To go or not to Go

[vjman]

Hello to All Consultants,
My profile:
Bachelors, Masters Electrical engineering
ethnicity: Indian (east)
Gmat: 710(92 %) with 49math, 38verbal, 6 AWA
Acads: MS gpa 3.0/4, bachelors GPA 69/100 (highest achieved by that class 83 %)
Community service on the side:
Volunteered in community service in Indian villages and government hospitals in undergrad for almost 2 years. Working in California on community service projects. both of which i am leading. One in a formal non-profit organization. The other group has been there for 2 years but not registered as a non profit or has a website. We Just function using yahoo groups.
Sports:
Competitive Racquetball. But no official tournaments
Recommendations:
One from manager, other from a customer for whom we are providing design service(this guys wrote an amazing letter for one of my schools).
Target schools:
Stanford, Duke fuqua, Darden, UCLA. May be HBS.


I am shooting for R2. The deadlines are in Jan 1st week for all of them. My question is how well off I will be if I write essays on my own vs. going to a consultant. I have about 11 days off in december. So i have this time entirely for my own work.

My written english is pretty good if not excellent.

Please give me suggestions. To go to a consultant or not?? Pros and Cons of doing either.

Thanks.

[Guest]

Dear vjman,

That's a difficult question for a consultant to answer! Working in your favor are strong written English skills, and what looks like a solid application in terms of grades, scores and activities. You don't discuss your actual work experience so I can't comment on that. You also have a dedicated block of time to work on the application. Your biggest challenge will be making yourself stand out, since you fall into a particularly competitive demographic category. If you feel like you have a good understanding of what stories you want to tell and how you want to present yourself, give it a try on your own.

Applicants get accepted without a consultant, so using one is not a requirement for acceptance. You can always change your mind part-way through if you feel you're getting stuck.


Sincerely,
Jessica Shklar
MBA Mission

Website: www.mbamission.com
Blog: www.mbamission.com/blog
MBA Mission Insider’s Guides: www.mbamission.com/store.php

[guest]

Vjman,

Based on your profile, you will be in a very field competitive field w.r.t to some of the universities you have picked. Give that there isn't much time between now and January you will need all the help you can get. You may have good written skills but you will need someone to objectively read your essay and provide quality feedback in a timely manner. From experience, it is not how quickly u write an essay but how long you sleep on it (let it mature) after writing it, which usually determines whether you have done your best. The more number of times you revise it, the better and if you have a paid person giving you constant feedback on how to revise it then you can increase the overall quality of your applications across the universitites you are applying to. Also, you may consider receiving help for a couple of universities and then doing the rest on your own.

Hope this advise helps.
Guest.

[guest]

Writing a good essays for a university like Stanford or HBS alone can take a couple of weeks. Therefore if you have 5 weeks to write applications to 2-3 universities you will need all the help you can get. Admission consultants are there to help and their assistance can only make your task easier if you can afford them. Anyway what is another 2-3K if u are ready to shell out a 100k for tuition at these top schools. If u are second guessing their utility then it could means that subconsiously u are not sure of the application result and therefore the ROI. However, at the end of the day irrespective of the applicationr esult, it can be a very rewarding experience if you choose the right person to work with.

Good Luck!
Radikoko