Angela Guido comprehensive prep

After researching a few different companies and interviewing 3 different consultants, I did not hesitate to work with Angela, and I still consider hiring her as one of the best things I did to prepare for the long process of applying to business school. She is upbeat, down to earth, kind, and the type of person who will tell it like it is and tell it how you need to hear it. Now that the process is over, I would definitely go back and choose her again in a heartbeat.

I am a non-traditional applicant- first of all, I am a 38 year old mother, so from the perspective from many Adcoms, I may as well have an AARP card. The stats for my admission to any top tier school were not good just based upon this fact alone. I am also military (I had a long commitment), but I had a late start to my career due to some flailings in my personal and professional life in my early 20’s. My extracurriculars were nothing spectacular and my college GPA was 3.3. I did, however, have a 740 GMAT, so I decided that maybe a school or two may overlook my faults if I could sell myself correctly, and this is where Angela came in.

I knew that I would give this one shot- no reapplying next year, so I wanted to make it count. I bought the 5 school comprehensive package and paid the nearly $10,000 fee (gulp!) With her advice, I decided to apply to MIT, Yale, HBS, Kellogg, and Foster (U of Washington). Here are a few of thoughts about my experience with Angela:

1. I am an extremely private person, yet I felt completely comfortable sharing things with Angela that even some of my closest friends don’t know. Not only is she not judgmental, but I also felt that in sharing certain things with her, she was able to understand me as a total person, which was key when helping me craft compelling narratives.

2. She was ALWAYS on time and NEVER missed a deadline or phone call. Ever. She was always prepared for the call.

3. I am not by nature a procrastinator, so I did not hire her to help me stay on track. I hired her because she knows what she is doing. She did not disappoint.

4. I had one minor recommender-related crisis that occurred half way through the process that I freaked out about. Angela was on the phone with me almost immediately and talked me down off the ledge and gave me some much-needed direction.

All of this was still hard work on my part. Having Angela as a consultant did not mean less work for me- on the contrary, it probably resulted in more. I had anywhere from 3-6 drafts on each essay, but as a result, my applications were WAY better than they would have been had I not been working with her. There are so many ways to screw up an essay, and I probably would have if left to my own devices.

I ended up receiving a full scholarship to Yale and a $40K scholarship to Foster. I was offered an interview to both MIT and HBS but was waitlisted at MIT and rejected to HBS. I was rejected to Kellogg (they interview everybody). All in all, not too shabby for someone with my stats! I probably would not have gotten into Yale at all or Foster with such a large scholarship without Angela. So the way I see it, this was a great ROI on my initial 10K. Aside from the economics, working with her just made the process… well, better. It was nice not to have to bug my friends to read my essays and I liked having a totally unbiased opinion. I looked forward to our brainstorming sessions and I felt like she really got me. All in all, I would do the same exact thing and hire Angela again if I had to re-do this process (which I don’t, thank goodness!).