The Prime MBA Admission Consultants Of 2025

The advisor rating relies on verified shopper critiques at Poets&Quants from September 1 2023 to August 31, 2024. Throughout that timeframe, shoppers wrote 1,374 assessments of their expertise with 68 admission consultants at 70 completely different companies. Thus far, the Poets&Quants‘ consulting listing now boasts greater than 600 MBA counselors, with practically 10,000 critiques.

Some 13 MBA consultants this previous 12 months achieved an ideal 10.0 shopper satisfaction rating over a minimum of 10 critiques. In addition to Chimni, Sweet Lee LaBalle racked up 25 excellent scores from shoppers, whereas Eli David accrued 20 excellent scores. Rounding out the highest 5 excellent scorers had been Nisha Kaul and Petia Whitmore, with 16 every (see desk right here).

Hiring a coach to assist navigate the admissions course of into an elite MBA program stays an costly proposition. The costliest consultants on the Prime 25 checklist cost $775 an hour for his or her providers or a hefty $14,300 for a complete start-to-finish package deal of assistance on purposes to 3 faculties. All three of these dear consultants–Devi Vallabhaneni, Katharine Lewis, and Debbie Choy–are affiliated with mbaMission, the biggest agency within the enterprise of MBA admissions consulting.

Every of those counselors brings important expertise to the sport. A Harvard Enterprise Faculty MBA, Vallahhaneni had spent greater than three years as an MBA Admissions Board member at HBS and has been serving to candidates at mbaMission for seven and one-half years. Lewis, who has each a Harvard MBA and a JD on her resume and who has labored at McKinsey, was an MBA admissions reader at Stanford Graduate Faculty of Enterprise for a few years earlier than becoming a member of mbaMission the place she has recommended candidates for over 13 years. Choy is a Stanford MBA who has labored in funding administration at JP Morgan and administration consulting at Booz & Co. She has been working with MBA candidates since 2013.

The least costly on the Prime 25? A Chicago Sales space MBA, Niketa Desai had been an admissions fellow at Sales space and started counseling candidates for Admissions Gateway in 2017. After working with Chimni for 3 and one-half years, she set out on her personal in early 2021 because the founding father of Admit Beacon in India. Desai, who has coached greater than 200 candidates, expenses $300 an hour and $6,700 for a three-school complete package deal. In 2023, she claims to have helped 28 shoppers get into Stanford, Harvard, or Wharton; 35 land spots in an M7 faculty, and 38 in a Prime 15-ranked MBA program.

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Sam Weeks, founding father of Sam Weeks Consulting, is within the high 5 of essentially the most favorably reviewed consultants this 12 months with 26 optimistic critiques and a 9.77 shopper satisfaction rating

To make our annual honor roll of high MBA admission consultants, each counselor’s assessment needed to cross a rigorous two-step course of. Not like another pay-to-play and unverified lists on the Web, the place advisers fork over a charge to permit critiques on their profiles, this can be a pure journalistic endeavor, not a pay-to-play mannequin. In our database, you’ll discover each optimistic and destructive assessments of consultants and companies (if in case you have had a nasty expertise, we strongly encourage you to share it with others in order that they’ll keep away from these points). Whether or not optimistic or destructive, no assessment is printed until it passes via a high-quality display.

First, each assessment up till our deadline of August thirty first needed to be independently verified by Poets&Quants with each the shopper and the service supplier. Secondly, each appraisal was then painstakingly reviewed in order that solely MBA consulting assignments had been counted. Eradicated from the depend had been critiques for undergraduate or Government MBA candidates, free introductory consultations, profession counseling, case prep advisement, and group periods for such organizations because the Forte Basis. These restrictions typically introduced down the variety of favorable critiques for the highest consultants and saved others off the checklist.

Skeptics might argue that consultants who rack up essentially the most optimistic critiques are merely extra assertive in encouraging their shoppers to put in writing favorably about their experiences. Or that the checklist would exclude part-time counselors who might be simply pretty much as good as full-timers however aren’t uncovered to as many consumers. However MBA candidates who take the effort and time to put in writing their expressions of reward are the final word endorsements of superior consulting work. The extra critiques any advisor has, the extra credible and authoritative the consequence. When a shopper writes a optimistic referral for a advisor, that motion goes past buyer satisfaction: It turns into a measure of buyer loyalty.

A former admissions official at London Enterprise Faculty, Emma Bond of Fortuna Admissions achieved an ideal 10.0 shopper satisfaction rating throughout 13 completely different MBA candidates up to now 12 months

That’s a excessive hurdle one of the best consultants should meet with immediately’s extra anxiety-ridden candidates. For a lot of, their assist could make the distinction between an acceptance to a extremely selective program the place the overwhelming majority of candidates are routinely turned down or a whole rejection with out even an admissions interview. That’s the reason shopper critiques from profitable candidates are effusive with reward–and in addition why candidates who spend $10K or extra on a advisor and fail to get right into a goal faculty usually are not all that pleased.

Admitted to the Class of 2027, a present shopper of Fortuna’s Emma Bond reveals getting a $100,000 scholarship from Wharton together with a full trip to the Yale Faculty of Administration. Bond made each our lists this 12 months, within the Prime 25 for getting a excessive variety of optimistic critiques but additionally for attaining an ideal 10.0 shopper satisfaction rating.

“I used to be initially not sure whether or not I even wanted to work with a advisor, however in hindsight, I can confidently say the funding greater than pays off,” wrote the candidate to Poets&Quants.  “Emma actually takes the time to get to know you and provides tailor-made recommendation particular to you, your faculties, and your objectives. She was there all through all the course of, from the brainstorming and resume refinement to the interview prep and scholarship negotiations. She is extraordinarily educated, organized, and environment friendly. Even within the peak weeks when software deadlines had been approaching, her fast turnarounds didn’t waver. Emma strikes the right stability between telling you what you should hear and being an inspirational and supportive coach.”

The reward heaped on Bond is just like different consultants’ favorable critiques. After gaining admits to each Harvard Enterprise Faculty and Wharton, one candidate who used Sam Weeks as a advisor was over the moon with the outcomes. “By no means in my wildest desires would I’ve imagined that I’d have provides for HBS or Wharton (not to mention each!) and I can actually say that Sam made it potential for me,” wrote the shopper who might be a member of the Class of 2027 at both Harvard or Wharton.

An MBA from Oxford College’s Saïd Enterprise Faculty, Weeks has been advising MBA hopefuls for the previous 4 years, ever since quitting his job as an fairness derivatives dealer. His enthusiastic shopper went on to clarify the hands-on touches that Weeks offered. “Sam is an unimaginable author and I used to be amazed at how productive our weekly reside enhancing periods had been,” the candidate added. “I all the time left every assembly with clear and actionable steps which made me really feel comfortable and in management all through all the MBA software course of. Additionally, Sam all the time offered me with trustworthy suggestions that was geared toward pushing me to dig deeper and discover one of the best model of every facet I used to be placing ahead within the software. His candidness was a lot appreciated and performed an enormous half in strengthening up my software.”

In fact, many candidates would possibly marvel if the price of a advisor is actually value it. Many consultants observe that an expertly finished software to a extremely selective MBA program might not solely get one admitted; it might additionally end in a considerable scholarship to defray a number of the value of getting the diploma.

Through the 2023-2024 admission season, Weeks says that his agency took on a file 60 shoppers. Some 55 of these candidates secured admits to a number of of their goal faculties together with $2.4 million in scholarship provides, for successful fee of 92%. Of those, 55% or 34 shoppers, utilized to M7 faculties and 22 had been profitable, for an M7 success fee of 65%, in response to Weeks’ printed efficiency report.

Total, 31% of his admitted shoppers acquired scholarship provides, sharing $2.4 million of scholarships amongst them with every grant averaging
$43,600. 5 of Weeks’ shoppers acquired full-ride scholarships for his or her MBAs. No much less spectacular was the variety of shoppers Weeks helped get into Stanford, Harvard, and Wharton.

“In complete, 26 shoppers utilized to Harvard, Stanford or Wharton, and 12 acquired provides from a number of of those faculties,” he says. “That’s a HSW success fee of 46%. Extremely, one shopper acquired provides from all three of those high faculties. One other heroic shopper acquired a proposal from HBS with a GRE rating of solely 320.” That’s six factors beneath the typical GRE rating of 326.

Then once more, that’s one cause to rent a high MBA admissions advisor.

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