before. The key is in the details, and I experienced a lot of clarity after I completed this process with Wendy, my Career Narrative advisor, Ram and Kathryn.

During the school selection process, make sure you consider Kathryn’s advice, especially when she tells you to apply to other top schools that are also aligned with your personal goals and overall applicant profile. She encouraged me to apply to Fuqua as it was closely tied with my career goals, and was a great fit with my personality.

I was accepted to Fuqua (with scholarship) – which would not be possible without the constant support and advice from the SOP team!!! I was also waitlisted at Tuck and was told by admissions to try improving my GRE scores, which I am, while SOP is helping me craft a compelling waitlist letter. I’m now waiting to hear back from the other two schools I applied to in R2. I know for a fact that SOP has helped me craft the best narrative to highlight my strengths.

My day-to-day advisor was Ram, who worked with me every step of the way and spent countless hours on the phone and over email to learn about my background and experiences, while providing insights for individual schools/essays. He’s honest, compassionate, and 100% committed to your success (not only for the applications, but in life)! He makes himself available at any time, gives prompt responses, and his way with words is unlike others. He has consistently encouraged me to be more reflective and introspective, and when coupled with his phenomenal writing skills, has helped me craft an authentic story.

Ram will encourage you to explore different perspectives and continue to dig deep until you arrive at something that can differentiate your candidacy. His interview preparation is excellent! His advice made me feel confident every step of the way, and know it will help me in the future as well.

Overall, working with the SOP team has been a wonderful experience, and every member of the team is accessible and genuinely invested in your success! Bailey and Jenny will make sure you are on track for your applications, while your career advisor, day-to-day advisor and Kathryn will help create the best application for you! You won’t regret working with SOP, especially if you want individualized attention from an intelligent and empathetic team.

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Admission into a top school wouldn’t be possible without square one. I began the program confused and scared like most MBA applicants and registered for a 1:1 session with Kathryn. As my conversation with Kathryn continued, I realized she’s the owner of SOP! For the owner of the company to be spending time learning how she can help me get into business school meant so much to me. Further, she was willing to chat for over an hour and a half, diligently answering all the questions I had about the process going well beyond the time other companies give you for a consultation. This is when I knew I would sign with Square One Prep.

I began the process a young African with 2 years of work experience and a 3.0 GPA. (hardly the ideal b-school candidate on paper) but with the help of Kathryn, Collin and the rest of her team, we were able to show my top school why I deserved to be a part of the program.

I’ll be attending Wharton this fall and I’m still giddy! SOP helped me take a major step in my life and I’m forever indebted to them!

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Right off the bat, Kathryn and the Square One team differentiated themselves through my initial consultation with Kathryn. While respectful and thoughtful, Kathryn was direct and to the point in during the call, a style that the entire Square One team embodied throughout the process.

Throughout the process, the entire team was incredibly responsive and helped me stay on-top of my deadlines, despite my complaining about my busy work schedule. In addition to hand-holding me through the specific parts of the application, Kathryn and her team were very helpful in guiding me through some of the “softer” parts of the process (e.g., willingness to jump on a call when I was suffering from writers block, debriefing after interviews, guidance on nudging my recommenders to submit their recommendations on time, etc.)

The entire Square One Team enabled me to pull together multiple business school applications in a short period of time while maintaining my sanity and I would recommend them to anyone who is considering applying to business schools.

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From my very first free consultation call with Kathryn, I knew I found the right group of individuals to help me through this process. I engaged with SOP based on the suggestion of a friend going through the application process and reached out shortly before my first interview. After my first (free) consultation, Kathryn and I had already come up with a game plan on how to get me ready (an aggressive plan but one that would position me best for my top choice school). I appreciate the level of attention and check-ins to make sure all the pieces of the application were moving forward. This was particularly helpful while life and work were picking up for me.

Quickly after my consultation, I knew I was committed and soon after interviewed my advisor. My advisor not only became a friend during this process but a real confidant. Afiya was transparent, accessible, understanding, but always kept me honest when I needed to get back on track. I really appreciated the support throughout the whole process. Overall I'd highly recommend the services of Square One Prep. Their unique portal helps organize the pieces of the application in a way that is easy to digest and keep up with during this stressful time!

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My primary advisor was Eden and I cannot speak more highly of her. From the get-go, I knew I wanted to target EU schools only, so I wanted someone with experience working with successful EU admits. I applied to three schools; Judge (Cambridge), Oxford (Said) and INSEAD.

I first heard of SOP through a referral from a peer; a Forte Fellow who got an admit from Booth. I'd spoken to 3-4 other consulting companies by this time, so I thought I have nothing to lose by setting up a 30 minute video call with Kathryn, which turned into a 60 minute call. I wanted a partner who wouldn't just help me develop my application, but was going to be 100% honest and give sincere constructive feedback throughout the process. I asked her the hard questions; "A 93% success rate for interviews overall, what about the SPECIFIC schools I'm applying to?", "How many clients have you worked with, with non-traditional backgrounds?", "These are my worry points, what would be your suggestion if we worked together?".... She answered each one perfectly, personally, and with the utmost confidence in me.

I think that was the differentiating factor throughout my four month engagement with them - Confidence.
1. Kathryn, Eden, Wendy, Bailey and Jenny had an unwavering confidence in my candidacy (even at times when I had little confidence in myself!). This rubbed off on me.
2. Confidence in their work - and they should - they know what they are doing!

I'd specifically like to highlight the below;

*ESSAYS*, essays, essays. After trawling my files, this is what Eden and I have come to...
3 schools/ 19 essays/ 188 revisions (~9.89 revisions per essay). Eden was extremely professional. Despite the time difference (US and EU), she would make sure she had each revision back to me within 24 hours (but most of the time <12hrs). Toward the completion of the essays, we would often send three versions within a 24 hour period. The hours she would have put into the essays easily would have amounted to over 100 hours. Her attention to detail, her passion to keep my 'voice'/authenticity, her professionalism was more than I expected. Eden was with me every step of the way (school selection, background analysis, essays, LORs, interview prep.. the list goes on). Honestly, she wouldn't be doing it if she wasn't passionate about who she was working with. By the end of our engagement, Eden was more of a friend and mentor than an admissions consultant and I give her credit for my success (and the many others she's helped get into top MBAs).

On top of that, each of my 19 essays were reviewed by the Leadership Team twice. I truely believe that everyone at SOP, whether an advisor or the CEO, was committed to making sure I put my best foot forward.

Career Narrative/Career Vision
I thought I knew what I wanted to do, but Wendy, Eden and Kathryn made me realise how many gaps I had in my plan. By guiding me to think deeply into who I want to be, what I want to do, and what I want to stand for, I was able to craft a strong, compelling career narrative which is 100% me. This required hours of introspection (and psychological might from all parties) but ultimately I was able to explore, research and decide on career prospects, geographical moves and timelines, the skills I'll need, and the impact I'll have.

Systems Approach
Lastly, I wanted to give credit to the strong systems that SOP has established for clients, like you and I, to utilise. This includes the personalised Schedule which visualises (in a calendar graph format) when each component of the application (each essay, LORs, Career Narrative, etc), who is currently working on it, and their deadlines. They also provide sample essays only from past successful admits (anonymously) specific to the school. Both these tools kept me accountable, while expanding my thinking and truely appreciating that not one essay/application is the same, just like not one person is the same.


I'm happy to report that I'm off to INSEAD starting in September. I am still waiting to hear scholarship decisions (I will update my review once I find out).

I recommend Square One Prep and Eden wholeheartedly for any aspiring MBA candidate.

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Square one prep is one of the best investments you can make in yourself. The MBA application can be extremely stressful and square one prep takes out all the stress through their structured approach.

Jeannice, Kathryn and Wendy helped me immensely throughout the application process. From brainstorming my career narrative to my interview preparation, my team was always pushing me to give my 100%. My consultant, Jeannice, was extremely responsive to all my emails and made sure I completed all my deliverables on time. I was so happy with the quality of service that I decided to purchase another school package.

Square one prep worked with me till the very end and not only helped me get off the waitlist but also helped me secure a scholarship to my dream school!

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I am so thrilled with my results after working with the amazing resources at Square One Prep! There is no way I would have been able to have received four acceptances and two scholarships without their help every step of the way. They broke down each component of the overwhelming process into doable, bite-sized steps, and kept me on a schedule which was truly invaluable.

One of the most helpful parts of the process was working on my career narrative with Wendy and the team. As someone who plans to make a substantial career change post-MBA, it was vital to form a clear story and define my short- and long-term goals. The team was very patient with me as I went through multiple ideas and figured out what exactly it was that I was trying to convey to adcoms through my applications. They helped guide my thought process until I had what felt like the most authentic narrative for me, and they never dictated a certain story that they thought I should tell.

Annie, my individual advisor, was incredibly helpful as I went through the essay writing process, particularly as I generated compelling and thoughtful ideas for each essay. She was not afraid to push back on me when the ideas or content was not strong enough. She really got to know me, my interests, and my stories in order to help me craft the strongest responses to each school and their unique prompts. She also was very helpful when guiding myself and my recommenders through the recommendation process.

I would absolutely recommend Square One Prep as you take on the MBA application process!

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I have consulted with quite a few consulting services at the beginning of the process. At the time I felt very uncertain about how strong my candidacy was with a background from the arts in a startup environment. Time was ticking to hit R1 deadlines when I decided to apply. Kathryn and SOP were swift, honest, genuine in giving a thorough initial assessment and providing great insights right away on the free consultation call. She was generous with her time, educated me, and immediately instilled confidence in me, while some firms were really no shy of crushing your faith in yourself. It was so important to feel that your consultant sees you and has your back, with the support of experiences and insights.

My primary consultant Mike White was extremely hands-on and made himself very available. The response time is usually within hours the entire time. He adhered to a unique SOP process while adding his own perspective and professional input to sculpting your story.  Rather than asking clients to submit a self-reflective questionnaire that requires a majority of the introspective heavy-lifting already been done, SOP’s process makes the crucial reflection process an active intake and conversation between the client and the consultant. To me, that takes a lot of psychological burdens off and makes it much less daunting to start the process.

I deeply appreciate the career narrative process with Wendy and Kathryn. They really challenge you, again and again, to think hard and deep, at micro and micro, personal and market-level on why a certain career path makes sense to you. Such work is so worthwhile and necessary that bleeds into everything that you write from there.

For anyone who seeks the sense of security that someone is always there for you at any moment (literally picking up a phone late a night if an emergency happens) and have the option to solicit opinions from multiple perspectives from your support system SOP is really a great choice.

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Thanks the Square One Prep team (Matteo, Kathryn, Wendy and Bailey) so much for helping me get into my dream school! I believe MBA will be a life changing experience for me and SOP plays the most important part in this application process. I'm a re-applicant and SOP is the key to help me rebuild my confidence.

Thanks Matteo, who spent great amount of time, kept revising and refining my version again and again.

Thanks Kathryn, who's always critical and popping out the key questions for me to think about and work on.

Though the application process is definitely a tiring process, I'm so lucky that I have SOP to accompany me along the way! I'm not alone!

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The Square One team was extremely supportive of me throughout the entire application process. Back when I was still considering whether to apply to MBA programs, Kathryn carved time out of her schedule on multiple occasions to help me talk through my career path, my professional goals, and how an MBA might fit with these goals. She made me feel comfortable and I truly felt that I could completely be myself around her and the Square One team. I had a pretty aggressive timeline from the time I started my application journey to the application due date, but my advisor Kathleen created and guided me through a plan that was manageable and effective. The team's style involves really getting to know their client, and I appreciated how much effort they put into bringing out the best in me. In addition to just creating the application, I also learned a lot about myself, and I had fun doing it, too! Without Square One, I would have struggled to create an application and conduct an interview that so heavily emphasized my strengths and limited my weaknesses. I would recommend Kathryn and her team to anyone who is kicking off their MBA journey!

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