Amerasia Consulting - Drew Hoff

I worked with Drew Hoff from Amerasia Consulting and had a great experience. I had a free initial consultation phone call with Drew and we spoke for about an hour about my target schools, post-MBA goals, etc. What initially impressed me about Drew was how much he seemed to know about each school. He talked about how important it was to really understand each MBA program’s “DNA” (i.e., the unique characteristics of each program) when preparing applications. After doing consultations with other admissions consultants that just talked generically about applications, this is what led me to decide to work with Drew.

After the initial consultation, I completed a questionnaire so that he could learn more about my background. We then started by working on a general career goals essay (not school specific) because he felt that nailing that down would be important for all of my applications. Once we finalized the career goals essay, we moved onto school specific applications. For each school that I worked with Drew on, he would prepare a 4-7 page strategy memo for the school. The strategy memo would give some background on the key qualities that each school looks for in applicants and then discussed strategies for approaching each essay question so that I could display those key qualities in my essays.

When we started working on the actual application essays, I would send him a first draft of an essay and he would either come back with a redline and comments or tell me to try a different approach. Be warned, Drew’s not just going to let you settle for a decent essay. On one application, I went through 14 versions of an essay before we finalized it. His typical response time was 2-3 days for an essay revision (but quicker as we approached deadlines).

Outside of the essays, Drew helped me to select my recommenders and also gave me a strategy memo on how to approach a recommender. He also prepared me for interviews on the phone by walking through some of my answers for general questions as well as stories for the behavioral questions.

I’m happy to report that with Drew’s help, I got acceptances into two M7 schools as well as another Top 20 school. Overall, Drew was like a coach for the MBA application process who helped to bring out the best in me for each application. For anyone considering an admissions consultant, I would strongly recommend his services.