The “what ifs?” can drive you nuts. We hate to be the instigators of more mental distress among the BSer community. Gawd knows, there’s enough anguish and drama and second-guessing at so many stages of this MBA application obstacle course. But we sometimes wonder… What if a BSer had used us instead?
Yeah, we know, this sounds pretty self-serving. (And it’s not like we need to drum up more business. We’re plenty busy with lots of your BSer friends already this season.) But please hear us out.
To use a very extreme analogy: What if Adnan Syed, the guy whose murder trial was so fascinatingly documented in the first season of the Serial podcast , had had a more competent attorney?
If you know Serial, you know what we’re talking about. If you don’t… well, it’s really worth listening to in its entirety! The gist of it is, he was in high school, 17 years old or something, and his ex-girlfriend was murdered. And he got convicted of the crime. And we don’t really know if he did it or not. There’s definitely plenty of doubt. What seems clear is that his attorney fumbled the game tactically in some pretty significant ways.
Back to MBA admissions.
The reason for this post is that we frequently get introduced to a BSer early in the season, often through use of our Comprehensive Profile Review service, which is a great opportunity for us to lay out our assessment of where you’re at and how you might stack up against your specified target schools.
Oftentimes, that’s the only service that a BSer uses, and they go off and submit their apps on their own, maybe also taking advantage of our MBA essay guides for the top bschools. And then later we hear back, and we’re excited! Yay! They made it in! That’s always a moment of celebration – we don’t need to have been directly involved in your app process for us to still be excited to hear you got in. And, given how challenging this whole process is, and how competitive it is these days, we’re always super pleased and impressed when BSers navigate the whole thing on their own and land a plum spot at a top school.
But what happens when someone comes back and reports their admits – and we see that they got into a whole slew of very good MBA programs – but that they didn’t crack the top tier.
For example, a BSer from Rd 1 last season reported back to us in the Spring that they got into like 5 great schools. (We’re not going to name them since we don’t want to out this person in any way.) However, they weren’t successful in that top tier that they tried for.
We never saw their apps and we don’t know how they went about the essays, but clearly, given that they made it into some good schools, they did something right. That’s awesome!
And yet…
We can’t help but wonder if perhaps having an extra advantage on their side, they could’ve also hit the topity top top, too.
We certainly cannot “get you in” to any school. Sometimes people use that phrase when they’re shopping for a consultant, and it’s just not how it works.
BUT!!!!
A top-notch MBA admissions consultant can absolutely help you strategize, and refine, and fine-tune things. Year after year, we work with BSers who had failed to convert any of their best-school apps the prior season, and they come to use for help as a reapplicant, and they do indeed land a spot at the very best of the best bschools thereafter.
So we can see from those results that we’re adding value.
Monday-morning quarterbacking does not help anyone. Who knows, maybe the BSer who shared their results with us would NEVER make it into a top-top school. Maybe they maxed out with the almost-top school that they landed.
But when we see someone make strong progress at the second-to-highest tier, yet fail to convert at the best of the best…. it just makes us wonder what might have been.
Tell us what you think.