Harvard, Stanford & Wharton MBAs On How Admission Consultants Helped Them Get In

‘TIME WAS LIMITED. WORKING WITH A CONSULTANT WOULD OPTIMIZE MY TIME’

Dubrovsky was in a similar situation when she was paired with Fortuna consultant Michel Belden, who had been an associate director of admissions for Wharton’s full-time MBA. She had a demanding job at J.P. Morgan in New York and significant limits on her free time. “I thought I wanted to maximize my chances of getting into a top MBA program,” she says. “Time was limited. Working with a consultant would optimize my time and make sure I would submit the best application possible. They helped me think through which schools to apply to and helped with mock interviews.”

For Kejriwal, who came of age in Delhi, India, getting consulting help was a way to ensure that he smartly leveraged his experience in applying to Stanford. He was paired with Silpa Sarma, who joined Fortuna four years ago after spending nearly three years in admissions at Stanford GSB. “It’s one thing to be able to create goals for an application,” he says. “It’s another skill to extract them. You may have a lot of goals, but if you don’t have a way to clearly express them,  it will be hard to convince someone of them. Experienced individuals help you articulate what you truly feel. I needed someone to see the high-value signals and communicate that to a business school.”

Each student, of course, brought a unique set of life experiences to the game. After graduating with her business degree from UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Dubrovsky went straight to New York and into a rotational program at J.P. Morgan Chase before ending up in wealth management. “An MBA was always something that was in the back of my mind,” she says.  “Ultimately, it was a matter of timing. I had been working for a promotion and would have felt incomplete without getting one.”

THE MBA WAS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR A CAREER PIVOT

Out of J.P. Morgan’s global finance and business management program, Dubrovsky started as an analyst in wealth management, then an associate and senior associate before her promotion to vice president when she incubated and evaluated strategic investments in new technology capabilities and external & internal partnerships in the wealth management business. “It was a good moment to reassess what I wanted to do,” she recalls. “I loved the job. I networked my way onto a team I enjoyed and stayed on for a number of years.”

The MBA, she believes, was an opportunity to do something different, something that was more entrepreneurial.  “I wanted a very different experience at startups and smaller companies,” says Dubrovsky. “I did the big structured job and wanted to find out if I felt comfortable working in a startup environment.”

At Wharton, Dubrovsky became co-president of Wharton’s Women in Investing Club and an advisor in Wharton’s Venture Lab, its startup incubator. She interned at a venture capital firm last summer and continued to work with them through last fall. She is joining a CFO program at Alpine Investors, a San Francisco-based private equity firm investing in software and services businesses, where she will serve as the chief operating officer of one of their portfolio companies. “It will let me help scale and grow a company but as part of a PE firm,” she says.

MOST VALUABLE? THE GIVE-AND-TAKE OVER CRAFTING SMART ESSAYS

Most of the value from her admissions consultant came over the give-and-take on her essays. “I don’t come from a family with business school experience, and all the schools have different questions. You can take your story in any direction. Having an expert you can bounce your ideas off and workshopping your story helps. If I did it myself, I don’t think I would have done the same. Michel helped me brainstorm. She gave me feedback and pushed through the story that made the most sense.”

Recalls consultant Belden: “We worked very hard on crafting her story and presenting a clear and realistic career vision to pursue a career in venture capital. She had a strong undergraduate education from Berkeley Haas with a 3.6 GPA and an impressive career at JP Morgan Chase. She was able to discuss this in her application and show how her background informed her goals.”

Dubrovsky says she had a great experience with Belden. “She was willing to work in whatever way made sense for me. It was only a positive experience.”

The feeling was mutual. “I enjoyed working with her to highlight her personal qualities, which included sharing how she was raised by strong women who empowered her to be a strong, independent woman,” recalls Belden. “Her family had fled communist Russia. They are Jewish, and she was raised by a grandmother and mother who are successful businesswomen. Anyway, she was inspiring, hardworking and I am so excited for all her success!”

‘HE WAS FULLY AWARE OF THE UPHILL BATTLE HE HAD TO CLIMB’

As a male candidate from India with a computer science undergraduate degree, Kejriwal had the misfortune of being in the most overrepresented part of the elite MBA applicant pool. Yet, he had his heart set on applying to the most selective prestige MBA program in the world at Stanford.

“Fully aware of the uphill battle he had to climb, particularly as an applicant from a heavily represented demographic, Abhinav never gave it less than 100%,” remembers consultant Sarma. ” He was eager to introspect, receptive to feedback on how best to showcase his personal journey and exceptional impacts, and fully engaged in the iterative process required to optimize his applications. This made him a terrific client to partner with and resulted in admissions offers from both his target schools: GSB and HBS.”

Kejriwal’s reason for getting an MBA has evolved. “Initially it was to take a break, meet people, develop soft skills, have fun and new experiences,” he says. “Now I would argue that my initial motivations were deeper, to develop a greater sense of self awareness, to give myself the space to think and reflect on what it is that I truly want, and to develop deep and inspirational friendships sustainable for the long term.”

Kejriwal developed what he called “a very incredible working rapport” with Sarma. Together, they narrowed down more than 25 anecdotes to the top five or six that would make it in his essays. “Finding the signal from the noise is akin to finding a needle in the haystack,” he says.

‘SHE HELPED ME BE THE MOST UNAPOLOGETIC AND AUTHENTIC VERSION OF MYSELF’

“The relationship was casual and professional at the same time. She has been my inspiring partner rather than a do-this-and-that partner. I remember when I was wanting to get to the substance of what matters most to me and why, I asked for a call to figure out what would be most effective. We had a quick ten-minute call and she asked leading questions that helped me articulate my view. She helped me be the most unapologetic and authentic version of myself, unafraid of any outcome that may happen.”

That honesty clearly made a difference. “She helped me weed out what was not as striking and convincing by probing me with second and third level questions. I may say that authenticity or people matter most to me. But one layer deeper brings you to why does this really matters. She would push back on me. That nudge from her at the right point was very helpful.”

What he didn’t expect from the consulting experience was how it would inform his life. “I learned more about myself applying to business school. I think the intensity you get from a consultant and the application process gives you clarity about your life journey and what you want to do.”

This summer Kejriwal will intern with a preventive health care company that is leveraging virtual reality technology. He is mulling over the benefits of working at a startup, going back to India, or working in other high tech companies. “It will evolve,” he says.

‘LIKE MANY MILITARY CANDIDATES, HE HAD MANY VIVID AND IMPACTFUL LEADERSHIP STORIES’

In contrast, Bernard knew he was among a large number of military candidates applying to top schools. He had earned his undergraduate degree in political science and history from The Citadel, the famous military college in Charleston, S.C. Along with that education, his family’s military background made the U.S. Navy an obvious choice. He enlisted as a naval aviator in San Diego in 2014, became a flag aide and deputy executive assistant to the Navy Chief of Legislative Affairs, and finally an assistant strike operations officer on the U.S.S. Gerald Ford.

“Like many military candidates, he had so many vivid and impactful leadership stories to work with,” says Hillis. “The challenge with these kinds of candidates is selecting the most compelling stories to tell  because they often have so many and translating them for non-military audiences.”

She says that Bernard showed a “willingness to engage in deep self-reflection and put in the necessary work to differentiate himself from other military applicants.  This process can take you to some uncomfortable places, and Matthew was open to questions that pushed him to reflect on how his experiences transformed his worldview.  He is a person of deep convictions and high integrity, and I was honored to be able to help him bring his story to light in a way that he felt proud of and ultimately resonated with HBS.”

He is now completing the required core curriculum at Harvard Business School and will soon head off to work for Google Public Sector. “The phrase they use is bringing the magic of Google to the mission of government,” he says. “I don’t think I could have done better. This is what I think I want to do. But I don’t know what I don’t know yet.”

‘APPLYING TO BUSINESS SCHOOL SHOULD BE ALL HANDS ON DECK’

Asked what advice each student now has for applicants in the same process they had been in not all that long ago, Dubrovsky suggests doing your homework. “Going into those consulting conversations doing your research before hand is helpful so you get the most out of each conversation,” she advises. “It is making sure it is a priority for you to get the most out of the consultant’s time. Something that Michel told me that I did throughout our process but could have done before was to reach out to current students at the schools I was interested in to get more perspective. It was an important part of writing my essays.”

Kejriwal’s advice? “Applying to business school should be all hands on deck. Share everything. Share as much as you would with your therapist because that will help you be the most unapologetic version of yourself to admissions.”

Bernard comes down on deep introspection. “We spend so much time thinking about who we are but I don’t know if it’s possible to know how you come off in the broader context of all the applicants,” he says. “When choosing a consultant, you need a friend who you can talk to as a mentor. Sometimes people hire consultants thinking they will do all of the work. But you still have to do all the work if not more so because they are pushing you to do your best work. Be ready to do more work, not less.”

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