A friend who had been accepted to H/S in previous years had recommended working with Melissa Merchant and I'm so glad that I did!

Through the MBA application process, the personal essay portion was most daunting to me and I'm glad I worked with Melissa Merchant on it. Melissa did an amazing job helping me shape a story that was compelling and authentic to me. With each round, she provided candid and actionable feedback in a timely manner. In addition to the personal essay, I found the support on short form questions, resume, and review of recommenders extremely helpful as well in shaping an overall strong submission. Through the interview process, mock interviews with Melissa were extremely useful and allowed me to feel more confident and prepared for the actual interview.

The two schools I worked with Melissa on are Harvard and Stanford and I was accepted to both! Melissa is also such a lovely person to work with, she made the overall application process fun and not stressful. Thank you Melissa for helping me be accepted into my dream schools!

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TL;DR: Melissa provides clear, helpful and speedy essay edits, and really helped me shape up my narrative to suit each school. I was accepted to Wharton & Haas.
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The process of applying to business school can be stressful, and as someone who had not written an essay in years, this part seemed daunting.

When I began, I had a rough idea of my story, so I first worked with Melissa to refine my essay outlines. In our first 45 min meeting we reviewed outlines for 4 different applications.

After this, we worked on essays asynchronously, via email. Melissa provided speedy and incisive edits to my essays, which really helped make my narrative more clear and convincing. She helped me strategically edit my essays for length & messaging - helping tailor the messaging in each essay to suit the culture of the school.

You can tell when you work with her her brings loads of experience editing essays and thinking with an AdComs mindset. This is a tremendous asset to any applicant. I highly recommend booking time with her if you're applying to BSchool!

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When I first started the MBA application process, I doubted whether my profile was competitive enough to get in to a top school. Melissa helped me identify and capitalize on the unique stories and experiences from my background, helping me craft applications where I could highlight my strengths and mitigate my weaknesses. I thought I knew what I wanted to write in my essays, but Melissa helped fine tune my ideas and pointed out experiences that she felt were unique which I wasn’t considering before. She’s also a skilled editor - I tend to be a verbose writer, and Melissa easily cut 200+ words from my essays while still maintaining the content and emotions of my story. Additionally, she is an incredible mentor and cheerleader, answering my questions candidly but compassionately and reassuring me when I was overwhelmed or anxious about the process.

Ultimately, with Melissa’s help, I landed interviews at 4 M7 schools, and was admitted into 2 of them - Chicago Booth ($70k merit scholarship) and Columbia ($50k merit scholarship)! Melissa even went out of her way to review my scholarship negotiation essays and a waitlist update essay for another program. I'm extremely happy with these results and am confident that Melissa’s support and guidance was instrumental in helping me land them. If you’re in the market for an admissions consultant, look no further!

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Headliner: With Melissa, I got into GSB, Kellogg MMM (competitive cohort of 65 people per class within larger MBA class) with the most prestigious full merit scholarship awarded to 20 people per class, and Berekely Haas with $130k in scholarships. I independently got into Wharton as well by using much of the wording from the essays Melissa and I worked on together for other programs.

Long-form:

Working with Melissa was an absolute pleasure and was worth every penny spent and then some!! I got the three-school package for GSB, Kellogg MMM (full ride merit scholarship), and Berkeley Haas (80% of tuition merit scholarship). Melissa helped me to strategically select which schools to use the consulting package on to get the most diverse spread of essay types. I absolutely believe I wouldn't have gotten nearly my level of successes without her help.

Melissa gets it and keeps it real. This journey is tough -- brutal at times -- and can be incredibly lonely and filled with self-doubt. Having an expert, and an empathetic one at that, was critical on every level. Melissa was a soundboard for extremely tough decisions, listening actively and asking insightful questions to help coach you to draw your own conclusions and direction. You can tell she earnestly cares about you and your story. And not to mention, Melissa is incredibly good at editing. I'm a verbose writer and she was able to give critical feedback on things to cut when I got too attached to certain sections, slashing to get me to word count. You will work hard -- getting in is on you, but having a partner like Melissa was grounding and helped maintained my sanity at several points over the last 1.5 years. Believe me when I say, you WILL want an empathetic, skillful, responsive expert to work with and Melissa is a rare blend of all three.

I highly recommend MBA applicants consider Melissa as their consultant. I truly do not think I would have gotten the large merit scholarships without her expert help, so the ROI on this investment really paid itself off enormously.

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I wasn't a very easy case. I'm 36 with a low GPA from a non-feeder school. Melissa still helped me get into a top 10 school and I made the interview round at one H/S/W program and one other M7 program. I can tell you looking at my first essay drafts to the finished product, I would not have gotten in on my own because I wasn't selling myself the right way at all. Melissa helped me shape and develop ideas for essays and helped me decide how to think about these essays in a way that let me be effective.

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I had an excellent experience working with Melissa. From the very beginning, I felt much more comfortable working with Melissa than other consulting firms. I told myself I'd contact two of the major consulting firms for the free half hour phone call, and Melissa came across as someone who really understood my story and believed that I could be successful, whereas the other firm felt very salesy and lacked warmness.

I had some uniqueness in my profile, and Melissa was great in helping me to shape my story and really focus my essays. One of the most important and helpful things that she did was help me to shape the optional essay. Her insight took the original draft from about a 6 to a 10. I couldn't be more pleased with how that turned out and am positive that without her help on the essays I would not have been accepted to the school I'll be attending (Booth).

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I had such a wonderful experience working with Melissa and mbaMission. When we started the process, I thought I knew what I wanted to write in my essays. Melissa asked questions that totally transformed my essay into a compelling narrative. When I had questions, Melissa answered them candidly and quickly. She always provided me with direct and helpful feedback on my essay, resume, and even testing strategy. Ultimately, I applied to school as the absolute best version of myself, which resulted in my acceptance into HBS, GSB, Wharton, Booth, and Berkeley. Without Melissa, I am confident I wouldn't have gotten accepted into these programs. If you're still searching for a consultant, snag Melissa now before she reaches capacity for the cycle!

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Working with Melissa was an absolute pleasure and was worth every penny spent. I truly believe I wouldn't have gotten in without her help.

She helped me understand my strengths and weaknesses for applying to specific schools, and proactively helped to find ways to cover off those weaknesses and exemplify strengths without being boastful - both of which helped make me more competitive in the admissions process.

Melissa is also excellent at helping make your essay writing as efficient as possible. This helps get more information into your essays while still ensuring it all tells a holistic story. She is really helpful at connecting the dots of your candidacy into personal themes that are also relevant to the school you're applying to.

Finally, she's extremely proactive and responsive to questions specific to your situation. There are no stock answers - everything is tailored to you.

I highly recommend MBA applicants consider her as their consultant.

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I have nothing but positive things to say about my experience with Melissa. After less success in my Round 1 application cycle, I decided to work with a consultant and apply again in Round 2. I worked on a 2-school package with Melissa and was accepted to both schools with scholarship awards. Those results speak for themselves!

Melissa’s exceptional attention to detail and incredible knowledge of what each school values in its candidates made a huge difference. While I had already done some of the leg work after applying in Round 1, Melissa's probing questions helped me dig deeper into my story and weave together my various professional and personal experiences to show where I had been, where I wanted to go, and why an MBA would help get me there. I was so impressed by how well Melissa got to know my story and was able to help me tailor it to each aspect of the application process.

Melissa also challenged me to be more detailed about why a certain school was the right fit for me. Not only did this help strengthen my application and interviews, it also helped me truly understand what type of MBA program I was looking for, and ultimately enabled me pick a school that I truly believe is uniquely positioned to help me achieve my personal and professional goals.

I highly recommend working with Melissa! She has the right combination of expertise, professionalism, energy, and compassion that not only makes her a great consultant, but also a wonderful cheerleader and mentor throughout the application process.

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Melissa is a thoughtful, caring, and diligent consultant who will put you in the best position possible to get accepted to your dream MBA program. Melissa was able to extract insights about me and my story throughout the process that I would never have been able to surface on my own. She is an extremely talented essay editor and knows what admissions committees are looking for when they read your personal statements. Without her, my essays would have been much weaker, and I'm not sure I would have gotten the results I did.

More importantly, Melissa provides deeply caring and personalized mentorship. She was always extremely accessible and knew my story inside and out, despite working with many other clients at the same time. She is a straight-shooter and gives actionable feedback, which also means that when she tells you how awesome something is, she means it! She is very honest and pushes her clients in all the right ways. I can't say enough good things about Melissa.

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