couldnt have done it without Angela!

When I had first planned to apply to business school, I was actually fairly against hiring a consultant - giant waste of money, I thought, I could do it myself with the help of a few friends to read my essays... then I spoke to a good friend of mine who had attended MIT Sloan and also happened to be a Manhattan GMAT instructor, and he informed me that over 50% of HBS admits use consultants. Great. But then I started looking at how much work b-school applications were going to be, incredibly more time-intensive and all-consuming than undergrad, plus at that pt, I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted after b-school/with my life.

So, on the recommendation of my friend, I started looking at the resources provided by mbaMission. I signed up for their Boot Camp to see if I could improve my essay-writing, not expecting too much, but I was completely blown away. The series was incredibly comprehensive and extremely useful, making me realize how much I didn't know about the application process, and the subtleties to writing essays for each particular school. Angela, who led the sessions, was amazing and after hearing her process, I knew I had to have her as my consultant!

This was mid-July at that point, and Angela was already entirely booked for the upcoming application season, but she managed to squeeze me as her last client!

We got right down to business. From the very start, Angela completely picked me apart - my life, my dreams, my ambitions, my entire professional career - and somehow magically brought it all together in this wonderfully comprehensive story that really spoke to who I was. It was amazing how she could understand me so well and so quickly and really drill down and identify what motivated me, what I was good at, and what I wanted out of my life and career. She had an uncanny ability to ask just the right questions – those incredibly powerful probing questions that are hard to answer bc it forces you to dig deep and find those moments in life that shaped who you are and how you think.

It sounds funny, but Angela truly helped me better understand myself. And once you really know yourself and what you want, writing essays about those topics becomes that much easier! Angela helped me brainstorm every single essay before I started writing, setting a game plan for how all the essays for a certain school would flow together. As I started writing, I had quite a bit of trouble staying within the word count limits (usually at double the length in my first draft), and Angela was immensely helpful in teaching me how to be more concise and impactful with my words – she wouldn’t just cut them for me, but forced me to learn how to be more concise and efficient. She taught me how to be a better writer!

In total, I ended up applying to 5 schools. With an average of 3 essays for each school, and at 4-6 drafts apiece, I wrote over 70 drafts – all of which Angela turned around in 48 hours, and helped me refine for each particular business school. That would’ve been an impossible task to ask of any friend or number of friends, and they wouldn’t have had the context or experience that Angela brought to the essay-writing process.

But the essays were just one portion of the application where Angela’s help was invaluable– Angela helped my recommenders with their recommendation letters, she did numerous practice interviews with me, and even after I received my acceptances, she connected me with her old clients to help me in my decision-making process! She was there for me and more throughout the entire process, from start until the very end!

Now looking back, I don’t know where I would’ve been without her. I have absolutely no doubt that my applications were much, much stronger than they ever would’ve been without Angela’s help!

And to give you some context – the five schools I applied to were Stanford, HBS, Wharton, Booth, and Kellogg. In the end, I didn’t get into the first three, but received generous scholarships from the last two. Thanks Angela!!! :)