About mbaMission

mbaMission’s admissions consultants are here to fully support you throughout the entire MBA application process with honest feedback and advice. Every member of our full-time team is an experienced and highly skilled communicator with comprehensive knowledge of the MBA admissions process, and helping you navigate that process to your fullest potential is our sole priority.

Here are just a few of the areas where we can help:

• School selection
• Brainstorming
• Resume
• Application essays
• Short answers
• Interview preparation
• Recommendations
• Waitlist strategy

With years of experience helping thousands of business school candidates, our MBA admissions experts are uniquely qualified to guide you on your application journey.

Our Complete Start-to-Finish Package page explains each stage of the process in more depth.

Each year, thousands of people apply to the world’s top business schools, either independently or with some level of assistance from a professional. We at mbaMission find that The decision to engage/employ/recruit/seek [help from] the help of an experienced MBA admissions consultant greatly depends on the candidate’s personal, professional, and financial circumstances.

The applicants who most often seek consultant support fit one or more of the following descriptions:

• They struggle to identify and tell their strongest story.
• They want any edge they can get.
• They need help managing this complex and time-consuming multistage process.
• They are dealing with cultural or language barriers that are complicating or impeding their efforts.

If you can relate to one (or more) of these scenarios, you would likely benefit from the informed guidance of a professional MBA admissions consultant.

To better understand whether working with an MBA admissions consultant would be beneficial for you in your business school pursuits, sign up for a free 30-minute consultation. We will assess your candidacy honestly and recommend what we truly feel is best for you.

mbaMission offers a combination of strengths and attributes that no other admissions consulting firm can match. Here is what you need to know about us:

• We are the only MBA admissions consulting firm exclusively recommended by the world’s leading GMAT prep provider, Manhattan Prep, Powered by Kaplan.
• Everyone on our staff is an elite, professional communicator.
• All our admissions consultants are MBAs from the world’s premier programs.
• MBA consulting is a full-time commitment for our consultants, not a side project.
• We are constantly training and improving to better serve our clients.
• We produce in-depth research and publications on MBA-related topics.
• We have more than two decades of profound experience in MBA admissions.

Our consultants are based in cities across the United States as well as overseas. We work over email, phone, Skype, and Zoom with business school applicants in more than 65 countries.

We actually do not believe in “success rates,” and after you read our views on the subject, we think you will understand why they should not be a factor in choosing an admissions consulting firm.

Some firms advertise a percentage success rate, and frankly, we have no idea how they can do that. To begin with, what defines “success”? Getting into one of the five schools you applied to? Two? What if the only one you got into is a safety school you added at the last minute? Would that still count as a “success”?

Moreover, we see a fundamental flaw in any MBA consulting firm’s attempts to define a success rate—namely, how this influences the consultants’ incentives. If their primary objective is simply to get clients accepted to schools, they suddenly have reason to steer you toward MBA programs at which they believe you have the best chance of being accepted, rather than helping you increase your chances of getting into the programs you actually want. Understandably, applying to “safety” or potentially less desirable business schools would likely increase the odds that you would be accepted, but that would be fulfilling your consultant’s goals. At mbaMission, we focus instead on helping you get into the schools you actually wish to attend—in other words, helping you meet your goals.

Our thoughts on where you might apply and your odds of acceptance at those programs are strictly input for your decision making, and that is all they should be.

Lastly, someone’s past success has very little, if anything, to do with your unique candidacy and goals. If a firm claims that 95% of its clients were accepted to business school, that does not mean you automatically have a 95% chance of getting in, too. We see every MBA applicant as a distinct individual, not a statistic.

Guarantees can be appealing, but they are really nothing more than an unethical and misleading gimmick. When an MBA admissions consulting firm “guarantees” that you will be admitted to business school if you use its services, its consultants have every reason to encourage and redirect you to apply to safe schools that are easier for you to get into, rather than helping you apply to the one(s) you really want. We are not in the business of guiding candidates in ways that would make us look good—we help clients submit the strongest applications possible to their dream MBA programs. We concentrate on the business schools you have chosen, have honest conversations about risks and challenges, and work tirelessly to ensure your applications are robust and compelling. A money-back guarantee will not get you admitted to your target school, but an experienced, committed consultant with your best interests in mind just might.

Our core consulting services have helped thousands of candidates gain admission to their target MBA programs. Tens of thousands more have benefitted from our free 30-minute consultations and our in-person and online presentations and workshops, many of which we offer at no cost. After more than two decades in this business, we can confidently say that we have collaborated with seemingly every possible kind of applicant, including professional athletes, chefs, comedians, politicians, bankers, teachers, consultants, techies, engineers, and everything in between. And we have helped candidates in countries around the world. Thanks to our wealth of experience and know-how, we are supremely qualified to help you capture the admissions committees’ attention and stand out from the crowd.

Over the years, we have had MBA clients get into every noteworthy business school in the world, from the most internationally renowned to lesser-known diamonds in the rough. And all candidates can benefit from help identifying and telling their strongest stories, regardless of their target school’s reputation or latest rankings. Wherever you have set your sights, we can assist you in highlighting your strengths and conveying your distinct story to the admissions committee. Click here for a list of business schools at which our clients have been successful.

Our full-time staff of MBA admissions consultants has worked with thousands of business school candidates over the past two decades. We have hosted online and in-person admissions events for more than 20,000 applicants. We have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, U.S. News & World Report, and other esteemed publications. We have written The Complete Start-to-Finish MBA Admissions Guide and 17 in-depth guides to the leading MBA programs while cultivating long-standing relationships with representatives and alumni of the world’s preeminent business schools. We know what we are doing and offer our clients a definite advantage in the challenging world of MBA admissions. Whether that advantage is unfair we leave for you to decide.

We at mbaMission believe that everyone can benefit from objective feedback and informed guidance in the competitive world of MBA admissions. Quite frankly, no one should submit a business school application that has not been reviewed by a second set of eyes.

Our admissions consultants can weigh in on any the following areas of the MBA application process:

• Compatibility and assessment advisory
• Brainstorming for essay ideas
• Editing MBA application essays
• Resume revision
• Short answer preparation
• Letters of recommendation
• MBA interviews
• Navigating the waitlist
• Post-acceptance counseling

A professional MBA admissions consultant can give you the necessary insight to craft your most compelling business school application.

We offer a wide range of MBA admissions services at different price points. We believe strongly in our Complete Start-to-Finish Package approach; this flat-fee option, which starts at $5,900, gives you unlimited brainstorming assistance, ongoing feedback and advice, and as many revisions to your essays, resume, and other elements of your application as you feel you need to craft the most successful application possible. Our hourly services start at $400/hour and are ideal for MBA candidates who need help with specific application elements rather than their entire application. We also offer interview prep services that start at $800, ding reviews ($700–$900), and pre-application strategy support starting at $1,600.

Absolutely not. Under no circumstances will we ever write any part of a candidate’s application. In addition to obviously being unethical, acting as ghostwriters for our clients would be doing them a grave disservice. The MBA admissions committees want to hear what you have to say—not what we have to say for you. Our services are meant to hone and showcase your voice in every part of your application.

How much time you should dedicate to your MBA applications depends on multiple factors, such as when your target programs’ deadlines are, your writing ability, and your other commitments. Some clients work with us for six months, others for six weeks. If you want help with the entire MBA application process—from school selection through interview preparation—you will obviously need to allocate more time than if you need assistance only with certain elements of it, such as essay editing or resume revision. The more time you can dedicate to the process, the better, but we will work with you to accommodate your specific timeline.

We always strive to ensure that clients are paired with the team member who is their best possible match, especially considering that our consultants and their package clients often work together closely for as long as nine months. To determine the right consultant for you, we take the time to learn about your personality, working style, goals, and other key factors. Our matches are never made blindly or randomly. Applicants can also choose the consultant they wish to work with (pending availability, of course). We encourage you to visit our Team page to read our consultants’ bios and watch their videos. We are in the service business, and our goal is for you to be happy from the start.

Keep in mind that all our MBA consultants have the credentials and experience to help you achieve your goals. In addition, they all completed an extensive training program before they began working with applicants, and the team as a whole continues to learn and improve through twice monthly meetings, an annual training conference, and constant communication with one another.

Sometimes when clients are trying to decide which of our consultants to work with on their MBA applications, they will ask us, “Should I pick someone who has worked in an admissions office?” We will answer this question using an analogy.

A food critic is someone who is skilled at evaluating meals that others have prepared. When reviewing a dish, a food critic assesses only the end product, considering various factors, such as composition, presentation, flavor, texture, and freshness. They then determine whether or not they enjoyed the dish and whether it could be enhanced.

A chef, on the other hand, is someone who is skilled at preparing meals. Chefs focus on the process of producing the desired end product rather than judging that end product when it is complete. Beginning with raw ingredients, a chef conceives of an idea and then manages the additions, adjustments, and balancing of the elements involved to ultimately create the best possible version of the final dish—the end product the food critic will assess.

Within the context of MBA admissions consulting, former admissions officers and experienced writers can be seen as food critics and chefs, respectively. The former is trained in appraising the value of a candidate’s end product—the application—and making a decision about its effectiveness. However, these individuals do not participate in the process of creating the applications they review. In fact, a former director of admissions at a top MBA program once admitted to us, “I would make a terrible admissions consultant because while I know what I like to see, I don’t know how to help applicants get there.”

Although having firsthand experience in an MBA admissions office can confer some useful insight, it is not enough to equip someone to guide an applicant through the process of crafting a compelling application. This is why at mbaMission, we ensure that every MBA admissions expert we hire is an accomplished writer (who also has an MBA), someone who knows the ins and outs of creating an engaging and successful narrative. We are “chefs” who oversee the fusion of the various components of an applicant’s candidacy—exploring different stories, mixing and matching them, changing the proportions—so that the end product is something the candidate is proud of.