If you're on this site you're thinking about business school; and if you're thinking about business school, you should be thinking about an admissions consultant.
There is simply no investment that can give you a higher yield in terms of schools gotten into, grants / fellowships money, and long-term career earnings.
But how do you choose a good one? Here are seven criteria that will guide you to getting the most out of your investment in admissions consulting:
- A good consultant helps you think carefully and systematically about where you want to go to business school and which schools are the best fit (see another sticky post in the Kaplan forum for a list of criteria you should be considering). A good consultant points out inconsistencies and points you towards schools and considerations that you might not have thought of.
- A good consultant helps you position business school as the fastest and most efficient way for you to get from where you are now to where you want to be in two years, in other words, position an MBA as a "bridge." This is often harder than it sounds but is essential for a successful application. In fact, in way or another, it is the foundational element of every application.
- A good consultant helps you achieve internal consistency in your application. Are you saying one thing with your resume but another with your essays? Are you claiming experience that is not backed up by your reommenders? Do your short and long term goals align with the strengths of the program to which you are applying? Don't be like my finance client who, in his application to Northwestern, said he wanted to go there for the marketing classes!
- A good consultant helps you structure your essays. Sometimes a big chunk of essay needs to come out (and the writer --and this happens to everybody-- invested too much time in it to see it) or paragraph order needs to be switched around. It's amazing how much an essay can be improved by switching two or three paragraphs and cleaning up a few transition sentences. A good consultant has a grasp of essay structure and flow and can communicate those suggestions quickly and effectively.
- A good consultant helps you make your application letter-perfect. An outsanding admissions consultant can go from big-picture positioning and consistency issues all the way down to wonky syntax, clunky writing, and other tone and style issues. They also make sure that your voice comes through --the good ones do not ghost write applications.
- A good consultant is responsive (e-mail and phone), enthusiastic, friendly, easy to work with, has a sense of humor, and has learned how to work quickly and efficiently, maximizing the value of the time that you have bought. You should feel impressed with his or her insights and see immediate noticeable improvement.
- Finally --and this is very very important-- the best MBA admissions consultants don't hold criticisms and comments back. They don't attack but they do candidly and respectfully share all of the concerns and issues that they see with your application and candidacy --you're not paying somebody to tell you how great you are, you're paying somebody to give you direct and at times pointed and uncomfortable feedback. If you're consultant isn't doing that, get rid of him or her and find another one immediately.
Kaplan consultants have a distinguished record of helping MBA applicants by meeting and surpassing these criteria. To begin working with a Kaplan consultant today click here: https://www.kaptest.com/GMAT/Admissions- ... lting.html
There is simply no investment that can give you a higher yield in terms of schools gotten into, grants / fellowships money, and long-term career earnings.
But how do you choose a good one? Here are seven criteria that will guide you to getting the most out of your investment in admissions consulting:
- A good consultant helps you think carefully and systematically about where you want to go to business school and which schools are the best fit (see another sticky post in the Kaplan forum for a list of criteria you should be considering). A good consultant points out inconsistencies and points you towards schools and considerations that you might not have thought of.
- A good consultant helps you position business school as the fastest and most efficient way for you to get from where you are now to where you want to be in two years, in other words, position an MBA as a "bridge." This is often harder than it sounds but is essential for a successful application. In fact, in way or another, it is the foundational element of every application.
- A good consultant helps you achieve internal consistency in your application. Are you saying one thing with your resume but another with your essays? Are you claiming experience that is not backed up by your reommenders? Do your short and long term goals align with the strengths of the program to which you are applying? Don't be like my finance client who, in his application to Northwestern, said he wanted to go there for the marketing classes!
- A good consultant helps you structure your essays. Sometimes a big chunk of essay needs to come out (and the writer --and this happens to everybody-- invested too much time in it to see it) or paragraph order needs to be switched around. It's amazing how much an essay can be improved by switching two or three paragraphs and cleaning up a few transition sentences. A good consultant has a grasp of essay structure and flow and can communicate those suggestions quickly and effectively.
- A good consultant helps you make your application letter-perfect. An outsanding admissions consultant can go from big-picture positioning and consistency issues all the way down to wonky syntax, clunky writing, and other tone and style issues. They also make sure that your voice comes through --the good ones do not ghost write applications.
- A good consultant is responsive (e-mail and phone), enthusiastic, friendly, easy to work with, has a sense of humor, and has learned how to work quickly and efficiently, maximizing the value of the time that you have bought. You should feel impressed with his or her insights and see immediate noticeable improvement.
- Finally --and this is very very important-- the best MBA admissions consultants don't hold criticisms and comments back. They don't attack but they do candidly and respectfully share all of the concerns and issues that they see with your application and candidacy --you're not paying somebody to tell you how great you are, you're paying somebody to give you direct and at times pointed and uncomfortable feedback. If you're consultant isn't doing that, get rid of him or her and find another one immediately.
Kaplan consultants have a distinguished record of helping MBA applicants by meeting and surpassing these criteria. To begin working with a Kaplan consultant today click here: https://www.kaptest.com/GMAT/Admissions- ... lting.html
