Less A Consultant, More A Mentor

I worked with Faisal for my applications to b-schools last year after I was referred to him by a friend of mine. I was in the process of finalizing a consultant and was meeting with admissions consulting firms left, right, and center.

The first thing that worked with Faisal was his brutal honesty about my chances. I was a male IT engineer from a non-IIT background applying with a GRE score of 325 (To most, these parameters are as close to a death knell as they can get) and Faisal was extremely candid about the fact. What I absolutely loved about him was that he did not shoot me down exclusively based on my score (like a majority of consultants did) or painted a very rosy picture of my applications (like a lot of others did). Faisal devised a plan for us to develop the application and focus on retaking the GRE in parallel.

Faisal works in an extremely comprehensive manner to craft the applications. Before getting started we worked on an extensive document to flush out all of my important life stories. The questions in the document brought out stories that I almost forgot existed. We then honed in on developing a compelling narrative across applications and together we drafted compelling essays (essays that I’m proud of).

I ended up with a T20 admit with a ~$45k scholarship. I can’t recommend Faisal enough. Post admit, Faisal has continued to mentor me and advise me on a host of things. I barely noticed when he stopped being the consultant and become a treasured mentor who had my best interests in mind.