Square One Prep will help you reflect deeply and convey systematically

TL;DR
- I strongly endorse Square One Prep
- They have a systematic approach
- They are always available and are continuously invested till you and they are satisfied with the essays/resumes

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I availed Square One Prep's services and would strongly endorse them.

Overview:
It never really struck me when people said that the real work begins after taking the GMAT. Square One Prep was strongly recommended by a close friend. In the preliminary assessment call SOP's founder, Kathryn, went above and beyond the 30 minutes advertised to genuinely learn about my background and aspirations. Soon my friend's glowing words resonated with me. What also was impressive is that, once I decided to go ahead with them, the time I spent with Kathryn was not lost. She maintained diligent notes and passed them on to her team.

Process:
SOP understands that there are different elements to submitting a strong application, and thus, they have experts handling each domain.

You get the opportunity to choose your daily advisor, who most likely is an experienced individual who has themself gone through the rigamarole of the MBA. My advisor was John.

You then get into a call with your advisor and Kathryn to determine your schools. I truly appreciate that Kathryn & John laid the facts in front of me and allowed me to make my decision.

After selecting the school you work with the experts to build your career narrative, resumes and finally move on to essays and application forms. For every item that you need to work on, you'll get to refer to samples created by successful candidates previously. All of them also undergo multiple rounds of review before Kathryn herself signs off on the quality.

When the time comes for interviews, the team trains you to find the genuine answers that most interviewers appreciate. You get to do a mock interview (that seems very close to the real deal) and are immediately given concrete feedback on how to improve.

Career Narrative:
Most MBA programs will at some point ask you what you intend to do. Had it not been for SOP's robust process, I would've left it to be extremely generic, and thereby uninteresting. The exercise conducted by SOP's career narrative expert (Wendy Bagdi-Durrua) will help you dig deeper into your aspirations.

John Shaw:
I can't begin to capture the support John extended. While he took the conversation forward from Kathryn, he spent nearly 2-2.5 hours going through my details. John, in fact, kept diving deeper. Our conversation came up with things that I hadn't thought about for years. John helped me polish my resume to make it action-oriented (the evolution of which I still use at my MBA program.) My first essay draft for my first school was so abysmal that we practically had to rework it completely. John patiently helped me see how I can improve the content. The exercise helped me churn out better drafts for subsequent essays. John also prepared me for my interviews. He conducted a mock interview that allowed me to understand the format and purpose of an interview and prepare accordingly.

All In Service:
When a couple of my applications turned out to be waitlists. The Square One Prep team was prepared and invested to help me convert the offer. They even helped me with the material for my re-applications at no additional charge.

I wish:
The one thing I wish Square One Prep had done was to prepare me to interact with current students. While they did convey this step, I didn't understand the gravity. I wish I spoke to more students and attended more school events, something I figured out after turning in my applications.

Conclusion:
The work I did with Square One Prep has continued to help me. Be it the resume, or efficacy in writing, these are skills I am glad to have picked up from my interactions with them.

My Stats:
I opted for a 3 school package with them and applied to 7 other schools across two years.
I got material for all the schools and was waitlisted at an M7 school and a T10 school, and secured admission to 4 other schools.