Lifetime Achievement Award In MBA Admissions Consulting: Jeremy Shinewald Of mbaMission by: John A. Byrne on October 30, 2024 | 648 Views October 30, 2024 Copy Link Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email Share on LinkedIn Share on WhatsApp Share on Reddit mbaMission Founder and CEO Jeremy Shinewald in one of the firm’s instructional videos When Jeremy Shinewald graduated in 2003 with an MBA degree from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, he landed a typical MBA job at the Royal Bank of Canada. Lucky for him, it proved to be a disaster. He hated the job, even dreading getting up in the morning to do what he considered numbing work. Fed up with the job and the place, Shinewald gave his notice on July 15 of 2004, staying an extra week at the bank’s request. “I remember being so thrilled that the crushing boredom of banking was over,” laughs Shinewald. “I was doing it for all of the wrong reasons and everyone knew I was in the wrong place, including me. But as Philip Roth once said, ‘A Jewish man with parents alive is a 15-year-old boy and will remain a 15-year-old boy until they die!’ I was there to please my parents.” LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD FOR MBA ADMISSIONS CONSULTING It was then that he decided to go out on his own, founding an MBA admissions consulting firm called mbaMission. It turned out that he had all the attributes of an entrepreneur: Driven, smart, and hotly competitive, Shinewald threw every bit of himself into building a professional series firm with distinction. Now in its 20th year, mbaMission has been a massive success, the largest admissions consulting firm of its kind in the world, with with 32 consultants, career coaches and support staffers. For his professionalism, innovation and leadership, Poets&Quants is awarding Shinewald its first Lifetime Achievement Award in MBA Admissions Consulting. Over his 20 years in the business, Shinewald estimates that mbaMission has done free consultations with more than 60,000 applicants, converting one in four of them into clients. All told, mbaMission has worked with more than 15,000 prospective students. In a typical year, the firm provides free 30-minute consults with some 3,000 would-be MBA students. And this year, for the fourth consecutive year in a row, Shinewald’s firm earned top honors for being the most favorably reviewed large MBA admissions consulting firm in the world. Three of his consultants were among the top 13 this year in receiving the most rave reviews from clients, while another four of his admission coaches are among the 15 who have garnered 100 or more favorable assessments. He wins praise from colleagues who admire his attention to detail, while providing the firm’s consultants with a keen sense of ownership. “Jeremy’s management style emphasizes EQ,” says Devi Vallabhaneni, a former Harvard Business School Admissions Board member who joined mbaMission in 2017 and now serves as executive director of the firm. “He truly cares about his team and the client. Many times, I’ve felt that he has our back in giving us the freedom to manage clients while securing the future for mbaMission. There are few barriers to entry in this field, but Jeremy has created a significant moat by focusing on the intangibles.” Someone who sweats every detail, Shinewald is a take-no-prisoners entrepreneur. Even after 20 years, the 48-year-old CEO of mbaMission unabashedly expresses a real passion for the business. “I am in the fortunate position where I meet a thousand people from around the world every year and I hear about their stories, their dreams, their aspirations, even their setbacks and failures and what they have overcome,” he says. “If you don’t fundamentally love people and love stories you are in the wrong business here.” ‘I AM A LITTLE SKEPTICAL. I AM NOT SURE I WANT TO WORK WITH YOU’ Shinewald did not have first mover advantage when he entered the business. The roots of MBA admissions consulting trace back to Maxx Duffy, a Wharton MBA and one-time associate director of admissions at Harvard Business School who left her post for personal reasons in 1976. She never thought to sell her insider’s knowledge, but almost immediately friends besieged her. Before long she started charging for her services, discreetly handing out fliers at GMAT testing centers around Boston. In 1985, she moved to Los Angeles and officially launched Maxx Associates. In those early days, schools made it clear that students should complete their applications on their own, period, even forcing them to sign statements attesting that they had no help. So, Duffy flew under the radar for many years, never letting former colleagues know that applications were being guided through the door assisted by someone with inside knowledge. A trickle of other admissions officers followed her footsteps in the 80s. By the end of the 90s, the trickle became a flood, with the launch of The MBA Exchange, Accepted.com, Clear Admit, and Stacy Blackman Consulting, among others. For Shinewald, formally launching mbaMission in the summer of 2004, the early going was tough. To land an uncertain client, he even guaranteed to work for the applicant–an international candidate with a low GMAT score–for two full weeks without pay. “The client said to me, ‘I am a little skeptical. I don’t know if I want to work with you.’ I needed a client so I told him, ‘I am going to work for you for two weeks for free. At that point, you can pay me or not and there will be no hard feelings. I went in just hoping that I wouldn’t have to work for any one else in my life. I just wanted to be an independent entrepreneur.” ‘I HAD NO BUSINESS BEING IN AN MBA CLASSROOM’ Darden MBA Jeremy Shinewald founded mbaMission 20 years ago Head down, Shinewald gave it his all, working with the candidate on applications to three MBA programs at Dartmouth Tuck, Duke Fuqua, and Cornell Johnson. “I poured everything I could into him,” remembers Shinewald. “I wanted to show him that I was going to win him over. He got into all three schools and ended up going to Tuck. At the end of our engagement, he said, ‘I am going to refer all my friends to you.’ I said, ‘Thank you so much’. And he said. ‘I am not doing that as a favor to you. I am doing it for them.’ That stuck with me to this day. 20 years ago.” When Shinewald went to Darden, he had little idea of what he would eventually do with an MBA. “Admittedly, I went to business school only because I finally realized that law school would be a mistake for me, but I still felt I needed a graduate degree,” he says. “Considering what I do now, it is deeply ironic that I had no idea at all what I would learn in the MBA classroom. I was bright eyed and bushy tailed. Everyone was so much more directed than I was. I was shocked when I got there to even find out what the jobs were. I went on a Darden camping trip and asked one of my classmates what do people do in these banking jobs. I was totally ignorant. I probably had no business being in an MBA classroom.” Like many of the applicants mbaMission counsels, however, Shinewald was a nontraditional student with work experience far removed from the world of business.He had been the sole speechwriter for the Ambassador of Israel to the United States, writing more than 70 policy addresses. At Darden, Shinewald was an admissions interviewer, wrote two case studies for professors and was chosen by his peers to be the class graduation speaker. His unexpected side hustle was helping a few others get into highly selective MBA programs. Other than his ephemeral banking detour after earning his MBA, he has been in admissions consulting ever since. POSTING ON BUSINESSWEEK FORUMS TO GET BUSINESS In his first year advising prospective students, Shinewald ran the business as a solo entrepreneur, posting on Businessweek’s message boards for business schools where HBSGuru.com‘s Sandy Kreisberg and accepted.com‘s Linda Abraham were dominant. “When I started,” he remembers, “I put a few comments on the Businessweek message boards in 2003. It was an early Reddit in a way and Businessweek was the big dog then. The whole thing was not a lark but I didn’t anticipate it being a career. I felt like I was playing catchup.” He would advise applicants in between his own MBA classes at Darden. “I remember one day in my learning team, a guy said, ‘Let’s go for a beer.’ I said, ‘I can’t. I have a Skype call with a client in Germany.’ Back then, I also had clients in Japan and Korea but there was no payment mechanism. They were sending me checks from overseas. A classmate suggested I use something called PayPal. I had never hear of it. But everything grew from there.” In the second year, Shinewald brought on a couple of part-timers to help with the increasing workload. And then, in the third year, with business continuing to expand, he focused on a strategy of hiring full-time admission consultants like any of the major professional service firms. A TURNING POINT IN CREATING A PROFESSIONAL SERVICE FIRM That decision was a turning point because it helped to more clearly differentiate mbaMission from most of the other existing firms that largely rely on part-timers and freelancers. “Having a stable and reliable professional staff was a game changer,” says Shinewald. “We had trained professionals who were committed to us, and we didn’t have to quickly scale up with 30 part-timers who couldn’t be trained. The decision allowed us to have consultants invested in the success of the company. They came with ideas and relationships. Any business school professor would say of course you are going to have well trained professionals who are invested in the organization. But even today it’s the gig worker or the hobbyist that is the standard.” To gain greater authority as an admissions expert, Shinewald then decided to write a book. Published by Simon & Schuster in 2010, The Complete Start-To-Finish MBA Admissions Guide, the book would establish his bonafides and bring in more business. It was a companion to the discussions I was having with with clients. People started buying it and reading it and sharing it. The reaction to that guide made me realize we had to be content leaders.” Poets&Quants 2024 Honors Lifetime Achievement Award for A Dean: Jeffrey Brown of the University of Illinois’ Gies College of Business Lifetime Achievement Award for Admissions: Dawna Clark of the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business Lifetime Achievement Award for MBA Admissions Consulting: Jeremy Shinewald of mbaMission Dean of the Year: H. Rao Unnava of UC Davis’ Graduate School of Management MBA Program of the Year: IMD’s Reimagining of the MBA MBA Professor of the Year: Wharton’s Ethan Mollick Continue ReadingPage 1 of 2 1 2