Using mbaMission was absolutely worth it and Eric Hollowaty had a huge impact on my acceptance to Columbia! I initially came to Eric under the assumption that I only needed a brief scan of my essays and maybe some verbiage cleanup, but I was totally mistaken! Eric helped me rework my essays to really highlight my story and make a compelling argument to the school. Our candid discussions helped me to define where I really needed to focus. Even under a slight time crunch (our first conversation was ~3 weeks before the CBS Early Decision deadline), I never felt overwhelmed by the process and Eric was very quick in responding to emails and always met the 2 business day deadline. Overall, I would absolutely recommend Eric and I am SO glad I made the investment!

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Liza was my consultant for a "Start to Finish" package - I only applied to one school and Liza was instrumental in helping me get in. She helped me formulate my ideas and put them together in an organized and succinct manner. She always responded to my emails quickly and rapidly addressed and alleviated any concerns that I had. She was able to to combine her professionalism and experience with a personal touch. I can honestly say that if it weren't for Liza I would have had a much more difficult time putting my application together. Liza carries my unreserved recommendation.

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I would highly recommend Eric Hollowaty to any serious mba candidate. My background is in finance and investment management so storytelling doesn't come easy to me. Eric was able to provide key insight and feedback into my essays that absolutely transformed them. Eric was always timely with his feedback, more often than not he was early in his responses. Eric's strength is his ability to focus on the details that matter. We spent a considerable amount of time brainstorming and that certainly translated into time savings down the road as I applied to multiple schools. In the beginning, I didn't think you could see the value of buying multiple schools but I was proven wrong. Though there were some overlap in my essays, we still spent a ton of time refining them to be school specific. I don't believe I could have been successful with my target schools without Eric's help.

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Hollis Kline consulted me on my applications for business school. She was very helpful in both crafting my application and guiding me on where to apply. Hollis has a very clear sense of what each school is looking for and how best to approach each essay. She gave me great ideas about how to start each essay and structure each paragraph thereafter. She helped me in broadest sense, brainstorming, ideas about which anecdotes would prove most effective and also went over my essay word for word, helping me to proofread the essay so it was just right. Hollis was also able to guide me on the short answer questions throughout the application. Once I turned my application in I felt very confident and I ended up at my top choice school.

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I decided to apply for an MBA a little late in the game (round 3) due to extenuating work circumstances which made things a little tricky. After reading reviews for different services and consultants, I selected Liza from MBA Mission as she had a number of accepted students to the program I was interested in. After the free consultation call I knew I had made the right choice. Liza was kind and understanding but also assertive and made sure to efficiently communicate her advice showing she respected the fact that we were on the clock. I went though several rounds of essay and resume edits for two applications with Liza and the results were night and day. Her edits and comments enabled me to step outside of my story and really portray it in a way that was conducive to the admissions committees' point of view. She is succinct, articulate, and very insightful and I have no doubt she was a driving force enabling me to attend one of my top two (and only two) schools that I applied to.

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Hollis, through mbaMission, was extremely helpful throughout my application process to Wharton. We all know how stressful the application process can be and she played a big part in reducing that stress. The process they have structured helped me reflect on my life and crystallize the message and theme of my application. That brainstorming process was instrumental in selecting the topics for my essays. After selecting the topics, Hollis was very helpful in reviewing the material and continuously supported me in fine tuning my message. She was accessible, responsive and insightful and was always available to talk through my concerns or objectives in each essay. In addition, the mock Wharton TBD prep was also extremely helpful and I went into the session feeling prepared and confident. I would highly recommend her services.

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After my GMAT, I was under the impression that college applications should not be a big task because it is just about putting together all my past experiences in an interesting way(please bear in mind that what's interesting to me need not be interesting to the adcom). However, I still decided to go for the 3-school package with mbaMission because I had given my GMAT only in Oct end and I wanted to apply to the B-schools for the next year admissions; and having a consultant's help would certainly aid me in taking some quick decisions regarding what I could write for a particular essay. Back then, I had no clue that admission consultant's help could make such a huge difference to my application. I now believe that taking mbaMission's package was one of my wisest moves because there way no way that I would have managed to do such a great work on my essays without Eric's help.

Although I had a strong international work experience, I think most of the other aspects of my application weren't outstanding(they were good but not great). But considering that my background is one where thousands of other guys like me keep applying, it was very important for my essays to highlight my international experience and make it stand out from the rest. After filling up the brainstorming document, Eric and I discussed about the various positives and negatives in my application and we decided on how we would be tackling each of the questions for the college. Be that bringing my attention to some of the important things that I missed in my essay or reducing the number of words in the sentences thereby allowing me to add more content to my essays, Eric's made an immense contribution to my essays by making the experiences sound compelling. Since I started working on most of my applications with just a month left before the deadline for the b-school, I would generally manage to send the essays to review only at the last minute; during all these situations Eric has been extremely helpful and returned the essays on time. I must admit that it is very important to start early when it comes to your applications, so that you have enough time to review your essays. Working with Eric over time, I could see that my writing skills have improved dramatically(at least I would like to think so ;-)) and my most recent B-school essays had fewer reviews than my first B-school essays. Even before my interview for my dream college, Eric boosted my confidence by telling me what an MBA interviewer expects from an applicant.

I would like to highlight a mistake that I did during the whole process. Until I got a reject, I never bothered going through the start to finish guide by mbamission fully(I had read a few sections but not all of it). After I got dinged from one of the B-schools, I decided to go through the pdf and made several drastic changes to some of the important questions; I got an interview call from both the B-schools I applied subsequently and I cleared the interviews as well.

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Eric was the key to getting me into my dream program. I put in a lot of the leg work before my first chat with Eric (a month before my app was due). The good thing was that I knew where I wanted to go, why, and what my academic focus would be, but I really need help to create a cohesive application. Eric definitely brought my application up a notch. He asked key questions that helped me fine-tune my ideas and experiences into a cohesive story with specific goals. Given that I was reaching out to him almost always in a panic and at the last minute, I was so lucky that he was able to squeeze me into his schedule whenever he could and provide feedback surprisingly quickly. My only regret is that I didn't start the process a little earlier!

Eric also helped me fix up my resume to be more results-focused (instead of task-focused). Again, he was super helpful here and helped me boil down some of my industry jargon into an easy to read resume. He also asked me key questions to help highlight my most important accomplishments. I would recommend mbaMission and Eric to anyone who needs help getting to the finish line!

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I used mbaMission to help me with preparing my application and I think it was worth every penny! The company first asked me what type of working style I had and paired me with Eric Hollowaty based on my responses. Eric was very professional throughout, and provided me extensive and exhaustive support.

I went into the process not really appreciating fully the magnitude of the task ahead, and so was really thankful to have Eric help me to navigate the process. Not only did Eric help me to brainstorm ideas for essays across the four schools I applied to, but he also reviewed those essays in detail over the course of multiple iterations. He also helped me proof read my resume and the application itself, all of which allowed me to “rest easy” with the knowledge that I had an expert, extra set of eyes to ensure my application allowed me to put my best foot forward to the admission committees.

Eric also helped keep me on task. If I had done the process on my own, I’m sure that I would have let some items “slip through the cracks”, so having Eric’s reminders every now and then that, for example, I only had two weeks left and need to fill out the application itself because it takes more time than you’d expect, was really helpful to ensuring that I completed everything on time.

In terms of the essays themselves, I was not prepared for the soul searching that some of the essays for the top 4 schools required. Eric really pushed me to dig deep and identify the fundamental things about me that an admissions committee wants to understand when asking an open-ended question like “tell us something we don’t already know about you.” Eric also provided great support in ensuring that I crafted a compelling story for “Why Our School”, forcing me to get very specific on the aspects of their curriculum that aligned with my interests, as evidenced by my career.

Lastly, Eric gave me the impression that he was incredibly dedicated to my success. Even though we only spoke over the phone, I could sense Eric’s passion for helping me to achieve my goal of getting into a top-tier business school, and it made me really enjoy working with him, to the point where I hope we stay in touch moving forward.

I would highly recommend mbaMission for their professionalism, and Eric Hollowaty in particular, for the phenomenal support that they provided. I would not have gotten into my business school of choice without their help!

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The only justice I can do for the incredible service I received from Liza Weale over our eight months working together is to write this review and let others know how great she is and how worthwhile it is to hire her.

I was introduced to mbaMission via Manhattan GMAT (which I also highly recommend), so decided to check them out with their free 30 minute consultation. Based on her bio on the website, I decided to meet Liza Weale (in person, which I recommend) to judge for myself whether the lofty price tag seemed worth it. During our brief initial meeting I was instantly impressed by her ability to identify what I wanted and needed out of our process working together and walked away challenged with how to tell my story successfully.

I initially purchased the two school start-to-finish package, which was a great decision. It allowed me to work with Liza through every step of the process – from school selection to brainstorming; essay writing to resume drafting; and even through the interview process. I highly recommend the complete package because it allows you to develop a relationship and working style with your consultant, while not being worried about the cost through every essay draft and phone call. I also used Liza on an hourly basis for a third school, which was sufficient because we were able to build off the work we had done for the two school package.

Working with Liza was worth every penny (and it was a lot of pennies). She provided me with all of the “must-haves” of an admissions consultant, including: keeping me on a schedule, being readily available and reliable and proof reading my work to 100% grammatical correctness. In addition, mbaMission's general process and how Liza guided me through it was critical to my success in the process. First, they provide strong overall process and school specific guides to get you started up the seemingly unsurmountable mountain of work that is applying to business school. Second, from my experience with Liza and reading through the bios on the website, mbaMission really does hire extremely qualified people who are impressive from both an academic and professional standpoint. This provides credibility to their insight and recommendations. Also, I found it extremely useful to get an unbiased reaction to my application from a credible source that you cannot get from friends, coworkers or family. Third, the process is structured and offers a critical brainstorming and self-assessment framework to lay the foundation for a strong application. I found this part of the process to be the most critical in discovering for myself what I want to do and how I communicate that to others, both for the business school application process as well as in the future. Finally, mbaMission really does work as a team and Liza was able to share insights from other clients and consultants on a variety of important topics from essay question strategy to interview focus.

However, most important were Liza’s personal attributes, style and hard work that lead me to recommend her so strongly. Liza was a pleasure to work with as she is both a good listener as well as an idea and thought partner and genuinely personally invested in your success. She helped me through every step of the process to craft a consistent and convincing story that I could be proud to submit and confident I put my best foot forward. Best of all, Liza is just a generally nice and cool person. I can’t wait to grab a cup of coffee with her and continue our great working relationship on a personal basis. Specifically though, the top three reasons I enjoyed working with Liza and would recommend working with her are:
1) She guides you in the right direction, while still allowing your point of view and voice to shine through
• I’ve heard that other consultants will “rip you a new one” and completely change your ideas and direction. However, Liza was very constructive with me – focusing on my cool, unique attributes and not a cookie cutter application format
• By helping you to come to the conclusions yourself you can develop the most conviction behind your application and create something really genuine
2) She spends the time to get to know you and your story so she can genuinely help you brainstorm and discover your best ideas
• There were many instances where Liza would recall an experience I told her about that was worth highlighting or an angle of an experience that wasn’t as obvious to me being someone who lived it. Her attention to detail, hard work and dedication in this aspect were vital to me
3) All of her edits / revisions are timely, thoughtful, analytical and never just a check the box / check for grammar exercise (no superficial editing)
• One of my biggest writing weaknesses is being precise and knowing where I can cut. She provided a huge value add to me here by giving me concrete opinions and suggestions while still allowing my full store to come through

In the end, I was admitted to HBS and Wharton so I really couldn’t have hoped for a better result! Overall, I highly recommend working with a consultant to make sure you put your best foot forward in your application. I was extremely happy with mbaMission and Liza Weale specifically, and would recommend her to anyone serious about applying to a top MBA program.

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