Make it happen with Susan

I worked with Susan on a 3 school package for R2 and was admitted to 2 of 3 schools, with a financial award granted at one of the schools. A total shocker and wonderful surprise to receive after 6 months of hard work and grueling hours. All schools in top 5.

Pros of working with Susan:
She's direct and candid. If it sounds like you don't have well-formulated or reasonable career goals, Susan picks up on this immediately and puts the breaks on all other aspects of application prep until this piece makes sense. Career goals are incredibly important to the admissions team, so spending a good amount of time brainstorming this aspect is well worth the time and effort.
Accountability. Simply having someone waiting to receive a revised essay draft is incredibly motivating, and necessary, when completing a long and arduous process like b school applications. Susan keeps you honest - did you sleep through the last revisions? That's a waste of your time and her time. Knowing that Susan is going to review and critique your work during each draft ensures you're putting in the necessary work along the way and not simply cramming at the final hour.
Interview prep. The mock interview sessions with Susan were surprisingly helpful. I assumed I was a well-spoken candidate with little room for improvement here, and while that was generally true, it was very helpful to work through framing answers to tough questions with Susan ("what is your Plan B if your career goals don't pan out?").

Cons:
Susan took more time than necessary during our calls to introduce the point of the call, often repeating information I already knew about the overall b school application process. It would be helpful if she discussed with her clients how much prep they had completed on their own so less time was used during the short calls to hear repeated information. I work best when being able to formulate my thoughts out loud, but sometimes felt Susan did more of the talking during the calls. Don't be afraid to push back, and you'll have a more productive relationship with Susan. She's open to it, you just need to be comfortable steering the conversation from the get-to to ensure you get what you want out of each call.
School selection discussion. Susan sent me an excel doc where I had the opportunity to list features of a b school program that mattered to me, and give each feature/attribute a ranking. This would in theory help me sort through which programs are a good fit for me. I appreciated the excel doc and understand the school research should be completed by the applicant, but would have appreciated a bit more of an opportunity (separate call(s)) to discuss my thoughts/opinions of each school with Susan. She has a depth and breadth of knowledge and I had a feeling she could have shared more about each school I was considering. Granted, holding back this information is probably in part to ensure the applicant has ownership in the process, but a little more opportunity for discussion would have been helpful in the beginning of the school exploration process.

In summary, I would definitely use Susan again and recommend her to friends. She's open to feedback while working together, truly invested in seeing her clients succeed, diligent in keeping clients on task, an excellent editor, direct, and encouraging. I enjoyed working with her immensely and attribute my acceptances to our hard work together. Thank you, Susan!