I had the pleasure of working with Leslie on my R1 apps (Class of 2025) to HBS, Stanford, Wharton. I’ve had a few months to reflect on my Harvard and Wharton acceptances and sincerely believe that this would not have been possible without Leslie as my coach!

HBS has been a dream of mine ever since I was in college, and I had applied twice (unsuccessfully) before for the 2+2 programme. Given my slightly tricky re-applicant history and the fact that I was in a hypercompetitive applicant bucket (Indian Male), I knew that I had to go with the best consultant for my third, and likely final, time applying to HBS. I could list countless examples that showcase why you should pick Menlo and Leslie for you MBA journey but the 4 most important factors for you to consider are:

1. A Partner in your MBA journey and not an instructor

• I started the MBA application journey in Feb ’22 and over the course of 6-7 months, I felt Leslie was an invaluable partner in the journey. I always felt like Leslie was rooting for me and that our successes were intertwined.

• Not once did I feel like I was simply paying for a service where I was spoon-fed and told what to do. Leslie always wanted to showcase my voice, authenticity, and tone in all components of the application, and this meant I always had to have an active role in driving the story forward. This was an important consideration for me because I wanted to come across as genuine and considered, and also wanted my voice to come through in the essays.

• Leslie, and the rest of the Menlo team, has been doing this for several years with 100s of applicants. This allowed Leslie to share unique data-driven perspectives and expertise whenever I asked questions about the application process, what is right/wrong, what the admissions committee is looking for, etc.

2. Unlimited support and their number 1 priority

• Leslie was always available for me whenever I needed her. I know she had other client too but anytime I had a question I knew I could reach out to Leslie and I’d be able to get on a call within a day or get an e-mail response a few hours later. Whether it was a holiday or a weekend, I could always get Leslie’s input if I needed to!

• Leslie was also based in a different time zone (West Coast) than me (UK), which was a cause for concern for me at the beginning but ended up being one key reason why our partnership worked so well. I could send my drafts in EOD UK time and have Leslie’s feedback, changes, and comments back in my inbox the next morning because Leslie was 8 hours behind me.

• Although you are assigned 1 Menlo coach, throughout the application process, I always felt like I had an entire team behind me. For instance, Alice, Menlo’s Founder, jumped in to review essay drafts that were in their final stages and also helped shape my career goals statement. I also had several conversations with Alice 1:1 that involved strategizing and brainstorming about how I could gain an edge despite being in a competitive bucket. During the mock interview stage, I was interviewed by Alice and Leslie, each structuring their mock HBS interviews in a way that mitigated different gaps. Finally, for the Wharton TBD, I was able to do a mock interview with David, the co-founder of Menlo, and other Menlo clients.

• Over several months, I always felt like I was Menlo’s #1 priority despite them having several other clients who were all applying to similar schools. I know several of my friends used other Admissions Consultants and only had their ‘coach’ to lean on.

3. Hand holding if you are in a busy job

• I work in a job with long hours (MBB) and I wanted to work with a consultant that offered a bit more hand holding along the journey than others. Upon speaking to several former Menlo clients I was told that Leslie/Menlo will ensure you stay on track by gently nudging you and checking-in with you regularly to ensure you aren’t falling behind.

• In fact, I finished all my applications with a few days to spare, and Leslie was a big reason for that! Furthermore, when I had particularly busy weeks at work, Leslie suggested I make progress on other parts of the application that weren’t as time/effort intensive and to come back to my essays when things cooled down at work.

4. Leslie will do what’s right for you, not what’s easy for Menlo

• Firstly, there were times when I had a strong point of view about how my essays should end or what to include/exclude from the story. On the few occasions where Leslie categorically disagreed with me, she was not afraid to say so and explain why, whilst also leveraging her experience in the past with other applicants. Although it would’ve been easier for Leslie/Menlo to keep me happier by agreeing with me, they were not scared to tell me when they disagreed with me, which ultimately led to a better essay.

• Secondly, I went through 20+ iterations of my HBS essay with Leslie until we both felt it was perfect. Although it was difficult to constantly make changes and build upon previous drafts, the fact that Leslie kept pushing me to refine my stories and content further allowed me to pull out key details that allowed me to showcase who I am as a person and applicant more effectively. Given draft 10 may not have been significantly different that draft 20, I know it would’ve been easier for Leslie to not request additional builds but she pushed me and added work on to her own plate until she knew the essays were acceptable.

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I came to Jarrett just 10 weeks prior to application due dates with a plan to apply to 7 schools. Jarrett was confident that this could not only be done but done well. He immediately organized me around due dates, drafts, and goals and kept me on pace to feel comfortable and confident in every application, interview, and negotiation. Though I came to Jarrett overwhelmed, at no point after we started working together did that feeling return. Jarrett has an incredible talent for seeing “golden threads” where others cannot, gives honest and direct feedback, and responds at all hours of the day with an eagerness to hop on a zoom and work out problems. Ultimately, I was only rejected from 1 out of those 7 schools and received scholarships from 2 in large part because of Jarrett’s wit, resolve, and diligence. I would highly recommend him to
anyone looking to apply M7.

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Deciding to work with Rebecca has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made! Before committing with Menlo Coaching, I screened multiple consulting services and I found Menlo Coaching to be the best for me because they offered comprehensive services like interview preps and an entire scheduling platform to keep you on track. Not needing to track hours used was especially critical for me since my background in tech though isn’t traditional, it is also not unique. Through Rebecca’s help and brainstorming, we were able to pull out my story and connect the dots from my upbringing to passion and to my career. Rebecca is an absolute superwoman who is not afraid to push you to do what’s needed, especially when its out of your comfort zone.

A bonus of Menlo Coaching is being based in the EU (I am based in the US). The time zone difference works out very well as I can work on my essays during my day. Rebecca then provided feedback while I was sleeping. This enabled a very efficient and rapid drafting of essays.

Having Rebecca in your corner with the entire Menlo Coaching team, you can be absolutely confident that you’ve put your best foot forward in your applications.

MBA Class of 2025 Admit

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Working with Rebecca truly changed my life. I had a below-average undergrad GPA and without a standout application I wouldn’t have any chance at my dream schools. At the beginning, even just breaking into the M7 seemed like a reach. Rebecca helped me with every step of the application. She identified forgotten areas of my life to highlight, helped weave a comprehensive life story, and pushed me to meet all the various deadlines that the MBA application requires. She was a mentor, a therapist, and a friend. My countless essay drafts were turned around within 12 hours and Rebecca had seemingly endless hours to meet with me and help me work through problems, wording, and strategies. When it came time to interview, she made sure I was 100% prepared and made sure my situational examples were rock solid, oftentimes conducting multiple sessions with me until I had it perfected. Overall, Rebecca and the rest of Menlo Coaching are white-glove consultants that do everything in their power to help you achieve your goal. For me, the experience was life changing. I would recommend Rebecca for anyone who wants to guarantee themselves the best chance at getting into their dream school.

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After contemplating business school for a few years and having a less than positive experience with an hourly/part-time MBA consultant, I entrusted Rebecca in guiding me through the MBA application process during R1 of the 2022-2023 application season. Coming from a family with little to no business experience (let alone any former MBAers), Rebecca helped make the goal of business school feel attainable. Rebecca was candid from the start, highlighting the strengths in my application profile as well as some areas of concern. She provided realistic feedback on my target list of schools and helped me narrow down my final list. While I appreciated (and needed) Rebecca's honesty, she balanced that honesty with a warm and supportive demeanor. She clearly wanted what was best for me and was only giving advice that she believed would help me find the most success in my MBA application process.

After starting with endless turns of my resume, Rebecca helped me identify unique characteristics about my life and career that would enable my personal story to stand out. Differentiating myself from my peers was one area Rebecca broughT out the best in me as I was struggling to communicate what unique abilities and perspectives I could bring to the b-school classroom. I have a fairly "cookie-cutter" business school background (top public undergraduate institution and Big 4 consulting firm), but Rebecca helped my story come to life through highlighting life experiences from my upbringing and family dynamics that had previously unknown parallels to my professional career and goals.

Once my personal story was well defined, Rebecca was a guiding light as I worked through various MBA applications. She shared nuanced differences between the program's applications and the different approaches I should take depending on what specific schools look for in their students. Having Rebecca, along with Basecamp (Menlo's software platform), keeping me on track with deadlines made the process much more digestible and doable while balancing professional and personal responsibilities. Rebecca also advised on how to approach and support my MBA recommenders while respecting the integrity of the MBA recommendation process. Additionally, Rebecca and the Menlo team supported my interview prep process, allowing me to feel borderline over-prepared for all of my MBA interviews. Interviewing is an area I typically feel very comfortable with, but Menlo improved my approach and messaging, leaving me feeling even more confident for this phase of the process.

Thanks to Rebecca's help, I was admitted to Tuck, Ross, and Kellogg with a combined $230K in total scholarships! While reflecting on such a positive end result, giving credit to Rebecca is natural. However, I believe it is important to highlight how I felt leading up to the admissions decisions. Once my applications were submitted and interviews were complete, I felt that I had truly delivered the best version of myself to the admissions committees. I knew I could not control the final outcomes, but Rebecca's support gave me the peace of mind that I could not have put together a better application!

Please consider Rebecca and the rest of the Menlo team (David White, Maya Parikh, Obinna Arizor, etc.) as you prepare for your MBA applications. Rebecca helped me realize a new level of confidence through a vulnerable MBA application process and I am more than grateful for my admission/scholarship outcomes!

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Yaron and the Menlo Coaching program are incredible, and I highly recommend them to anyone with hopes of attending a top business school.

The Menlo Coaching program is extremely structured, taking all the mental burden of process out of the applications, so you can focus on the quality of the content: writing the best stories you can, crafting the best narrative about yourself, researching schools and networking with them. When you sign on to work with Menlo, you’ll have access not only to genius coaching from Yaron and others, but also the infrastructure of people and tools that keep you organized and on schedule to accomplish all you need to do before deadlines hit.

Yaron is one of the best coaches (of any kind - sports, work, school) I’ve worked with because he guides you to the best answer, the best outcome, by asking prompting questions that force you to dig deep and do a lot of tough, creative introspection. For me, I had somewhat of a sense of what I wanted to say going into the applications, but Yaron took it to another level, making my story extremely personal, unique to me and compelling. We got there through a mix of one-on-one sessions where Yaron and I talked through my entire history – not just career and school, but what motivated me in life – and trading essays back and forth, Yaron asking me thought-provoking questions in his redlines. And lastly, perhaps most importantly, Yaron helped me then tie my personal story and life goals together to articulate to my top choice schools exactly why I was a perfect fit.

When interview season came along, Yaron made sure I was prepared to tell my story with excitement. And through Menlo, I also had access to a communications coach from Fearless Communicators, who put me through my paces in a 2hr session before my interviews began.

In the end I was admitted to my top choice school – CBS – with additional acceptances to Kellogg, Yale, Stern and Darden. I’m extremely excited to be heading to CBS in the fall and would highly recommend Yaron to anyone seeking success in MBA admissions.

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Rebecca has been instrumental in my success during the 2022 R1 application cycle. I have a fairly average profile with few bright spots (no-name undergrad, work at company that isn’t a b-school feeder). However, with her guidance I was admitted to all my target schools in the T15 (with scholarship) and my reach school in the M7. Rebecca’s extensive knowledge of all the top MBA programs was invaluable in helping me craft a compelling narrative for essays that resonated with each school, wordsmithing to meet the pesky word count, and answering all my late-night random questions about the schools. My lowest point was when one of my recommenders was apparently not going to meet the deadline despite my numerous attempts at reminding him. I was on the verge of giving up and preparing to apply in R2 but Rebecca went above and beyond by tactfully diffusing the tense situation – a few days later I received an email notifying me that the LoR was received. Besides that, she has been pleasant to work with and attentive throughout the process. I’ve never had to wait long for a response on a quick question or feedback on essays.

Based on my experience, I can confidently recommend her services to any prospective students reading this review. I would not have been half as successful in this round without her help.

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After a year of applying to a variety of MBA programs without any guidance or coaching and seeing absolutely no success, I wasn’t sure if my dream of earning an MBA was ever going to come to fruition. But from the very first introductory call, I knew that Rebecca was truly a world class consultant, and there was no better person to help me reach my goals. With her assistance I was accepted to multiple T10 programs with significant scholarship. She provided fantastic feedback and instruction at every step of the process and was always available to answer any question or concern that came up. I cannot say enough good things about my experience and would whole heartedly recommend her to anyone who is serious about pursuing an MBA.

Her process starts at the very beginning with school selection. She showed me how to evaluate a program and look holistically at its offering to determine if it was really the right fit for my professional goals. After developing a broad list, together we honed it down to a few schools in each of the reach, target, and safety categories. At this point we transitioned to networking; Rebecca showed me different ways of connecting with each program so that I could gather the necessary information that I would need when writing my essays. From there we moved to honing my resume and developing a personal master story that I would use to shape many of my application essays. To create this master story Rebecca sat on a call with me for a few hours asking me questions about my background, personal/professional experiences, and goals for the future. From this she pulled out key insights to help me craft a cohesive narrative that I would tell through my application. At this point in the process, we moved to writing the actual application essays. Having already put lots of time into information gathering and developing a personal story, it felt as if many of the essays almost wrote themselves. I have no doubt this is entirely because of the fantastic process Rebecca has in place. After rounds of back and forth where Rebecca always delivered kind but honest feedback(as somebody who is not a confident writer, I really appreciated this), my essays and application package were finalized. At this point we moved into interview prep. Each week we would prep stories that could be used to answer a variety of questions, until we held multiple complete mock interviews from start to finish. This gave me a lot of confidence going into the actual interview process. Even after interviews were complete and decisions were released, Rebecca helped me review my options and apply for additional scholarship.

Rebecca, thank you so much for all your help throughout this entire process. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, none of this would have been possible without your help and I’m so incredibly grateful.

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Working with Yaron was an absolute pleasure and made manageable what was initially a daunting process. Yaron’s expert advice helped shape my applications and stand out with a ‘dime a dozen’ background in the overrepresented finance industry.

Given that I was applying while simultaneously working a demanding job, I appreciated the efficiency with which the Menlo process allowed me to complete my applications. The process started with a series of helpful videos which provided the background insights that I would have otherwise had to gather through days of sifting through forums. Next, Yaron made it a point to understand my background and motivations through a series of discussions / interviews. Yaron ultimately leveraged small bits of background he gathered during these interviews to help craft my story once we started on the applications – this is where my I found my Menlo experience to be the most differentiated as, knowing how cheap I am, I would have never taken the time to let an hourly coach get to know me.

I really enjoyed working with Yaron and am proud not only of the results but of the application submitted to get there. Don’t think there’s any higher praise I can give – I recommend Yaron highly.

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I worked with Obinna at Menlo coaching to prep my MBA admissions interviews. I had 3 mock interviews with him for 3 different schools and his expertise in MBA interview prep really helped me during the interview preparation! His mock interviews and feedbacks were customized by different schools, which were super helpful to me. For example, he alerted me that one behavioral story is not very convincing and I might wanted to restructure my answer. Another example, he spent time working with me developing answers to some tricky questions got asked during those interviews in the past, which I found was super helpful. I spent day and night, trying to come up with something, and he was able to provide me total new perspectives and ideas. In general, when he provided feedback, he included specific examples and also gave me ideas on how to make the answer better. He was very patient, really calmed my nerves, and gave me the confidence for the real interview. Obinna was also detail orientated and focused on the big picture as well. He made notes on each my answers, and he also provided high level feedback on how I should behave and talk in general. His mock interview was very similar to the real interview. I was so grateful I had the mock interviews with him.
I also had the communications training, which was also super valuable. I really built on my confidence and improved the way I talk. David (the founder of Menlo) also answered a few strategic questions for me, which is totally out of the scope of the services. In the end, I received an offer from Booth! I would definitely recommend Menlo to anyone who is looking for MBA consulting services!

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