One In Three Of This MBA Admission Firm's Clients Got Into Wharton

Rajdeep Chimni, founder of Admissions Gateway

Precious few people in MBA admissions consulting openly disclose their success rates with applicants. In the rare circumstance that a firm shares its results, there is usually plenty of reason to be skeptical. After all, it’s not as if a Big Four accounting firm is putting its imprimatur on the results after an audit.

But one firm based in India has no such qualms, even turning over its spreadsheet of this past year’s assignments as evidence of the company’s unprecedented success.

Admissions Gateway, founded by Kellogg MBA Rajdeep Chimni, says it compiled a record 185 admissions offers for clients to get into this fall’s M7 business schools, with one in every three clients—51 in total—gaining admission to The Wharton School. More than 275 of its clients received invites into the Top 12 MBA programs.

‘LIFETIME BEST’ RESULTS FOR ADMISSIONS GATEWAY

“These numbers are lifetime best,” says Chimni, who for the past seven years has been one of Poets&Quants’ most favorably reviewed MBA admission consultants in the world, topping the list in 2019. “In the last two years, we have had exceptional results but we are always in this ballpark.”

According to Gateway, 140 out of 150 clients gained offers from the top 15 global business schools, a 94% success rate (see table below). Some 103 out of 140 received offers from M7 schools, an elite group that includes Stanford, Harvard, Wharton, Columbia, Kellogg, Booth, and MIT Sloan. Those numbers reflect a 74% rate of success.

The school-by-school acceptances best tell the story. According to the firm, it helped 52 candidates gain admission to Wharton this past year; 43 to Kellogg; 31 to Chicago Booth; 25 to Columbia; 22 to Harvard, 10 to Stanford, and two to MIT Sloan.

Admission Gateway client results for the 2022-2023 admissions year

CLAIMS IT WON $12.6 MILLION IN SCHOLARSHIPS FOR CLIENTS THIS PAST YEAR

The firm’s clients racked up $12.6 million in scholarships and financial aid, a sum that comes to an average of $85,000 for men and $108,000 for women. “Our candidates earned $10 in scholarships and aid for every dollar they spent on our services,” adds Chimni who charges $11,000 for a five-school package of help. “People going to U.S. business schools from India may be paying less money than those going to Indian schools,” he adds, based on the scholarship grants.

Also noteworthy is that female clients averaged 2.1 M7 offers each, better than the men who averaged 1.5 M7 offers—a consequence of schools trying to get close to gender parity in their cohorts. “The admission rate for women is much higher than for male candidates. That is a reflection of demand more than supply,” he says.

Chimni doesn’t claim all the credit to his firm. As domestic applicants continue to decline, the top schools have dipped more deeply into their international applicant pool. “It seems like business schools are loosening up on intake,” concludes Chimni. “It is easier to get in than it was some years back.”

ACCEPTANCE RATES WERE UP AT MANY TOP SCHOOLS LAST YEAR

True enough, acceptance rates at the top B-schools climbed for a second straight year in 2023, rising at more than half of the top 50 MBA programs, including seven of the top 10 in Poets&Quants’ annual ranking and 18 of the top 25. Five of the elite M7 B-schools saw their acceptance rates climb year over year. Those application trends would make MBA admission consulting a bit easier for everyone.

No less surprising, perhaps, is that Admissions Gateway only has three full-time consultants, including founder Chimni, and one full-timer in charge of operations. As a result, it relies on a group of freelancers, generally past MBA clients, who have come back to help the latest group of candidates.

“We have the ability to work with 150 or so odd clients in this model,” explains Chimni. “The freelancers we pick are people who we consulted with five or six years back. They have a little of our DNA and understand our mindset and philosophy. It’s not just people from anywhere engaging because of monetary reasons. I am a part of all client work. What that means is that we don’t just leave clients to work with consultants. I am always part of the process. Currently, it takes over a lot of my life but that is what it takes to maintain results at scale.”

‘WE NEVER TAKE ON A CASE IF WE DON’T BELIEVE IN IT’

Admission Gateway’s M7 results in the past year

Skeptics, of course, may well suggest that candidate selection is a key reason for the firm’s success rate. If in MBA admissions consulting you turn away applicants with low standardized test scores and other red flags in their application profiles, it would be easier to post superior client results.

The internal spreadsheet shared with P&Q of Chimni’s own clients shows that the median GMAT score of a candidate was 750—10 points above Harvard Business School’s current 740 class median—while the median GRE was 335. None of Chimni’s clients had a GMAT lower than 710 or a GRE lower than 334. The 710 applicant, however, won acceptance to three highly selective MBA programs at Yale, Dartmouth Tuck, and Michigan Ross. His team, he says, helped candidates gain admission to Harvard Stanford and Wharton with 700-710-720 scores, respectively, this year.

“We never take on a case if we don’t believe in it,” says Chimni. “I don’t think this is selection. I think this is ethical behavior. All of the admissions industry should run like that. If you have a candidate with a 600 GMAT and he wants to go to Harvard, you shouldn’t take their money. We take on anybody who is hard working and sincere and has aspirations aligned with their ability to perform. We have 84 people who gained admission to the big three this year. As we scale, the numbers just keep increasing. At some point, your process is working.”

‘IT’S MUCH EASIER TO HELP AN AMERICAN STUDENT GET INTO A TOP BUSINESS SCHOOL

Given the large numbers of qualified Indian applicants in elite MBA applicant pools, Chimni argues that it’s even harder to be successful when the vast majority of your clients are Indian-born. “At HBS,” he points out, “nearly two-thirds of an entering class of 930 students will be American with less than 40% international from more than 70 countries. So it is much easier for an American to get into Harvard than an international candidate. And it is much easier to help an American student get into a top business school than an Indian student.”

Chimni claims that he and his team have a 100% success rate with non-Indian candidates. “One thing we find is that as we work with international clients we’re able to get them into better schools with all of them in the M7.” He speaks about a British candidate working in the U.S. who got into both Stanford and Harvard with a 700 GMAT score this past year. An American client who had been in rehab and only had odd jobs on his resume is now attending Wharton. “He lived on the streets for four years and flipped burgers. This was a person who would have been told, ‘I don’t think you could get into any business school, never mind a good one.’”

His own clients, asserts Chimni, had even better results than the firm-wide numbers. “Some 45% of the people who worked with me got into Harvard; 78% who worked with me got into Wharton (compared to the 51% firmware). Last year 100% got into a Top Ten school and 97% got into an M7. Twenty-four of my clients got into Wharton. Almost everyone who worked with us got into Kellogg, 95% over the past two years.”

‘ADMISSIONS CONSULTING SHOULD BE RESULTS-ORIENTED’

However, he’s the first to admit that he also worked with a few applicants who did not end up with favorable results. “Two people didn’t get the result they wanted this past year,” says Chimni. “It is those who want one school and it’s Harvard or Stanford. Those are the ones that fail.”

Asked why he thinks so few in MBA admissions consulting are willing to publicly post their results, Chimni chalks it up to several reasons. “Many people say admissions consulting is about helping an applicant do their best. It is not about getting an admission. If you are going to charge a bunch of money, you should be results-oriented. That is why we share our results. We are this little firm in India, and we don’t have the marketing budget to spend so the only way to do it is to tell people our results. We are trying to make our space and it is all based on good results and scholarships.”