Desired result achieved with Ryan from SBC!

Briefly about my background
My GPA is 3.56 and my GMAT is 700. Most of my career I had worked in finance sector as a financial analyst and later at EY Georgia (Ernst & Young) as assurance auditor. With MBA I wanted to make a transition into Investment Banking and I wanted to get into a good finance school. Guys like me with Auditor background (even though I was quite successful at it, being in charge of some of the most complex projects) and not that high GPA and GMAT find it quite difficult to get admitted to a good school, which is why I thought that some help from a professional would do me a great job. Additionally, I was struggling with formulation of my goals: if someone asked me what I wanted to do short and long term, I could explain this in 10 minutes, whereas business schools require that you convey your message in much less time with limited amount of words. Additionally, I knew I had some really good stories which could truly strengthen my candidacy, though I could never achieve to formulate this story in way that it would be easily readable and enjoyable. Alongside these problems, I did not have enough money to pay for the MBA consulting services and I was thinking whether it was worth taking this amount as a loan. I was sure I wanted to apply to Booth (because last year I was invited to Booth interview and because of this I wanted to try again) and Cornell (my dream school). Finally, I applied to 5 schools: 1) Booth 2) Duke Fuqua 3) Cornell Johnson 4) Columbia 5) Georgetown and was accepted at Cornell and Georgetown.

Choosing comprehensive package at SBC
Before deciding on SBC, I had interviews with several MBA consulting companies (including SBC) from top 10 list. From SBC I first talked with Esther Magna, who, after analyzing my profile, immediately suggested Ryan as my consultant: as Esther explained, Ryan had extensive experience in working with international students and had success rate of getting them to desired interviews above 90%, which had really big effect on my further willingness to chat with Ryan. I liked the dialogue with Ryan immediately, because, even after a brief chat, I got the feeling that he understood what kind of personality I was and how I wanted to present myself in MBA applications. I chose comprehensive package because it allowed communication with less time limitations compared to hourly packages.

Working with Ryan
I will start from the end by saying that working with Ryan was absolutely amazing. First, we had a warm-up call which lasted 2 hours, during which we discussed the schools which I wanted to apply to and I received Ryan’s feedback on whether it was worth applying to them taking into account my chances. I wanted to use Ryan’s help for Booth, Cornell and Georgetown applications, whereas I was going to do Columbia and Duke myself. During warm-up call we went through my brag-sheet (this is a document which I filled in several days prior to the warm-up call). Brag sheet included questions mostly asking about my achievements and life-stories and this was a good opportunity to recall all the stories which could be worth mentioning in the application. After this call we started working on applications, first we did Booth, then Cornell and lastly Georgetown. The process was amazing and Ryan was tireless in writing notes to the drafts I sent to him. At the end, when I counted, we had 5-6 drafts for resume and each essay and final versions were really up to application level. Ryan was really very flexible regarding scheduling our calls; for example, if I wrote to him by email that I needed a call with him, he was ready to make the call the same day and I really did not need to wait long. Except for that, we had really productive discussions about my goals, about how to present them and Ryan really made me think through some fundamental issues, which partly changed my vision. Additionally, Ryan would never give up pushing on me to write one more draft of my essay, so that we achieved a better presentation of my stories and personality.

Conclusion
My final word is that service received from SBC and Ryan was worth every penny I paid for it and most importantly I got admitted to Cornell, which was my goal from very beginning. One additional great benefit was that I freely used materials from 3 applications (which Ryan helped me with) for two other applications, which I filled in myself. I highly recommend Ryan to every student wanting to do MBA, especially to internationals and to those wanting to get into Cornell.