Mike Ivancie, an evening and weekend MBA student at the University of California–Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, says that when he was applying to business school, he considered hiring an admissions consultant.
Ivancie ultimately decided hiring a consultant wasn’t the right investment for him, but says he understands how a consultant could be useful for other people, particularly if they’re intimidated by the MBA admissions process or uncomfortable advocating for themselves.
He says the prospect of writing an MBA essay can be overwhelming, even for someone who enjoys writing. Though Ivancie feels comfortable writing, it’s difficult “when you have to write an essay that kind of distills your value as a human being in 500 or a thousand words,” he says.
Part of the reason why Ivancie decided not to hire a consultant is because he is very confident in his storytelling ability, he says. Ivancie uses his communication skills on a regular basis as the director of marketing for CNote, a socially conscious fintech business that aims to expand economic opportunities for low-income and middle-class individuals while simultaneously allowing its clients to earn profits on savings accounts. He also has legal writing experience as a former attorney. Another reason behind Ivancie’s choice not to hire a consultant is that he had already attended law school, so he was familiar with the graduate school admissions process.
[Weigh the pros and cons of hiring an MBA admissions consultant.]
Instead of hiring an admissions consultant, Ivancie spent about $150 on an online GMAT test prep course, a purchase which he says paid off. “Objectively, it drastically improved my score, so I’m really happy about that,” he says.
Prices of MBA admissions consultants vary widely, with some well-known consultants charging hundreds of dollars an hour or thousands of dollars on a flat-fee basis. The prices of consulting service packages often depend on the number of b-school applications that a consultant assists with. According to a recent Graduate Management Admission Council’s prospective students survey, 17 percent of MBA applicants used an admissions consultant.
Ivancie says MBA applicants who have the money necessary to pay for an admissions consultant should first think about whether the weak parts of their admissions profile could be strengthened with the help of a consultant or whether the part of their profile that needs improvement is something a consultant cannot easily mitigate, such as lower-than-ideal college grades.
MBA applicants who struggle with selling themselves but who cannot afford admissions consultants have several viable, cheap alternatives, Ivancie says. He suggests that budget-conscious MBA applicants take advantage of free and inexpensive test prep resources, and he also advises applicants to ask friends, family and colleagues for input during the admissions process.
Deena Maerowitz, a principal and partner at The Bertram Group educational consulting firm and a former associate director of admissions at Columbia Business School, says ethical MBA admissions consultants never ghostwrite essays for clients and that this type of deceptive behavior is prohibited by many codes of conduct at national consulting professional organizations.
A consultant may assist a client with essay brainstorming if the client is struggling to decide what to write and can provide critiques of a client’s essays, experts say, but a consultant should never under any circumstances rewrite a client’s essays or heavily revise a client’s essays such that the client’s voice disappears.
While some MBA admissions officers oppose hiring an admissions consultant, others endorse it as a useful tool for applicants who need a bit of guidance.
Consultants often provide an assessment of a client’s admissions chances, offer recommendations about where to apply and how many applications to submit, help an applicant decide what personal traits to emphasize in his or her application and coach the client on how to express themselves well in admissions interviews.
Admissions consultants help MBA applicants identify and convey their selling points, Maerowitz says. “This is not a process where someone else applies for you,” she adds. Consultants also ensure that applicants address issues that might occur to admissions officers, such as questions about job changes or apparent gaps in an admissions profile, she explains. In some cases, she tells her non-U.S. clients about how highly U.S. b-schools value independence and warns them that discussion of the desire to continue a family legacy may be perceived badly, since MBA programs seek students who are self-motivated.
[Read how to be honest and genuine in your MBA applications.]
Nick Barniville, an associate dean at ESMT Berlin, a German business school, cautions against hiring an admissions consultant. Using a consultant may result in an application that no longer resembles the applicant, Barniville warns, emphasizing that authenticity is something that he and other admissions officers highly value in an MBA application.
“I would say that there are almost no situations in which I would recommend using an admissions consultant to get into business school … unless you can completely disguise the fact that you are using one,” he says, adding the caveat that the only scenario where hiring an admissions consultant could be justified is if an applicant is applying to one of the world’s most selective b-schools such as Harvard Business School or Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.
MBA admissions experts say although it is not always feasible for an MBA admissions officer to tell whether an application was crafted with the assistance of an admissions consultant, there are occasions where the influence of a consultant is obvious, such as when the quality of an applicant’s admissions essays is much better than the quality of the writing sample submitted in a standardized test. Situations where it appears that applicants did not write their own admissions essays usually trigger rejections, experts warn.
Barniville says there is a risk that if heavily-coached MBA applicants get into a b-school with the help of an admissions consultant when they might not have otherwise, they will be a poor match for the school and not be happy or perform well at that school.
Barniville says that if MBA applicants are worried about whether they are eloquent enough to submit a good MBA application, they should remember that MBA admissions officers care more about the substance of the application than its style and form.
“Admissions people are human beings,” Barniville says. “They want to hear real stories from people. I don’t think an application has to be a perfectly polished piece of work. I just think it has to be an interesting and authentic reflection of a person.”
Barniville says MBA applicants who are nervous about presenting themselves well may benefit from talking to alumni of the b-schools where they are applying and asking those alumni for free advice.
[Here are four questions to ask business school alumni.]
However, Benoit Banchereau, director of marketing and admissions at HEC Paris, a business school in France, says it is common for MBA applicants to use an admissions consultant, and the choice to hire a consultant often makes sense for applicants to highly selective b-schools.
Banchereau says many MBA applicants struggle with confidence issues and that this problem is particularly prevalent among female applicants. A lack of confidence can make it difficult for applicants to sell themselves well in admissions essays and interviews, he says.
Encouragement can help these MBA applicants to present themselves well, but there is a limit to what an MBA admissions consultant can accomplish, since a consultant cannot get an applicant admitted to a b-school where he or she does not have the academic credentials to get in, Banchereau says.
Banchereau likens the inability of an admissions consultant to transform an average MBA applicant into a stellar one to the impossibility of a jockey changing an average horse into a racehorse. However, he says, what an admissions consultant can do is show you what your greatest assets are in the admissions process, educate you on what matters to admissions officers and teach you how to sell yourself well.
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Should You Hire an MBA Admissions Consultant? originally appeared on usnews.com
