Review of Susan Kaplan

Thought I'd give a quick review on my experience with mbaMission to the GC community and in particular, my admission consultant Susan Kaplan.

My background - Auditor, CPA, CFA Level III, 3.8GPA, 720GMAT, and 4 years of work experience. Strong profile from an academic perspective, but definitely lack extracurricular activities.

I would highly recommend Susan and an admission consultant for the following reason:

1) If you are like me and don't have the time to read every post online about how to write your essays, not to mention the difference approaches adopted by different people. With that said, an admission consultant cannot make you someone you are not. They are in the business of highlighting your qualifications and make your application strong and more eye catching. They don't write essays for you (at least not at mbaMission) and they shouldn't. What Susan did for me was that she opened my thought process and challenged me to think differently about myself and not be conservative in highlighting my qualifications and framing my stories.

2) She is very knowledgeable of the entire process and does not bs you or over-promise on anything. She understands where all the land mines are and often times, I would step on them without knowing. She is very honest in her feedback, something I really appreciated as I didn't want to pay for someone to tell me that my essays were great - that would be a huge waste of money.

3) She is very willing to accommodate your schedule and will push you when you are behind. I think that's something we all need given our busy work schedule. We started early in the process (at least I thought), which really helped to manage my time better and not scramble last minute.

I went through the process with a friend of mine and she chose to use Stacy Blackman instead. Since we discussed the process almost daily, I was able to contrast the process and note the differences:

1) Stacy Blackman has a flight test review - this is a neat feature and basically, the admission board at Stacy Blackman will review your application in whole to see how the puzzle pieces integrate with each other.

2) In terms of actual feedback on essays, the services were not nearly comparable. I would often go through 6 or 7 drafts with Susan and even start fresh mid-way through while my friend received minimal feedback. The level of expertise in editing and overall idea generation was clearly lacking when you contrast the two.

3) As mentioned above, Susan is not afraid to ask me to start from scratch even when we are short on time. This is very important to the application process as your initial ideas generally don't work out. On the other hand, my friend felt that she paid a lot of money to have someone tell her that her essays were well written and only made small changes in wording and grammar.

Overall, I would highly recommend Susan Kaplan to anyone who is serious about getting into one of the top schools. As long as you have the right expectations and willing to spend the time and efforts, she can definitely improve your application and help you get into the school you want.