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About Personal MBA Coach
Founded 14 years ago by Scott Edinburgh, a Wharton and MIT graduate, Personal MBA Coach has helped hundreds of applicants around the world get into top MBA, EMBA, part-time MBA and specialized master’s programs (including Master of Finance, Master of Analytics, Master of Public Policy, law school) with a 96% success rate. Personal MBA Coach is consistently ranked #1 or #2 by leading sources. Last year, our clients earned more than $6M in scholarships!
All clients have direct access to Scott, who serves on the Board of Directors for AIGAC, the Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants and is invited to speak at MBA Admissions events globally, including the annual Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) conference.
Scott is supported by a boutique team including MJ Shores, a former Wharton MBA Admissions Director, GMAT/GRE/EA tutors who scored above the 99th percentile (most with 780+) and former M7 admissions interviewers.
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Product Personal MBA Coach Comprehensive School Packages
Consultant Scott Edinburgh
Scott provided direct expert advice throughout every step of the application process. I really appreciated the unique and customized approach he took toward each of my schools, playing to my strengths and avoiding my weaknesses. A highlight of my experience working with Scott was how he made the daunting task of starting the application process into a seamless, and even fun exercise. The personal timeline and tasks he assigned made this initial process a lot more manageable than I anticipated, and he provided invaluable advice when helping craft my personal story and career goals so I could start tackling my essays. Scott paid great attention to every aspect of my application, and provided numerous detailed edits to my resume, career goals, short answers, and essays. He truly cared about making sure we got everything right, even if it meant having over 10 versions of my resume. In addition, Scott was always honest with his feedback and always made himself available - he was quick to respond to all my questions, no matter what day or holiday season it was.
Product Personal MBA Coach Comprehensive School Packages
Consultant Scott Edinburgh
Scott is on your team on day 1 and tells you exactly what needs to be addressed and how to get it done. He is extremely responsive, direct, and involved throughout the whole process. I am excited to say that I have been accepted to a few of my target programs. When researching potential consultants, PersonalMBACoach struck me as a service that would be provide the greatest value for me and I am happy to say that Scott turned out to be great. In addition, Scott understands your unique application strength and works to highlight them in an effective manner.
I would wholeheartedly recommend PersonalMBACoach to anyone that is serious about the MBA process!
Product Personal MBA Coach Comprehensive School Packages
Consultant Scott Edinburgh
Scott and his team of editors were hugely helpful in my application journey. I was accepted to 3 of the 6 M7 programs I applied to, and I don't know if that would have happened without his support. From the initial work we did together (writing a goal statement and resume from scratch) through the 15+ rounds of edits on each school's essays, his editors had sharp, strong feedback, and what felt like clear knowledge as to what each school was looking for.
If you're looking for a consultant to manage the overwhelming process of applying to b school, someone to help organize your time or to-do list, or someone you'll speak to regularly on the phone, Scott is not your guy.
However, if you're self motivated, want his unmatched one sheeters on how to prepare an application for each school, and want tough critical feedback (that is always returned quickly) that will get your applications to the best possible place, I highly recommend Personal MBA Coach.
Product Personal MBA Coach Comprehensive School Packages
Consultant Scott Edinburgh
I decided to work with Scott after doing consultations with four other firms. I was very disillusioned about the industry and wasn't sure if I even wanted to work with anyone. Upon speaking with him, I was very pleasantly surprised by our natural chemistry and his easygoing nature. Rather than pushing a cookie-cutter narrative for my industry, he asked me for my story and pointed out areas that I should give more thought to. I was incredibly aggressive/ambitious in my school selection, however, Scott was very encouraging while still holding me accountable. Scott's team pushed me to take my essays to new levels which I can now appreciate was instrumental to bringing my personality to life in the application. When I did not perform well on my GMAT, Scott was very direct with me that I was jeopardizing my future success. After leveraging Personal MBA Coach's GMAT tutoring service, I was able to hit my target score. The interview prep, specifically for Wharton's TBD, helped me ease my nerves before the actual interviews. I was waitlisted at my top choice and heavily relied on Scott's guidance in writing update letters and also for strategies on how to navigate the smoke and mirrors of being a waitlisted candidate. I have so much respect for Scott and his team at Personal MBA Coach. Their commitment to helping early career individuals achieve their professional goals is unwavering. I would highly recommend Scott to anyone who is looking for a customized partnership in the application process. I am extremely excited and proud to be following in Scott's footsteps by attending Wharton this fall!!
Product Personal MBA Coach Comprehensive School Packages
Consultant Scott Edinburgh
Scott and team helped me a lot with my admissions process. Below are some of the key reasons why:
1) Knowledgeable: He is extremely knowledgeable about the admissions process, clearly laying out how to best approach the essays (and other requirements for the school) and tailor the messaging appropriately for practically any top school.
2) Experienced: His 12+ years of experience is also extremely handy, as he can share best practices from earlier candidates with similar profiles. This was extremely helpful for me as I started the process quite late - however, Scott was able to quickly go through my profile, resume and preliminary goals to distill the key messages and points to expand on to make a successful application
3) Well-organized: Scott has a clear and efficient plan, which he tailors basis the time available and the schools being targeted. Again, this was hugely beneficial to me, given my late start - having a process planned out and mapped week by week till the R1 deadlines helped me meet every deadline without any last-minute hassles.
4) Approachable: Despite working in a completely different time zone (10.5 hours apart), Scott and his team were always available to help, throughout the process (including waitlists).
5) Prompt and efficient: Scott's responses were always prompt, usually in 24 hours, or at max (rarely) in 48 hours. Despite the time zone difference, there was no drop in intensity through the entire duration I worked with Scott.
6) Comprehensive: Scott's approach covers all aspects of the application. I personally worked with him and his team on improving my resume, crafting a compelling storyline from my experiences and goals, drafting and refining essays + other application materials (with no cap on iterations - Scott kept pushing on details until we were both satisfied), interview prep and waitlist support. He also has other services covering the remainder of the applicant life cycle (pre-application, eg GMAT/ GRE prep etc; and post-application decision etc) - however, I did not personally use these.
Tl;dr summary - Highly recommend; knowledgeable, experienced, approachable, well-organized, prompt and efficient and comprehensive.
Product Personal MBA Coach Comprehensive School Packages
Consultant Scott Edinburgh
Looking back on my MBA application journey, I can say with certainty that the best decision I made was to hire Personal MBA Coach. I was by no means an easy client. My testing saga ended up taking much longer than expected, and because of this, I ended up working with Scott and team through R1 and R2. They never complained. While other firms I initially reached out to would not provide the flexibility for me to start working with them while still working through the testing, Scott had no problem with it. He also promised that I would have direct access to him, instead of someone who worked for him, like many of the other firms had arranged. After finally getting a strong test score under my belt, I was left with about a month to complete all of my applications. While Scott and team typically recommend and request that the essays be near completion at this stage, they worked through each draft with me up until the final deadlines. There were countless drafts and emails exchanged between us. They answered every nitpicky question that I had in a timely fashion, even during the holidays. When it came time to interview, Scott set me up with his interviewing experts, who thoroughly prepared me for each interview. I ended up getting into every single school that I applied to with many full rides, and am now in the position to choose between Stanford, Harvard, and Wharton. Scott’s expertise, dedication, transparency, and most importantly, patience, allowed for my lofty goals to become a reality. As I was searching for a consultant, I was given an important piece of advice, while consultants can be expensive, so is business school. This decision can make all the difference in the long run. I would recommend Scott and his amazing team to anyone in search of a consultant. I speak with conviction when I say that you won’t regret hiring Personal MBA Coach. Best of luck!
Product Personal MBA Coach Comprehensive School Packages
Consultant Scott Edinburgh
TL:DR - Scott is great, you can definitely choose him
Detailed Feedback: I am a female candidate from India, with a GMAT score of 750. I had wanted to get into one of either Harvard, Stanford or Wharton. I had researched multiple consultants and spoke with many people before choosing to work with Scott. One of the key reasons I chose Scott was the fact that he individually had a great track record and that I get to directly work with him, unlike other firms who had multiple consultants and there was the ambiguity of whether I would get a good consultant to work with.
Scott has great clarity on how to approach the application for each of the schools and also offers great flexibility in the entire process. For example, I had chosen the 6 school package with Scott, but hadn't chosen the actual schools to apply. I suddenly decided I wanted to apply to CBS within one week of the deadline for R1 to improve my chances, and Scott was completely understanding and helped me put together a great application within that short timeline and I got an admit as well!
Scott had a different style of working to what I was used to - after our initial analysis call, the entire communication was over email. Given that he personally works with all of his clients, this time crunch is to be expected. Once I got used to working this way, I was able to work well with him and complete all the applications to my satisfaction. Scott makes the entire process simple and easy to tackle, that helped me apply to 6 schools in a satisfactory manner with time to spare (some other consultants I spoke with said the process is so complicated I can at max apply to 4 schools). The ability to apply to more schools reduced my risk of not getting admitted anywhere, and hence reduced the pressure on the entire process. Scott is very responsive and ensures he gets back for all communication within 2 days, even during weekends and holidays.
Scott's clear approach uniquely tailored to each school helped me get into LBS, CBS and Wharton. Though I would have loved if I had cracked Harvard and Stanford as well, I wouldn't have had the success I have without Scott's guidance.
Product Personal MBA Coach Comprehensive School Packages
Consultant Scott Edinburgh
After speaking to a few consultants, I landed on Scott. I was worried that my lower undergrad GPA could be hurtful but with his help I was able to get into schools I was worried about. He was extremely helpful in making sure I addressed my goals in all my essays and narrowing down my perspective. The multiple draft edits were great and let me continually add / delete things that came to mind. Any reviews led me to critically think about why I wanted my MBA and how I could further focus my narrative. I also appreciated getting reviews done by others to make sure that it was thoroughly looked at. I would highly recommend to anyone looking for a service. I felt less stressed during the process then if I were to have done this on my own.
Product Personal MBA Coach Comprehensive School Packages
Consultant Scott Edinburgh
Trying to find an ideal MBA coach is a tricky partnership. You need to find someone who is honest, understandable and is able to work with you to be creative as possible. I had interviewed a few coaches and instantly felt the connection with Scott. As I made a decision to apply very late into the year and was very close to deadlines, Scott was very specific on the schools that I can potentially get into to. As I had a very interesting background, I had gone ahead and wrote my life history - which gave him insight to really dive deep to see what I wanted. He then helped in being more specific with my background, overall achievements and fine tuned things that were needed to make me a great candidate for these programs. I got tutoring for my EA exam as well as interview coaching. I ended up getting into my dream school!!!
Thanks a lot to Scott and his team for helping me every step of the way!
Product Personal MBA Coach Comprehensive School Packages
Consultant Scott Edinburgh
After having preliminary calls with multiple different consultants I chose to work with Scott through his Early MBA Planning package and am very happy that I did. I did not realize how little I knew about how to present myself to the admissions offices and can say with confidence that without his help I would not have gotten in to all three of my round one schools, including Wharton, my top choice (Booth and CBS were the others). The price tag was initially a bitter pill to swallow but was worth it many times over in the end. He not only helped me craft a very strong application from an atypical background but also helped me clarify to myself why I was really going back to school and enabled me the confidence to pursue the programs that really suited my specific goals. All in all I would recommend Scott wholeheartedly - I have already recommended him to all of my friends who are beginning the application process.