The first commenter on this post brought up the fact that they had used a business school consultant to help them with their application for the Harvard Business School. I’m not sure I was even aware there was such a thing. I’m also not sure how much I’d want to use one, although the idea of having someone who knew what they were doing mentoring me on the process is intriguing.
If you are such a consultant or if you’ve used a business school consultant, or if you just have an opinion about business school consultants, please post about you and your experiences.
Here’s one I know of. I’ve heard great things about them:
http://www.expartus.com/
I used one through admissionsconsultants.com. Although their web site is ugly as sin (which is important in my field), their CEO manages a fairly active discussion board at admissionsboards.com and I found a lot of his insight helpful (I also liked that all of their consultants have actual Adcom experience at top schools…not just a random degree in literature from Princeton or something).
After applying to five schools three years ago and getting waitlisted at two of them, I decided to get a bit more work experience and then paid for a one-hour consultation in early 2007 about my “chances” of getting into top 5 schools. My consultant (a former admissions director at Duke) gave me some great feedback and really helped me gain some perspective on the competitiveness (or not) of my application.
In light of her feedback and having just started a business, I decided to wait another year before reapplying. Looking back, it was the best decision I could have made. I grew a lot; I learned a lot about myself; and the extra time really helped me determine how to best benefit from an MBA and evaluate my desire/need for one.
In summer 2008, I started working with one of their other consultants (my former consultant had taken a job at one of my target schools…thus, a conflict of interest).
I don’t think my second consultant was as helpful, but, for $900, I think it was worth it. I had him help me with my top school choice (Stanford), but his feedback was helpful on all of my applications (six). I will say, however, that the feedback I got from other MBA graduates from top schools (friends), was probably more helpful than my consultant’s feedback (frustrating).
But, I don’t have a ton of friends with MBAs from top schools and I wasn’t comfortable having any of them spend 20 hours on my applications (and none of them would accept money…I tried).
Sorry. Probably more info than you wanted to hear. I’m pretty sure I didn’t get into Stanford, but I did get into Kellogg and Duke…and for that, I have no regrets.
Is this site a joke? I read your application. Are you kidding me? Immediately after reading your first paragraph, I couldn’t take the rest of your story seriously. Seriously.
The site isn’t but the first paragraph of my first essay was, and perhaps that’s how the entire application ended up being taken. At the time I felt I needed to explain some of my bad grades, and I chose to do it in a humorous way. I wouldn’t do it the same way again, and as I’ve said before, the biggest mistake I made in the application process was that I never got an HBS grad to read my application. That one step would have done a world of good, I’m sure, although I don’t think that alone would have been enough given other shortcomings that will require years to overcome.
I do appreciate the candor (seriously, if my application is a “joke” then I want to know that so I can fix it), and if you have any further insights you’d be willing to offer please do so in the comments section of this other post.