Best decision I’ve made!

Liza is literally an angel. I’m not sure if I could have gotten into business school without her – I truly believe that she not just boosted my chances, but helped make the whole process a lot less painful. Truly worth every penny!

In terms of my background, I am a female applicant who was accepted to HBS and Wharton, but rejected from Stanford GSB. I went to an Ivy League university with a 3.7 GPA with a 730 GMAT score. I worked at a bulge bracket investment bank and then worked in the finance department of a startup.

I started my business school application process about 2-3 months before the Round 1 deadline. When I sat down to begin drafting the application, my thoughts were pretty scattered and I found it hard to structure how I wanted to bring each part of my history together. After a free 30-minute consultation with Liza (offered through the mbaMission website), I was completely sold. In 30 minutes, she helped answer the top burning questions in my mind (Was my GMAT high enough? What were her thoughts on my initial essay outline? What were the parts of my application were “lacking”? What would be the best use of my time if I wanted to go with an hourly package?). She was upfront about the harder parts of my application (i.e. lots of bankers apply) but helped me structure what I would work on with her if I were to become a client.

I ultimately decided to go with the hourly package and therefore was very conscious of being very efficient with Liza’s time. She was great about calling out the areas of the application that I should be focusing on (and therefore have her focusing on) versus the parts that were more checkmarks. I also had many questions that came up during the process that were probably overblown in my mind but it was amazing to have Liza there as a resource to lean on and keep my neurosis in check (i.e. I had been a co-head of a club in college – should I write co-head or just head in the title? // I had gotten promoted – should I give the admissions office an update? // I know an alumni of the school whom I hadn’t asked to be my formal recommender – should I have that person write me an informal recommendation and if so, how do I go about asking for that recommendation? // What information should I be giving to my recommenders before having them write the recommendation?) Separately, she was also very diligent about my time – for example, she made sure to double check what essay or paragraph should be the priority with the remaining X hour or minutes I had left in my package.

What I also liked a lot about being her hourly client was that Liza didn’t try to sell me and push me to buy more hours just to make more money on her end. I had expressed some trepidation at times over the cost of the hourly service and she had been helpful in narrowing down essays (or interviews) that I should be spending my limited budget on (versus trying to upsell me). This came out even more so when I received an interview invitation and I had asked her to help with the mock interview: even though she could have billed more hours with me, she insisted that I mock interview with her colleague since the HBS interview was comprehensive (i.e. harder, pointed questions created with full view of your entire application) and she thought that would be the best practice to be tested on what the actual HBS interview would be like. That type of honesty truly shows how Liza is truly thinking of what’s best for her client!

In terms of Liza’s working style, I found her to be the perfect mixture of encouraging (the day before my interview, she sent me an email seeing how I felt and if I had any last minute questions; the morning of decisions, she sent me a note saying that she was rooting for me!) but upfront and direct. I had spoken to friends about choosing an application consultant – they had suggested I go to a “mean” consultant who would kick my butt but I found Liza to be the perfect complement of being actually helpful but calming. She was not afraid to call out a sentence or idea in my essay that she didn’t believe worked. While others who had looked at the essay would just point to the sentence and say to fix this part without providing concrete examples, she helped me brainstorm ideas on how better to express the qualities I was trying to illustrate (for example, instead of saying I was the leader of this club to illustrate leadership, she helped me brainstorm actions I had completed as a leader to illustrate this quality). She helped to overcome many writer’s blocks on my end, making the whole process a lot more smooth. The whole process was very stressful and she was a guiding light!