Should you hire an MBA Admissions Consultant? This is a wrong question to ask. The right question is, ‘can you crack a top notch MBA program such as HBS, LBS, Stanford, INSEAD and others without an MBA admissions consultant? If you can win the whole battle yourself, that's the best deal. You don't need an advisor. Save your money. If I can remain healthy without physical exercise, to hell with going to the gym. If I can manage my legal battles without hiring a lawyer, why should I hire one? If I can fix my car, why should I hire a mechanic? It makes no sense.
Now the billion dollar question is - can I fix my car or fight my little battles all by myself or just by taking help from my friends and family members? That's the main question. This is the main question applicants need to ask themselves. Can they select the right B Schools based on their profile, write effective essays, create an awesome MBA resume and crack the final interview all by themselves? Competition to gain admission to the top 25 MBA programs is intense. In any competition, it is the survival of the fittest. If you are the fittest animal in the jungle, you win; else you perish.
The admission ratio for the top 25 MBA programs is less than 15%. For Indian and Chinese applicants, it’s actually less than 5%. That means almost 85% of applicants perish every year. And that brings us to the worthiness of MBA Admissions consultants. The intense competition to gain admission and 85% rejection every year are the primary reasons behind the prosperity of the admissions consulting business in the last two decades.
On top of this, globalization has boosted the GDP of most countries across the world. A larger global economy requires more talented managers. The higher pay package of MBA graduates and better career prospects have attracted millions of applicants from all across the world, especially from India, China, Singapore and other Asian countries. Competition to get admission to the top 25 MBA programs has skyrocketed. Consequently, the number of MBA admissions consultants has also increased by leaps and bounds.
How many applicants applying to MBA programs that are ranked between 90 and 100 in the FT Business School ranking have ever hired an admission consultant? Almost no one has ever approached me in the last two decades. But how many hired an MBA admissions consultant to apply to the top 25 MBA programs? I don't know the actual number, but 99% of the applicants who have approached me have applied to such top tier programs. There lies the answer to the perpetual questions – ‘should you hire an MBA admissions consultant?’ or ‘do I need an MBA admissions consultant?’
Almost every business school applicant has pondered upon this question. The answer is a 'yes' and a 'no'. It really depends on three factors - you, your MBA admissions consultant and the chemistry you two strike during the service. Just like any other service such as medical or legal, the competence of the MBA admissions consultant, his experience, education, wisdom and mentality are the predominant factors that will impact your experience. It also depends on you as well. How much time you have devoted to find the consultant, how much research you have done on his website to review his clients’ testimonials, sample MBA essays, and the quality of the write-ups in his blogs are some of the key parameters that will showcase your intellect and judgment to select the right MBA admissions consultant. It is also a testament of your leadership skills.
As a young leader in your organization, you might have to hire a new member for your team. How would you select him?
At the end of this rigorous search process, you need to make a decision. Is the individual right for your team? Does he understand your requirements? Does he even have the patience to understand your questions? Do the answers that he has given showcase his intellect and wisdom? If the answer to all these questions is a ‘yes’, then go ahead. Finally, it is always your call as a leader. The buck stops with you. If he turns out to be a flop, you have no one to blame except for yourself.
This is the exact process for selecting even an MBA admissions consultant. You are the hiring manager. Check the consultant’s past client testimonials (video testimonials and LinkedIn are the most authentic ones). Notice the names of his clients from those videos, go to LinkedIn and check if such guys actually exist in the real world. Thereafter, watch the video testimonials carefully till the end to ensure you understand how the MBA admissions consultant in question has added value to those past clients. If you are satisfied with the video testimonials, then go ahead and give a call to schedule an interview.
During the interview, try to understand the following issues:-
Try to dig deep into these issues. Don't ask him about his success ratio. Most MBA admissions consultant will claim 90% and above. That's a high-quality dubious answer. The acceptance ratio in top MBA programs is less than 10%. So, how can any consultant ensure a 90% or 95% success ratio? That's a category 5 moronic claim.
If you are satisfied with his previous clients’ video testimonials (in which names of those clients are clearly mentioned) and his answers during the interview, then go ahead. You selected a good MBA admissions consultant. Be confident in your decision. The more research you do, the better the quality of your decision will be. That's applicable to all spheres of leadership; not just hiring an MBA admissions consultant. An experienced and wise consultant will be a treasure. He will be your mentor and guide throughout the process. He will be an ideal MBA admissions consultant who will be worth every penny of yours.
The best way to answer this crucial question is to do a case study. Kindly watch the video of one of my past clients, Nasir Khan, who was an Asian applicant and applied to several top EMBA programs in Europe and the United States. He has more than 20 years of experience in various entrepreneurial ventures across Asia and Africa. He selected the Bschools, wrote the application essays, created his CV, and selected recommenders….. without the assistance of any MBA admissions consultant. However, he was aided by one of his MBA friends. He was also helped by his wife, who is a journalist by profession and had graduated from Columbia University, United States. Nasir was expecting an admission offer from at least one school or at least an interview call as he had extensive leadership experience and he was very satisfied with his essays. However, he was rejected by all five programs. He was stunned!
In his next attempt, he scouted for an MBA admissions consultant and decided to work with me after reviewing the video testimonials of my previous clients. I meticulously evaluated his past applications and identified one big issue in his overall argument. He had an excellent leadership track record and a decent accomplishment in extracurricular. However, he thought (and his MBA friend and wife seconded) that he needed to differentiate himself from other applicants; hence, he focused more on his extra-curricular leadership experiences. He thought that every 20+ years, experienced candidates would talk about their professional accomplishments. He needed to craft a different tone in his essays that would differentiate him from his competition.
Nasir’s essays focused more on his childhood trauma and how such traumatic events left a scar on his psyche. He kept on narrating stories after stories from his involvement in various nonprofit organizations that showed how his childhood trauma had inspired him to become a responsible citizen of his society and how he was using his leadership skills for the well being of women and children. He thought that he had shown the human being behind the MBA applications to the admissions committee of the Business schools – a sure shot strategy that he read in the website of various MBA admissions consultant and numerous MBA forums. Even his MBA friend and his wife agreed to this strategy.
He was rejected by all five B schools, which was an eye-opening experience for him. Hence, he decided to hire an MBA admissions consultant. I brainstormed with him for hours after hours to find out all the excellent entrepreneurial experience he has. It also took some time to convince him that though BSchools would love to admit a good and responsible citizen, they are primarily looking for a strong leader. He needs to project his business acumen and tone down or remove his extracurricular leadership stories from the main essays. I guided him to rewrite all his essays highlighting his entrepreneurial skills and business acumen.
Changing the mindset of any applicant is no easy job. That’s what I believe to be the primary responsibility of an MBA admissions consultant. My principal job as a consultant is to:
Apart from brainstorming for hours, my next big job is to market the applicant to the business school by using the essays as the primary marketing tool. I decide the angle and the projection of the stories in order to create maximum impact.
Such an approach achieves two primary objectives:
I did the same thing with Nasir and he got admitted to LBS and Chicago Booth and he gave me a wonderful video testimonial. Watch the video carefully to find out in his own words how I assisted him during the brainstorming session to understand his life stories, his journey, accomplishments, failures, and life-changing events and thereafter created a customized marketing strategy that is suitable for him.
This, I believe, is the primary skill of any experienced and wise MBA admissions consultant. Now the ball is on your court. You have to decide whether you need to hire an MBA admissions consultant even if you have some friends or family members who are willing to help you in the process.
The cost of hiring an experienced MBA admissions consultant is quite significant. US-based MBA admissions consultants charge thousands of dollars per applicant. Just imagine, they are charging anything between $4500 and $ 6900 for one school package. For an average American individual earning $60000 annually, it is highly expensive to hire an American MBA admissions consultant. For Indian, Chinese and other Asian applicants, hiring an American MBA admissions consultant would be a pipe dream unless he is from a wealthy family. The average salary of an Indian IT engineer with 5-years of work experience is $ 8500 per year. Almost 70% of an applicant’s annual income would be wiped off simply by hiring an American MBA admissions consultant. I am not even mentioning Indian applicants from non-IT backgrounds as their annual salary is almost half of that of Indian IT engineers.
There are three reasons why India-based MBA admissions consultants don't charge such a whopping amount.
Any India-based MBA admissions consultant who graduated from a top ranked US B Schools and has worked as a consultant for a significant amount of time would be worthy of his salt. He had similar education and identical work experience as those of any US-based MBA admissions consultant.
The primary question that comes to the mind of young MBA applicants is - “Will this investment give me the desired results?” No one knows as no one can predict the future. But, it is also true that in order to beat your competition, you need to sharpen your weapons. Look at the jungle. Animals with the sharpest teeth and the biggest claws usually win the struggle for survival. In order to beat your competitions, you must emerge stronger than other applicants. In this battle, you might win if an experienced MBA admissions consultant is fighting on your side. The main question is – “Is your consultant a wise and experienced fighter?” You need to figure this out from video testimonials of his past clients.
Never ever… ever …ever hire a part time MBA admissions consultant (who has other regular jobs in any prestigious company and works with MBA applicants during weekends). Will you ever visit a part-time doctor for chest pain? Who would go to a part-time lawyer to fight his legal battles? If your house is on fire, do you need part-time fire fighters to come to your rescue? Have you ever seen a great athlete/ politician / philosopher / scientist / film director / stock market investor or businessman who is just a part timer?
Nooooooo.
Part-timers in any profession aren’t driven by passion. They are driven by money. A long time ago, when I applied to MBA programs, I didn’t even come across any MBA admissions consultant who was a part timer; but, now we have opened the flood gates of part-time MBA admissions consultants.
Nowadays, almost every MBA graduate from top notch programs aspires to be an MBA admissions consultant. They join elite admission consulting firms and get a 40% commission on each client. So, if an applicant has paid $5000 to any elite US based admissions consulting house, they paid 40% of the money to his part-time consultant. When fresh MBA graduates from top ranked programs or ex-admission committee members of top programs (who are also on commission-basis payments) join any big firm, the first thing that strikes them is that they need to take more clients in the rat race to earn more money, as it is the honey of earning money that attracted them towards MBA admissions consultancy in the first place. Otherwise, why would a Columbia GSB graduate, who is working in Amazon, work part time as a MBA admissions consultant?
The case is even worse for former admission committee members. Have you ever met any MBA applicant who has the burning desire to join the admission office of any B school post MBA from a top tier school? How many goals essays have been written in which applicants narrated their burning desire to become an admission officer of any Bschool in the short term and join Accepted.com or StacyBlackman.com in the long term? This is the actual path taken by hundreds of admissions officers of the top-ranked MBA program in the last decade.
Are they driven by the passion for admissions consultancy? No. Why not give your 100% to your chosen profession of admission office in top schools? Why leave an elite institution such as Harvard, Wharton, and Stanford and join Accepted.com or StacyBlackman.com? Are these organizations even comparable based on their history and stature? The only thing that attracts these people is money. That's the honey in MBA admissions consultancy that is attracting thousands of people to the profession. It’s not the passion for teaching MBA applicants about how to connect various aspects of their life with their broader leadership goals in order to become a better applicant (and a better leader in the process).
Whether you aspire to work with such MBA admissions consultants is up to you.
As the MBA Admissions Consultancy business flourished, it opened the Pandora’s Box of high pitch marketing. Some of the techniques are:
a. Boasting false success rate:
Many elite firms and independent MBA admissions consultants boasts ‘too good to be true’ success ratio. Some of the claims are really ridiculous.
Just review this post in the BeattheGMAT forum. https://www.beatthegmat.com/best-mba-admissions-consulting-service-t86818.html
Let me just give you a glimpse of the conversation to save your time. One applicant asked for feedback for some reputed MBA admissions consulting firm from other applicants. That single post invited the attention of at least 20 firms with tall claims of success rate and client satisfaction. One MBA admissions consultant replied “We transparently release the statistical evidence of our admissions success. For example, our lifetime success rate at Columbia is 75%+, and our Round 1 Success Rate at HBS is 90%+.”
What? Success rate at HBS 90%+? Are you kidding me?
This post raged a storm. It invited various negative comments from other MBA admissions consultants and real applicants. Despite of all these, several consultants kept boasting of their success rates (some of which are mythical numbers) in that post as well. Just read the blog in case you enjoy a good laugh!
b. Fake profiles in various admission forums for advertisement:
Just study the blog post I mentioned above and you will understand what I am talking about. There are at least 40 members with less than 5 posts (some even had only 1 post) who were appreciating various admission consulting firms or independent MBA admissions consultants. One member (GoingtoHBS) had only 2 posts and wrote down a lengthy 200+ words testimonials for one specific firm. So he just created a profile in BTG forum just to write a testimonial for an agency! How likely are you going to create a profile in BTG just to appreciate your consultant? ZERO PROBABILITY. Real applicants don’t behave that way.
Just study this blog to see how many such fake profiles you can identify. https://www.beatthegmat.com/best-mba-admissions-consulting-service-t86818.html. They pretend as prospective applicants and keep beating the drums of various MBA admissions consultancy firms.
c. False testimonials:
Most of the MBA admissions consultants have steller reviews in their company website. Generally websites don’t publish the video or LinkedIn testimonials. Hence, no one knows how true those testimonials are.
Even online MBA forums have hundreds of testimonials for various MBA admissions consultants. But the problem persists there as well. Just review these two blog posts to get some perspectives.
https://www.quora.com/Are-the-reviews-on-GMAT-club-for-MBA-consultants-justified
No. If you have 780 GMAT, 4.0 GPA, and you work in Meta or Google, you don't need to hire an MBA admissions consultant. All the best for your application!
However, the majority of the applicants aren’t rock stars. Low GPA and GMAT score, gap in work experience, below average career progression, poor leadership experience, negligible accomplishments in extracurricular, poor communication skills, shy and introvert personality and so on are some of the basic issues in thousands of applicants. When such applicants dream of enrolling in a top 50 MBA program in the US, Canada or EU, they face an uphill challenge from much stronger applicants. In any competition, survival of the fittest is the norm. Hence, thousands of weaker applicants get rejected every year. Next year, when such candidates reapply to business schools, they usually hire an MBA admissions consultant who will guide them throughout the process. No MBA admissions consultant can transform a very poor applicant into a rock star; but a wise and experienced consultant can transform a poor applicant into an average one and change a mediocre applicant into a strong one. That's the primary job of an MBA admissions consultant.
I wrote another article on this subject that you might review for additional ideas. Click here or here.
Click here to review my clients’ feedbacks, including video testimonials!
Politicians have speech writers. Journalists use news editors. Famous writers and columnists have an army of professional editors. Don’t you think you also need to have one?