As someone with a less than stellar profile (<3.0 ugpa, <700 GMAT), non-business work experience (Engineering) and looking to attend a top B-school program and career switch into a very competitive field (Investment Banking) I felt that it would be best to get help from a professional in working on my applications. I came across Amerasia from reading Paul Lanzilotti’s prospective student profile reviews on the Admissions Consultants board. I really liked the candid and honest opinions and advice he provided and scheduled an initial consultation with the company. After sending my profile to Adam Hoff he reviewed it and paired me up with Jenny Lin.

I hired Amerasia to work with me on The Consortium base application + individual school essays for 2 schools. Because of my work with Amerasia, I was able to put together great applications; I was admitted to one of the schools with scholarship consideration (an Elite level program) and was waitlisted by the other (another extremely competitive school) though I plan on sending updates and may still gain admittance there as well. Working with Jenny not only resulted in strong applications for the two schools we worked on together, it also helped me develop a foundation to build off of in my other applications which were also quite strong.

Working with Jenny was absolutely fantastic throughout the entire process. She did a great job of helping me frame my story and really showing me how to get my point across in my essays in a very clear and concise manner all while writing in my own voice. She also showed me how to highlight the strengths in my profile and align my goals with the strengths of the schools I was applying to. She was awesome in helping me during my interview prep working very thoroughly with me through the interview questions and candidly telling me the places where I needed work and how to best phrase my responses. This prep gave me great confidence going into my interviews and I was well prepared to give my responses.

Amerasia, and Jenny especially, more than exceeded my expectations. I was expecting for someone to simply edit my essays and perform some surface level preparation on my applications, but Jenny was right there with me throughout every phase of the application process. I had been researching schools for months before I even began working with Amerasia, yet Jenny gave me some great advice on how to deeper research these schools and how to properly reach out to and interact with various school members(current students, Adcom, professors, etc.) She even recommended some other schools whose strengths aligned with my goals that I had previously overlooked, and even put me in touch with some people she knew at schools I was applying to, and they ended up being great resources for me.

The greatest value of working with Jenny though, goes well beyond just helping me with my application. The B-school application process is an arduous one and can sometimes be a very introspective and emotional time, it was for me at least. Jenny was great at helping me curb my emotions and keep things in perspective. It meant so much to have someone in my corner who believed in me even at times when I didn’t believe in myself.

I definitely recommend Amerasia to anyone looking to apply to B-school. It is such an involved process and having someone who knows the ins and outs of it all can significantly help your chances. Jenny did such a great job of helping me put together a great application, and I’m not sure what they are paying her at Amerasia, but I know they need to give her a raise, she’s worth her weight in gold! lol I know that I was able to produce much more competitive and overall impressive applications because of my work with Amerasia.

I have read a lot about some admissions consultants actually writing essays for their clients, and I would like to say that Amerasia does not in any way conduct business like this. Amerasia has a very involved system of learning about their clients’ profiles, strengths, and goals and they do a great job of using this knowledge to best help their clients. In my work with Amerasia, all of my essays were written in my own voice and with my own ideas.

I am choosing to not submit this review anonymously because I would like to help any GMAT Club member who would like to know more about my experience working with Jenny and Amerasia. Please feel free to send me a PM if you have any questions.

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I worked with Amerasia for Booth and Kellogg this year and I honestly feel I would've been lost without using some kind of consultant (I also used Precision Essay for Duke in R1). It's not that I couldn't have done it on my own, it's that I'm a natural worrier and perfectionist, and without someone there to give me structure and monitor my progress, I was spinning my wheels for weeks without getting anywhere. I was so hung up about my GMAT not being good enough (58% in Quant!) that I felt helpless when it came to promoting my strengths. I spent weeks working on first drafts of essays and would scrap everything and still had nothing decent to show for it. I was running out of time and needed a kick in the butt to stop analyzing and start putting things together.

I was so impressed from the initial 1 hour call and felt he had enough school-specific knowledge to know what they were looking for. He addressed my concern over the GMAT score, and told me the only school on my list that was really strict about the quant percent being above 80 was Haas (only official ding so far, so looks like he was right) and eased my worries by saying the breakdown really doesn't matter all that much. Regarding GMAT, all they care about is whether you can handle the academics (and your high GPA proves this) and that your total score doesn't bring down their averages too much (and your GMAT is lower than their avg, but your GPA is higher so you're pretty much a wash). This made so much sense and made me feel confident about applying, it really made the difference for me.

Duke w/precsion essay was a mad dash, my fault for not leaving enough time. I had plenty of time for R2 and chose to go with Amerasia for Booth. He spent about a week reviewing my profile, resume, notes from our call etc and put together a document outlying my strengths and weaknesses in each area as it relates to Booth's core values. He read my essay drafts in detail and pointed out things that left a bit of confusion about my story and gave suggestions on what I could say to really make it powerful. With the powerpoint essay, he reviewed a few different intial ideas and gave his opinion on which was the best. Knowing he works with lots of clients and hearing him say something like "that's a really unique approach, I've never seen anyone do that before" gave me confidence to run with it, because I knew it would not be like so many others (like my second idea was)

I chose to go with a smaller essay only package with Amerasia for Kellogg as well after I was impressed by their work on Booth. I did feel this one was a bit more rushed, but I didn't make the decision to add this one until the very end. Overall very impressed and glad I went with them, I got into Booth with scholarship (something I thought impossible with a 58% Q from a quant heavy school) and used some of the same ideas in other school essays (got into Ross with the same concepts)

If you have any specific questions or want advice on the consultant process, feel free to PM me!

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