Anna Tsilidou

Working with Square One Prep was a transformative experience, and my time with Anna was truly the highlight. As someone from outside the U.S., I was initially unsure how to present myself authentically to top schools. With Anna, I felt right at home. She listened carefully and helped me uncover the life experiences that best represented who I am and what I bring to the table.

Her feedback was always honest and purposeful. I often heard “You can do better” or “This essay needs to convey X—try again,” but it was always balanced with “YOU GO, GIRL!” moments that kept me motivated. Thanks to her guidance, my essays and résumé reflected a clear, authentic story.

Square One’s structured, multi-step process and team of experts were also invaluable. It’s not an easy process, but the results speak for themselves: I got into five M7 schools, with a $100K scholarship. Beyond the results, the experience gave me the confidence to tell my story and grow in the process.

Words can’t truly express how grateful I am to Kathryn, Anna-Lali Tsilidou (my advisor) & the rest of the SOP team. Applying to top MBA programs is tough work. It doesn’t only require great grades/extracurriculars/experience but also persistence, belief, and teamwork. That’s why SOP was the clear choice for me. After speaking with countless business school consultants (including titans of industry), nothing rivaled that hour-long conversation with Kathryn. She was honest, sincere, and extremely easy to talk to! Coupled with the well-structured and team-oriented approach at SOP, I immediately decided to partner with them.

SOP went above and beyond in helping me ace the key aspects of the application including developing a career narrative, brainstorming & building essays, strategizing test prep, and preparing for interviews. Equally important, I always had a strong, supportive team behind me that I could rely on and trust. That was very critical for me, especially during tough times. Without the SOP’s team support, counsel, and tough love, it would have been much harder to continue pushing further and ultimately secure offers from top MBA programs. I truly felt that the SOP team was deeply invested in my success. That’s what makes them unique – they were not only great advisors but also true partners.

And lastly, I can’t conclude without speaking about my advisor, hero, and friend Anna-Lali Tsilidou! Not being dramatic but deciding to work with Anna was one of my best life decisions! We immediately connected from our first meeting; working with her was a joy, she made an otherwise daunting process – applying to business school – extremely fun! Together, we’ve built a series of business school applications that I’m extremely proud of – it was a very rewarding experience.

I speak highly of Kathryn, Anna & SOP not only because they helped me achieve one of my life goals but also because I want the same success for my colleagues, friends, and anyone thinking about applying to business schools

I can’t believe that at first I was skeptical whether I should hire an MBA advisor. I thought my 760 GMAT “got me covered”. Still, that’s what people did and I didn’t want to risk it, so I spoke with 4 advisors, two local, two American. The Brazilian advisors didn’t click well with me. One of the Americans I spoke with treated me like I was trying to get a table on a Friday night at a busy New York restaurant. Then I spoke with Kathryn. 15 minutes in I was thinking “is my time up?”. I told her I had an unusual background and that explaining it would take a while. She said “there is no rush”. I didn’t think I should use that story in my MBA apps. After a nearly 2h long chat, she convinced me I absolutely had to tell that story. I knew I had to pick SOP.

Before you sign with SOP, you get to chat to three advisors, to pick the one you like the most (if you’re not going with Kathryn). First chat went well, but it didn’t click. Second chat, same thing. Then comes Anna (Tsilidou). I’ll summarize my experience working with Anna with this: the effort she put into my app was as if she was applying herself. And all the team behind SOP made me realize (in a positive way) how little I was prepared to write those essays and how many blunders I would have committed if left on my own.

I was incentivized by Kathryn and Anna to aim higher in my applications and applied to schools I hadn’t thought of at the beginning. The MBA application process is not only brutal but also highly unpredictable. I’m still in disbelief that I got a 75% scholarship from my top school, Columbia. This was the dream result for me, and I got it. I am honestly not sure this could have happened had I picked someone else. It was worth every cent.

I could not recommend Anna and Square One more. I am so grateful for all their incredible work with me, especially under my time constraints given I didn’t reach out until December and needed to apply by the beginning of January! I didn’t have a proper strategy and I wasn’t aware of how much was needed to put together a strong application, I just needed a scholarship from USC or UCLA! Horatiu helped me define my story and gave my whole application a focus which I relied upon throughout the entire application process. Anna was an absolute pleasure to work, so experienced and personable, and Kathryn’s incredible expert opinion was always available. 

As a result, we put four applications together in one month. I received a full scholarship to Emory with a USD 30,000 stipend and a 60% scholarship to my first choice school, USC. 

They all bent over backwards to help me make this happen and keep me on track. I am so incredibly grateful for the whole team and I am so excited to start the next chapter of my life in July!

I am incredibly happy to have worked on my applications with Square One Prep. Thanks to them I am now headed to HBS in August. Every penny spent was worth it. Before I started my applications, I was quite exhausted from full-time work and GMAT prep, and I had doubts about the strength of my profile. I needed someone who could give me a reality check and clearly outline what needs to happen to put my best foot forward. Despite talking to several consultants, I was immediately drawn to SOP following my call with Kathryn because of her candidness, personal touch, and genuine interest in my background. My team consisted of Anna Tsilidou (primary advisor), Kathryn Lucas (senior leader), Cristina Castellano (project manager), and Horatiu Stefan (career narrative expert). I am forever thankful to every person on my team and I am particularly grateful that I worked with Anna as my primary advisor. She is a total superstar – confident, energetic, creative, and incredibly smart. I learned so much from her. She is extremely hard working and will demand absolute excellence from you. If you’re lucky enough to work with Anna, you’re in good hands (as long as you’re ready to work hard)!!
1) Personal support – this is technically not something you even pay for but the team does an outstanding job in supporting you personally. In my case, I was hesitant in my decision-making and lacked strong self-belief. But the team consistently encouraged me and gave me the confidence to push myself hard. In fact, I didn’t plan to apply to Harvard because I was pessimistic about the outcome. Luckily for me, the team (and especially Anna!!) convinced me that Harvard was absolutely worth a shot and I went for it. The second aspect of personal support is accountability and project management. The team treats the application process extremely seriously and recognizes that, in order to deliver a strong application, you must start early and work regularly. Cristina and Anna would regularly check in on my progress, communicate deadlines, and help resolve problems along the way. Expect to be reprimanded if you are not meeting key dates. The outcome matters to the team just as much as it does to you, so they ensure you stay on track.
2) Responsiveness – A+++ the team is a rockstar on this. Questions/concerns/general thoughts are answered or escalated quickly and immediately.
3) Application support – after all the work with SOP, everything from my resume to essays to interviewing abilities was of exceptional quality. As an engineer who had gotten used to technical writing, I was amazed at how much better my writing could be once Anna started pointing out flaws in sentence structure, word choice, meaning, redundancy, and so much more. My resume also got an amazing, much-needed transformation. Not only did I myself learn a lot but I also ended up putting together an incredibly strong application package. The results prove it: out of the 6 schools I applied to, I received 6 interview invites. The work didn’t stop at the interview stage; the team set me up for success there as well. Doing several mock interviews with Anna helped me hone in on my flaws and shake off the nerves before the big day. If you put in the work and trust the team’s guidance and expertise, you will finish incredibly proud of all your documents.
4) Career narrative – I didn’t have a clear vision of my business school goals, so doing this work early paid major dividends throughout the application process. The team makes you start thinking about your professional interests/ambitions and putting it all on paper. Each interest/ambition is then pressure-tested in the context of your background until you settle on one and then you continuously research and refine it until you eventually put it to the test with a detailed review from Kathryn. I’d even say that you overprepare on this aspect to the point that a question about your career goals will no longer seem intimidating, no matter if the question is in an essay or an interview. Horatiu was the perfect person to guide me on this because he is patient, thoughtful and knowledgeable.

If you’re looking for a team that is dedicated, structured, responsive, well-versed in business school applications, and heavily invested in your success, then you can’t go wrong with SOP. Best of luck!

Anna, along with the SOP team did a fantastic job in helping with my applications. I got into multiple schools and my top choice was a T15 school. Kathryn, the SOP founder is an extremely dedicated, honest, empathetic, and resourceful person who has decades of experience in helping students reach their potential. I realized it makes a huge difference to work with advisors who love their job and are truly working to help you put your best foot forward.

Kathryn is one of the best advisors – especially with her knowledge of B-Schools and what ticks in an application. You cannot go wrong working with Kathryn. Check out the other testimonials on how amazing Kathryn and her team are on advisory work, crafting the application, the thorough and structured process, the quick turn-arounds, the career-narrative process, and the top-class service overall. While this is exactly what all of us, as applicants, need, I also want to highlight how SOP genuinely supported me and in the process, changed my perspective of the whole application ordeal.

I still vividly remember making the choice to reach out to SOP with exactly 4.5 weeks to go for school deadlines. As is the amazing process at SOP, after my conversation with Kathryn, I spoke to 3 advisors to choose one that I would work with for the next few weeks. The process enabled me to work with Anna, a truly amazing human being, a fellow international applicant who was in my footsteps a few years ago. She has since become a great friend for life. The next 4-5 weeks of crafting applications to 5 schools went through like the best breeze there could be because mentally I never felt it was just ‘my’ B-school application. Anna spent countless hours – mornings and nights, and at times while she was on treks or on flights – helping me throughout the journey. I can write many pages about Anna’s work but the two things that stood out were how she equipped me with the tools and created agency, and how she was empathetic and had a strong grasp of my values. Many times, Anna would mention a couple of points below an essay prompt alluding to things she believed I could mention about my career/ life/ extracurriculars – have you ever seen an advisor like this?!

With SOP, I had an entire team to help me brainstorm, vet my drafts, and my ideas, ask deeper questions in each essay draft, and bring out the best side of me in my applications. Truly, to me, the application never felt like work. I’ve heard many applicants say that crafting the applications was a tougher task for them than taking up the standardized tests, but for me (with SOP by my side) it was the total opposite. I had taken the standardized tests multiple times, but after working on my applications with SOP and having conversed with Kathryn and Anna, every single day, I realized my perspective on the application and my test journey had changed – I had immense confidence in what I had to offer. I felt mentally stronger and calmer. I retook the test after submitting my application and fared way better than the previous few times. A huge relief! I asked for strategies on sharing updated scores and waitlist updates with schools – each time Kathryn and Anna were always by my side, helping me more than I could imagine. I am truly grateful to the SOP team for their work and their presence in my life. I could not have asked for better advisors. I have a lot of respect for the amazing work Kathryn does, the company she has built and the team she has hired – Having seen firsthand her commitment to her work, I’m almost certain she never sleeps 🙂

From the first call, Kathryn and the Square One team were so involved and committed to helping me meet my MBA goals. Wendy helped me find my direction, Cristina helped me keep on track, Kathryn was my sounding board and Anna (advisor) helped me craft my story. I really could not have done as well by myself and I’m so glad that I found this
team! Square One went above and beyond because they not only helped me with the application process but also helped me improve my self-confidence. Anna especially helped me with this, and I know that I gained a friend through the process. Thanks so much, team!