Practical Debbie! Helped me get into M7s

I found Debbie when I was panicking in mid-Oct about R2 applications. At that time, I had a subpar GMAT and not even a draft school list. I had free consultations with a bunch of firms small and large, but I felt the most confident coming out of the conversation with Debbie. In our free consultation, she gave very practical and useful feedback. She suggested what schools I can consider based on my career goals and preferences. Some schools were ones that never crossed my mind beforehand. I appreciate how she left options open depending on my upcoming GMAT retake while other consultants didn’t think I could make it which discouraged me further in this stressful moment. Don’t be mistaken, Debbie doesn’t give you false hopes.

I also appreciate Debbie’s attitude towards potential clients. She never pushed me to purchase services and offered to recommend lower-priced consultants on her team. She reminded me about mbaMission’s service contract period, so if I wasn’t going to apply for MBA this year don’t bother starting a package yet. In all my free consultations, I asked how many schools clients typically buy for comprehensive packages. Debbie said 2-3 which I felt is an honest answer (rather than pressuring you to pay more) because you can reuse a lot of the content and learnings between schools. There are plenty of consultants out there who tell you to buy as many schools as you’re applying to. Due to the timing of the year, Debbie was also very practical in telling me what’s the max number of schools I should realistically apply to, and I decided to purchase a package less than that number.

I spoke with Debbie almost every week from Nov to Mar whether it’s back and forth updates to essays, questions from me about the process, and other status updates. The cadence came naturally because there’s just that much going on! I like mbaMission’s essay turnaround time cutoff, because that schedule pushed me to send essays over at a regular schedule in order to be the most efficient with revisions. It helps us both be accountable rather than other firms that just reply “as they get to it” which can be much longer the closer we get to deadlines. Debbie generally responds quickly to non-essay emails, 1-2 day response rate. She’ll let you know in advance when she’s taking off and how that’ll affect the response time.

Debbie is great at decluttering my thoughts and pulling out pieces that are actually relevant to essays and interviews. She will tell you straight up if certain ideas send the wrong message or are incohesive with the rest of your story. This is the harsh criticism I needed. Of course, feel free to push back since this is your application, but Debbie will work with you to find a middle ground. She’s knowledgeable about what the schools prefer and what works in applications, but also understand she can’t know every single itty-bitty detail. You still have to do your homework!

Coming out of this process, I’m glad I found Debbie to guide me. I’m not the type who’s thought about getting an MBA for years and my network doesn’t have any MBAs. The idea only came to me over the summer, so I had a lot to catch up on in a short period of time. She really gave me the confidence to push through and get admits to two M7s and two T10s which I doubt I could’ve made it without her. I chose Debbie due to her personality (also happy to support Asian women) because we would work very closely together during this period. That helped me feel comfortable asking her weirder questions relating to applications. Thank you again Debbie for your patience in responding to my long emails and addressing my boatload of comments in each essay.