Good experience overall

I reached out to 4 admission consulting companies and ended up choosing mbaMission and Debbie Choy in particular. I like the fact that mbaMission allows potential clients to arrange an intro call with a specific consultant, as opposed to other companies who would match you with some consultants.

I enjoyed working with Debbie. She has a very personable and cheerful personality. She helped me tremendously in terms of connecting the individual pieces of experience into a coherent, convincing story. Debbie is also an effective writer and helped me refine my essays to be more readable and interesting. Debbie often guides me to make connections back to my theme/main point in my interview answers that I otherwise would not have thought about (E.g., tying MIT Sloan’s course cross-registration opportunity in the MIT engineering school with ESG investing). There were instances where Debbie offered to go the extra miles without charging me extra, which makes me feel valued as a client.

In terms of areas of improvement, I believe the firm, mbaMission, should prepare some materials that are uniquely applicable to deferred enrollment candidates. I’m a deferred enrollment candidate myself and I feel like some of the materials that I was instructed to read does not pertain to me. Also, I believe the flexibility of the admission consulting process can be improved. I started working with Debbie late January/early February, and the deadlines are in April. With this short timeframe, I got a bit frustrated when I was asked to read the whole 160 pages guide. I understand that the existing protocol might be appropriate for candidates with a lot of time, and hence can prepare them with a holistic view of the application process. But for candidates under time-pressure, I believe there should be some prioritization guided by consultants.

Some other smaller things that could be perfected include: 1) double checking the contents and links sent in emails; and 2) not letting clients feel rushed. There were cases where the links sent in the emails were not working, and other times the prompts for recommendation letters might not be updated. In terms of the second point, very infrequently would I feel a bit rushed near the end of the meeting.

Results-wise, I received a deferred enrollment offer from Columbia Business School, awaiting MIT Sloan and Virginia Darden. I believe that this offer from CBS would not be possible without Debbie’s help, and I’m very grateful for choosing Debbie and mbaMission overall.