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“I went with a consultant who had a money-back guarantee.”

October 12, 2016 by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

A BSer told us this one year… after he was rejected from all of his schools. Which happened after he initially came to us for a profile review. But then he disappeared and we didn’t hear from him again until he got his results back and shall we say, it didn’t exactly work out as expected.

Apparently there is some consultant out there who promises you’ll get admitted. If you don’t, they’ll refund your money.

Well guess what? This BSer submitted like 10 apps and none of them panned out. Not exactly the most cost-effective idea in the world when the consultant is so completely clueless about the advice being offered. Sure, this BSer didn’t end up paying anything – but they also:

  1. Lost a whole year of their life
  2. Lost a year of an increased salary that they would’ve gotten from getting through the MBA sooner
  3. Paid for A LOT of app fees which were not refunded
  4. Blew their best shot at applying “fresh” to all their favorite schools, and is now a reapplicant where it’s harder

We saw the essays that this BSer wrote – and they were so completely off target for what the schools were asking that it was ridiculous.

So this is just yet another post on caveat emptor.

Are you really going to go the cheapskate route on this critically important process? You’re going to decide who to hire for this very important position in your life of advising you on how to pitch the schools… based on the promise of getting your money back?

It would seem that your interests are aligned, if the consultant is dangling such an offer in front of you. After all, they’d need to be pretty confident of what they’re selling, if they’re willing to give you your money back if they fail to deliver. Apparently the consultant had a greater appreciation of their own skills than was warranted.

The ‘Snark is also pretty confident of the soundness of the advice that we offer, and we would NEVER promise upfront that a client will definitely get in based on working with us. There are way too many variables involved with this – and unless the consultant is also being wildly unethical and doing totally inappropriate things like writing the applicant’s recommendation letters (which we have heard being done in this industry – ugh) then there’s no way that the consultant has enough control over the process to even come close to predicting what the outcomes might be.

Money is probably not the best metric to be using to make the decision of who to hire. Just because someone charges more does not make their advice better – and just because someone says they’ll give you your money back does not mean that they know what they’re talking about. Unfortunately, when it comes to MBA admissions consultant, the phrase “you get what you pay for” simply does not apply.

We’ve seen some exceedingly questionable advice served up by the highest-paid consultants. And our own pricing is more than reasonable.

Maybe in that initial profile review, we were too direct in our opinions, and we rubbed this person the wrong way. We didn’t give a glowing report about how we were certain they would make it into Harvard. The truth is hard to take at times! We don’t try to be jerks about it but we do serve up reality on a cold hard platter. Not everyone is interested in making a meal out of it. We get it.

However we just find this so sad. This BSer came to us early on – at a point in his process when we could’ve had a real impact. He had true potential. Not all of the schools he was targeting were realistic but some of them were. Some challenges, yes, but everyone has weaknesses in their profile. It’s just that the essays he turned out ended up seriously sucking. His outcomes could have been so completely different.

So if there’s a silver lining: At least he didn’t have to pay for all the bad advice that he got.

C’est la vie.

 
 

You may also be interested in:

  • Does your admissions consultant know this?
  • What (not) to look for in an admissions consultant
  • Another rant about admissions consultants (and why you don’t need to apply to a gazillion schools)

Filed Under: the admissions consulting industry

« Previous: We tried. We really did. But we’ve caved.
Next: ($) essay critique! Yale “commitment” essay »

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