Eric, an extremely sharp, dedicated, professional consultant

I applied to HBS, Wharton, MIT and Columbia and got into 2 schools of my dreams and waitlisted from the other two! Few years ago, I worked with another bulge bracket consulting firm, applied to same schools and only got interview invitations from two schools(I withdrew from the process before having the interviews). I contribute much of this success to Eric. Comparing my past experience and stories from 10+ close friends and colleagues who have worked with different MBA consultants in the past 1-2 years, I can say with confidence that my experience of working with Eric was by far the most productive and helpful.

Having worked as an analyst at an investment bank, I would describe working with Eric as such: (1) he was my “associate” at times, giving me detailed and extremely hands on comments/advice when necessary, (2) but also a keen “managing director” at other times, guiding me with high level comments that sometimes shifted entirely the topics/stories to elaborate on essays (critical as this served as the backbone of my entire application). (3) And at all times, he made sure I was actively incorporating comments and doing the thinking/writing, which was important in maintaining my voice and sounding genuine and personal throughout all the essays. These three I believe are key success factors in getting into top schools.

Specifically, key attributes which set Eric apart were:
- Timeliness, Efficiency & Approachability – He always gave me feedback before the promised deadline and was always available/approachable for any short or long comments/questions (for example, he will look at your essays on the plane, at his sister’s wedding during weekends or very early/late in the day, if necessary). He is extremely flexible and if possible, never make you intentionally wait the entire 48 hour response period guided by MBA Mission. While you are aware that the consultants have the whole 2 days to get back to you, frustration will build when your consultant is unwilling to flexibility work around it. With Eric, this will not be the case.
- Sharpness & objectivity – Eric knows what the admissions are looking for and quick to point/pull them out from your various life-long anecdotes. For example, having an investment banking background, I feared that my career background and aspirations would sound too dull/typical for the “why MBA and career goal?” essays and came up with a career goal that was geared towards a more seemly unique industry. I was excited to have come up with a more unique story for MBA essay purposes and presented to Eric, who quickly commented that it did not sound convincing/genuine enough and would serve me negatively. He advised that I stick to my original/true career goal but worked with me in really specifying/shaping the details of the examples/motivations, which led to a very dense, effective essay. In writing more personal essays, I again feared that my life story would be too dull (it seemed I did not have a failure, success or family-related anecdotes that critically stood out), but with a what may seem like a typical story, he really pushed and challenged me to go layers further in conveying the motivations for particular actions I took in the past. Again, this led to an extremely dense and personal essay which I believe served me well, being one of the more over represented candidates from finance background.
- Depth and exhaustiveness of feedback/advice – Again, Eric knows what is/is not important in the eye of admissions and he will give you an exhaustive comment on the key points you should focus on (some often going over couple paragraphs in writing or through phone calls, whichever he judges to be more efficient/effective). For example, on my personal essays, he provided detailed comments on stories I should eliminate but highlighted parts he felt I should deep dive into by asking me “why did you feel this way?”, “what made you…”, or “your response to these motivations conflicts with other motivations, think again” etc,. These various detailed “why” comments really pushed me hard to think, think and think and led me to write an essay that was deeply personal and genuine. You want your consultant to be able to push you to think but at the same time spend time thinking only on stories that matter so at the end, you end up actually finishing the essay on time. So equally important on that end is that he will make sure you don’t waste your time “thinking” over parts that are not critical.

Eric is one of the most professional individuals I have come across in any field; every moment you are working with him, you can tell he is genuinely dedicated to his career and reputation as a consultant (this compares to some other consultants who has other jobs on the side or working as a consultant as an in-between job). During the 6 months I worked with him, I thought how great it would be to have a colleague/boss with similar working style/work ethic like Eric!

Finally, personally, he is sincere, nice and just extremely pleasant to talk to. I have a brother and a cousin who will be applying to MBAs next year, and I will recommend no one else but Eric!