Scott is the man.

I've never considered admissions consultants, even 5 months into the application process. I honestly thought they were a waste of money, and anyone with some common sense and have successfully applied to top schools before (that requires essay writing) should be enough.

A good friend of mine who was helping me through the process asked me if I wanted to chat with Scott. Since the 15 min call was free, I called Scott and shared with him my story. To my surprise, he did not sugar coat his points of reservation, and was very forward about what aspects was not working. His honesty is refreshing. At no point in the conversation did I feel that he was courting me for his services. He was already serving me.

I only had budget for one or two schools. He recommended that we work together on the school that has the highest admit rate, because I was aiming to get into any top program in this application season. I chose to work with him on my reach school instead (with one of the lowest acceptance rates in the world). When I told him my school selection, he was nothing but supportive. I was worried that because I chose the hardest school to get into, he would not work as hard with me as he would otherwise, since I'm risking his "96% success rate.", but he was so professional, and gave me great guidance along the way.

Here are some things I really liked about Scott
- Readily Available. His turnaround times are crazy awesome. We burned through 5 or 6 drafts for three separate essays within a span of 2 weeks (15 drafts in total within 14 days). And I'm talking about serious edits with a lot of thought put in. This was during the short lull between R1 and R2. But when crunch time hits, he was still replying at an impressive rate of t+36 hours at the latest. You literally cannot find this anywhere else in the market.

-Honesty: Mentinoed this before, but he gives you good reason as to why an idea would not work. So whenever he greenlighted my story or essays, I knew I got something solid.

-Industry specific insights: This is probably the greatest value add of Scott. Throughout the process, you, as an applicant, will need guidance on more than just the essays. I remember just hitting Scott up for random questions like "which picture should I use for my application?" or "do you think I should write to alums to put in good word for me?" Scott can give school specific insights, and that helped a lot.

End result: I got interview invitations from 2 of HSW, and got an offer from one of them and a merit based fellowship.

Scott is worth every penny. And he's not even the most expensive consultant out there!

Scott- if you are reading this, thanks again.