I interviewed several admissions consultants and Kathryn immediately stood out for how much time she took to get to know me and the insightful questions she asked in our initial call. These questions (describe one of your happiest moments/describe one of your saddest moments) were key in setting the tone for the self-reflection that informed my business school application process. She also gave me the confidence to apply for my dream school, HBS, with her frank assessment.

I worked with Melissa on applications to Wharton and HBS. Melissa gave thoughtful feedback and kept me on track despite illness/crazy work. Melissa was instrumental in helping me clarify my story and reason for applying to business school through the MANY drafts we did of my Wharton essays. I am not an inexperienced writer, but her feedback and revisions made my essays truly shine and took them to the next level.

The thing that stood out to me most about Square One was their care. I decided not to apply to Lauder very late (mid-Dec - after finalizing my essays!), and both Kathryn and Melissa took time to understand my thought process and for me to feel 100% comfortable in my decision even though this meant completely revising my application for Wharton.

I'll be attending HBS in the Fall and am very grateful to Kathryn and Melissa for their help in getting me there.

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Experience during the program

Business school is unfortunately not a 2 year vacation at HBS. Classes are challenging - you always have to be on top of your game because of class participation and cold calls - and the learning curve in the first semester is very steep. Class attendance is mandatory (HBS has a very strict attendance policy) and there is class 5 days a week. What that does is force everyone to be very engaged, leading to better discussions, and a lot more learning than if it were just the professor speaking. That being said, the case method is a little more difficult to enact in classes like finance and accounting, and it can be hard for those with non-finance backgrounds to get up to speed quickly because the school just throws you in the deep end with financial modeling.

HBS completely met my needs because I wanted to come to business school to learn something (and not be paying $75k/year just to network). It was academically a lot harder than I expected, but everyone is very nice and helpful - a lot of pre-HBS finance people do section reviews out of their desire to help their sectionmates. However this also means that if you’re expecting to come to HBS to cruise or even work on a start up idea, the rigorous curriculum means you might not have the time to do that.

Overall BSchool experience (5.0)
Schools contribution (5.0)
Classmates rating (5.0)

Strengths of the program:

Curriculum, Classes, Professors
Career opportunities provided by school
Brand/Ranking

Best fit at this program:

Consulting
Finance
Investment Banking
Management

Can be improved:

Student body, diversity

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