The BEST investment in your application

I was unfamiliar with the MBA application process and decided to choose mbaMission (Jessica) to guide me from start to finish. I evaluated several consultants at the time and, after talking with Jessica, I felt that she was the right person! In the 30-minute free session, Jessica tried to help me as much as she could within the time limit. If you have a chance to evaluate many consultants, you will certainly know that the free session is actually the marketing session. However, this is not the case for Jessica. I bought 5 school start-to-finish package and eventually got interview at HBS (post-interview waitlisted and dinged), Wharton (admitted), and Booth (admitted). So in this review, I would like to tell you 3 key points about Jessica that eventually led to my successful applications.

1. Identification of Meaningful Personal Stories

In my case, I was able to list out personal stories that really shaped my life but, at first, connection among them was relatively weak. Hence, I was so tempted to write about my job, initially. Jessica was an expert in identifying meaningful personal stories and she would keep asking you to explain those stores in details. During the process, you would start to realize by yourself how much impact those events were. In the end, a few personal stories represented the core part of my essays and were used for 4 schools (out of 5) and accounted for at least 70% of word counts. I wrote only 1 paragraph about my job for each essay and its role was to support my personal stories.

2. On-Time Delivery and Perfection

Jessica always commented my drafts, on time, and she would not stop doing it until the essays are perfect. She would ask you to write as much as possible up 50% more than maximum word counts and gave you tons of comments that, sometimes, took me a week or so to address. This is a very efficient process. You overwrite it first and then remove certain parts, one by one, so, in the process, you will see the big picture and force yourself to consider each point in depth. You would likely run out of energy before she does. On each school, I worked with her at least 8-12 drafts. And even my final draft sometimes still had her pending comments that I needed to remove because of limited space.

3) Genuine and Authentic

My essay got me an interview at HBS so it was great, although I couldn't convert the interview to the offer. The essay question was "Introduce yourself to classmates" and was the great opportunity to show your personality so I wrote it in a very personalized and funny way, while mentioning some of my achievements but not too many (imagine you brag for 10 minutes. How could that be interesting to your classmates?). Before I submitted my essay, I sent the essay to my boss (and my recommender) for review. And he said "this essay is so authentic. It feels like you are speaking to me..... It's alive". Jessica helped me set the tone for my essay and, in my opinion, I like HBS essay the most.

So in my opinion, I strongly recommend Jessica. You need experts who can look into your stories and express independent opinions. During MBA application, you will burn out. So better invest now and get the best shot.