Services
All services are elite, exclusive, 1-to-1 profiling, interview, essay review etc., sessions with MBA admissions advisor and coach, Avi Gordon. There are no junior consultants or associates here. Also, there are no automatic payment links next to the services, because Avi doesn’t take funds before being sure he can help you (including assessing pre-existing client demand and capacity to be able to deliver fully to you on deadline dates at busy times of the year.) On signing up, you have a no-quibble guarantee of refund within a calendar year on services that have not been started. This is an honest, credentialed, AIGAC-accredited operation with a long-standing track record.
Services are detailed below, including pricing. For a Summary Overview, see this download (.xlsx file)
The signup/payment links are HERE.
Free: Try with no obligation
FREE ESSAY REVIEW
Any 500-word essay, for any top-25 school, reviewed with full comments. See Free Review tab.
OR
FREE SPOT ASSESSMENT: A review your resume and any background info, to give you a fast-turnaround straight-talking assessment of where you are strong, what still needs work, and how to move forward. Send to contact[at]mbastudio.net (Note: this is not a direct assessment of your “chances” at any particular school, because your prospects depend less on how good your profile is and more on how well you apply.)
.
Guide to services below:
SECTION 1. COMPETITIVE APPRAISAL: Understanding the admissions process; aligning yourself with what works; choosing schools
SECTION 2. PROFILING, POSITIONING, ESSAY APPROACHES: Developing a competitive profile and application focus, and applying this to admission essays
SECTION 3. ESSAY REVIEW & EDITING: All essay development and review services
SECTION 4. INTERVIEWS, RECOS, RESUME, etc: Everything else
SECTION 5. PER-SCHOOL PACKAGES: Integrated per-school discount packages
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
SECTION 1: COMPETITIVE ADMISSIONS APPRAISAL
Typical Applicant Situation: “I need to talk to someone who can give me the bottom-line, no-BS deal on how competitive MBA admissions works; what schools really look for and why, and how I rate against this, given my background, capabilities, and experiences, so I can put my time and effort in the right place, and get into a better school.”
MBA ADMISSIONS INSIGHTS, APPROACHES & TACTICS, Q&A CONCERNING YOUR APPLICATION, PROBLEM SOLVING
By phone or skype: Avi discusses the range of admissions topics pertinent to you — anything you want to talk about or ask about or are concerned about in making your application — including items such as:
* how Adcom will perceive any particular attribute, and why
* what each element of the MBA application asks of you
* GMAT or GPA requirements and how your score(s) affects you
* managing recommenders and what type of reco’s to strive for
* application timing issues and R1 vs R2 vs R3 questions
* pitfalls and red flags relevant to your application
* how to overcome a particular weaknesses
* And so on, all your questions — applying hard-won insights from a decade of admissions experience and thousands of previous applicants, to your particular situation.
Once you have signed on for this service you may come back any number of times, with any questions. Note, this is Q&A about the admission process and how you can best succeed in it, but does not include working on your application.
Competitive Appraisal Q&A (unlimited for admissions season): $395
.
DING ANALYSIS & REAPPLICANT RECOMMENDATIONS
By phone/skype, or written report (your choice): You get an analysis of a previous unsuccessful application to identify what went wrong and why. This is a no-BS, no-sweet-talk view of what your application problems and weaknesses were. This will guide you to avoid making the same mistakes again, and help you towards improving your applicant profile and develop a new positioning. A ding analysis will consider all the material (essays, short questions, etc.) that you sent to Adcom. As an optional extra you can have essay-by-essay feedback on the dinged essay set.
Ding analysis: $395
Ding analysis (incl. essay-by-essay review & analysis): $695
SCHOOLS EVALUATION & SELECTION
By phone/skype: After reading your background-bio documents, we discuss your profile, goals, and needs, and evaluate possible target schools in the light of your value-add and fit criteria, and so determine which are the best ones for you to apply to (and how many to apply to.) This includes identifying “reach” and “safety” schools (and whether or not you need a safety.) School selection may be done with or without full profiling. If it is done without, it requires a much longer get-to-know-you phase.
Schools evaluation & selection: $495
SECTION 2: CANDIDATE PROFILING & POSITIONING; ESSAY APPROACHES
Typical Applicant Situation: “I’m starting my essays. I need to find the strengths in my profile, and my points of value, and build these into an clear application platform that positions me competitively in the essays and interviews. I need to find my stand-out areas and get all the parts of my background working together, and working for me.”
PERSONAL & PROFESSIONAL PROFILING; VALUE POINTS ASSESSMENT; PROFILE BUILDING; THEME & MESSAGE DEVELOPMENT; APPLICANT POSITIONING, CAREER GOALS DEVELOPMENT
This is the core of a successful application. It is here that you and Avi “crack” your application, finding and marshaling your key value drivers for admissions. We talk and we think hard how to make the most of who you are and what you’ve done in the past, and what you could credibly do in the future, to get you noticed by Adcom. We extract key themes, value drivers, points of interest, and elements of distinctiveness. We look at key transition points, motivations, successes, etc., to come to a clear and organized determination of your core value drivers, points of interest, and distinctive elements, all towards deciding which parts of you to promote as a compelling candidate.
This includes understanding which background components and achievements are relevant, interesting, and valuable to Adcom, finding them in your past record, and pulling this focus through into your application message. In this way we consolidate a platform message from your profile, integrated with a positioning that best promotes you. We explore, consolidate, refine, and package your claim for selection. This becomes the basis of your statement of purpose (why an MBA, why here, why now?) and the other essays.
The interview process also covers goals development — clarifying and enhancing your future aspirations in the light of how Adcoms view and reward applicant goals. Goals development or School evaluation & selection may also be taken as separate services (if no profiling,) see below.
Includes:
Profiling Worksheets: You get a structured question set in 3 documents that prompts you to investigate your personal and professional profile strengths, weaknesses, motivations, and resources along the key MBA admissions value dimensions, following an intuitive tabular format.
1-to-1 Profiling Session/s by phone or skype: Avi works with you individually to bring together all the elements of your story into a coherent, structured profile, identify your application themes, position you correctly and differentiate you vs competitor applicants, and ready you for the essays, interview, and other parts of your application. (This is at least a 90-minute call, with unlimited followups, as necessary.)
Full profiling, profile development, and positioning: $895
.
Essay Approaches: Profile Mapping, Content Preview: The next stage is to build the profiling into an essay strategy: where and how to best deliver each important profile value item across the essay set. This is a pre-writing stage, where Avi helps you decide what to say and which essay to say it in and which evidence or examples to use, to develop a consistent, reinforcing message across the entire set (with minor repetition for emphasis) while making sure there are no redundancies, or message weaknesses or gaps.
Question primer and essay approaches, per school: $395
IF NO PROFILING, THE FOLLOWING, ROUTINELY INCLUDED IN PROFILING, ARE STAND-ALONE SERVICE OPTIONS:
Goals Development for ‘Why an MBA, Why now?’: The quality and scope of applicant career and life goals is absolutely key in successful MBA admissions. Goals must credibly link to your past, but also suggest interesting and ambitious future success. They cannot be too specific (no career blueprint will be believed) but cannot be too general, unformulated, and indeterminate either. Goals development and refinement is covered in profiling above, but may also be taken as a stand-alone service. It is done by phone/skype chat, as long as necessary, and includes multiple rounds if required.
Goals development: $495
Essay Question Primer: Part of getting essay approaches right is to understand the simple and compound question archetypes present in the question set you face. Avi helps you understand what is being sought in each essay, and therefore how to approach it.
Essay questions primer: $295
.
SECTION 3: ESSAY MAKEOVER [DEVELOPMENT, REVIEW, EDITING]
Typical Applicant Situation: “I know my profile and my value points. I’m clearly and competitively positioned. I’ve written a first draft of my essays. Now I need to know whether the essays work or not, or where they need reworking and strengthening.”
Note that the MBA Studio does NOT write applicants’ essays.
Essay makeover includes the following:
Essay Content Review and Development: Here Avi reviews and rework the content of your draft helping you refocus and add emphasis where necessary, so that it captures and communicates your value more clearly. He helps you find and develop imagery and stories, and point out where copy can be rewritten to improve direction and flow. He makes sure you avoid known pitfalls and help you cut low-content “air bubbles” without compromising meaning, giving you more space to make statements that count.
Structure and Writing Enhancement: Avi helps you organize and signpost each essay to structure your argument and integrate your key themes into the answer. This includes rebuild your essay structure and paragraph placement, if necessary, to clarify and develop the flow of argument and ensure the content message is delivered clearly.
Style, Grammar, and Expression Polish: Avi helps you fine-tune your essays to high-quality standards of style, expression, linguistic, and grammatical correctness, taking care not to lose your own voice and narrative style. This includes clarifying and enhancing sentence construction, fixing ambiguities, evening-out word choice and word register, and consolidating each essay’s overall tone in this ‘final ‘polish’ stage.
Note: It normally takes two-to-three reviews to get an essay right. Round one reviews and builds content, structure, and profile strategy. Then you rework your essay. The second review focuses on expression, style, grammar, and final polish. Depending on how you work, and how developed your essay was to start with, a third review may be necessary. You may also get the same service on a per-school basis, see per-school Option A below.
Per 100 words of incoming copy:
1st review $30. If required: 2nd and subsequent reviews $20
.
SECTION 4: INTERVIEW, RECOMMENDATIONS, RESUME, & MORE
Typical Applicant Situation: “Okay, my essays are great. Now how do I leverage this across the rest of my application. How do I get everything as good as these essays, and working together with them?”
INTERVIEW PREPARATION - MOST LIKELY QUESTIONS
We do a phone/skype session (+ readthrough of documents that you send) during which we talk about, prepare, and practice your answers to the most common questions you are likely to face in your interview; followed by feedback and development to ensure you know and are successfully communicating your value message. Avi assesses most likely questions based on school vs. alumni interviewer, the school itself, and your particular profile and background. Many of the most common questions are similar from school to school, and Avi will alert you to these and how they may be best handled in your case. Your profile may also suggest unique questions which you should be ready for, and you will be guided in seeing these in advance and how best to manage them. This service includes MBA Studio’s list of 200 most common, most pertinent or challenging MBA interview questions.
Interview Preparation: $395
‘LIVE’ INTERVIEW REHEARSAL
We do a practice interview (by phone or skype,) a real-time test interview of 30 minutes, followed by about 30 minutes feedback, analysis, tactics, and polishing delivery. You get experience in question (and underlying question) recognition, and practice managing tricky questions while making your points connect to your larger goal, and staying “on message”. You get experience articulating yourself under pressure, to get your profile message and application themes across to the interviewer no matter what questions you receive -including managing the interviewer and taking control of the question process.
How is Preparation different from Rehearsal? If you think about it in GMAT-prep terms: the preparation session (‘the build’) is a step-by-step consideration of the types of questions you are likely to face, and how you should manage them, given your particular story. We go over your key profile elements and most likely questions, taking them one by one, considering your best answers and stories, including explaining your problem areas. You can do this a number of times. Once you’re on top of this, you may choose to do one or several mock tests, in real time, under test conditions, with feedback. That’s the rehearsal session.]
‘Live Interview’ (rehearsal, analysis, and coaching): $265
Interview 3-pack (1x Preparation; 2x Rehearsal): $895
RECOMMENDER: TACTICAL SELECTION & PREP
Help to tactically evaluate, select, and brief your recommenders, to get your reco’s to dovetail with your application, reinforcing highlights and plugging holes. This includes evaluation of advantages and disadvantages of different recommenders and advice on briefing each one. Note: MBA Studio does not write recommendations.
Recommenders: selection & prep $345
RESUME REVIEW & EDITING
Full analysis of your resume from an admissions viewpoint, repositioning and repurposing it as necessary, and editing it to frame it correctly and competitively for b-school admission. Unlimited reviews /edits.
Resume review & edit: $395
Primary development of your MBA resume from the ground up, plus review and editing. Unlimited reviews /edits
Resume: primary development: $995
(Note: this is excluded from per-school packages)
SHORT QUESTIONS
Reviews & edits of your short question (file data & paragraph essays) answers to extract the maximum benefit from them, and to position them consistently with your essays and other parts of your application. Unlimited reviews.
Short questions, per school: $395
SCHOLARSHIP / FINANCIAL AID APPLICATIONS
Working with you on essays and whatever else is required to make a compelling scholarship or financial aid application. Unlimited reviews.
Scholarship / financial aid application: $345
WAITLIST SUPPORT
Full advisory and text support in the event of a waitlist request from any school (which is becoming more and more common these days as schools give themselves a “call option” on early-round candidates). Unlimited reviews.
Waitlist support, per school: $295
SECTION 5: INTEGRATED PACKAGES PER SCHOOL
These are discounted, per-school packages. See cost matrix below. Further discounted 5-or-more school packages are also available on request.
Typical Applicant Situation: “I need various of admissions support services, pulled together around my application for one or more schools.”
Note: Option A is ‘Essay Makeover; Development, Review, and Editing,’ applied (and discounted) on a per-school basis. It is unlimited, intensive text-based essay support, over multiple rounds where necessary. Options B adds profiling (done by phone/skype) and profile-message development applied to the essays. Options C and D do this too, and integrate (and discount) various add-ons: resume review, interview prep, etc., and include ‘anytime’ phone/Skype Q&A.
Option A: Essay Review — Applicant Positioning, Content Development, Essay Editing
Includes all elements described in Essay Makeover, Development, Review, and Editing (above):
1. ESSAY EDITING 1: content review and development, incl. message review, strategic assessment, red flag alerts, tactical fixes, suggesting new or additional content, changes of emphasis, etc.
2. ESSAY EDITING 2: attention to structure, paragraph placement, and development and flow of argument
3. ESSAY EDITING 3: style, grammar, word choice and expression fixes, and overall polishing
4. Unlimited reviews
.
Option B:
Personal & Professional profiling; Value points assessment; Profile building; Theme & message development; Applicant positioning, Career goals development; Essay Approaches; Profile Mapping, Content Preview; Essay Review, Content Development, & Essay Editing/ Makeover
Includes:
1. PROFILING WORKSHEETS: theme and message development
2. CANDIDATE PROFILING: 1-to-1 profiling session or sessions as necessary (unlimited); profile building
3. GOALS DEVELOPMENT & REFINEMENT
4. ESSAY QUESTION PRIMER
5. ESSAY APPROACHES: profile mapping, content preview
6. ESSAY EDITING 1: content review and development, incl. message review, strategic assessment, red flag alerts, tactical fixes, suggesting new or additional content, changes of emphasis, etc.
7. ESSAY EDITING 2: attention to structure, paragraph placement, and development and flow of argument
8. ESSAY EDITING 3: style, grammar, word choice and expression fixes, and overall polishing
9. UNLIMITED essay reviews
10. SKYPE ACCESS: By appointment Skype chat with Avi Gordon for essay help questions and concerns.
Option C:
Personal & Professional profiling; Value points assessment; Profile building; Theme & message development; Applicant positioning, Career goals development; Essay Approaches; Profile Mapping, Content Preview; Essay Review, Content Development, & Essay Editing/ Makeover; plus further services
Includes:
1. COMPETITIVE APPRAISAL: any question, anytime as you proceed with your application
2. PROFILING WORKSHEETS: theme and message development
3. CANDIDATE PROFILING: 1-to-1 profiling session or sessions as necessary (unlimited); profile building
4. GOALS DEVELOPMENT & REFINEMENT
5. ESSAY QUESTION PRIMER
6. ESSAY APPROACHES: profile mapping, content preview
7. ESSAY EDITING 1: content review and development, incl. message review, strategic assessment, red flag alerts, tactical fixes, suggesting new or additional content, changes of emphasis, etc.
8. ESSAY EDITING 2: attention to structure, paragraph placement, and development and flow of argument
9. ESSAY EDITING 3: style, grammar, word choice and expression fixes, and overall polishing
10. UNLIMITED essay reviews
11. SKYPE ACCESS: Anytime Skype chat with Avi Gordon for your application or essay help questions and concerns.
Plus any one (per school) of the following:
12. RECOMMENDATIONS: recommender selection, prep, and review
13. SCHOOL SELECTION: evaluation of best schools to target
14. SHORT QUESTIONS: file data and paragraph essays. Unlimited reviews
15. RESUME REVIEW & EDIT: one or two-page resume. Unlimited reviews
16. INTERVIEW PREPARATION OR REHEARSAL
17. SCHOLARSHIP / FINANCIAL AID APPLICATION: positioning, essay prep, and review
.
Option D:
Comprehensive Total Package. Includes Everything, Unlimited (interview prep: 1 per school)
This is the soup-to-nuts option, which includes:
1. COMPETITIVE APPRAISAL: any question, anytime as you proceed with your application
2. PROFILING WORKSHEETS: theme and message development
3. CANDIDATE PROFILING: 1-to-1 profiling session or sessions as necessary (unlimited); profile building
4. GOALS DEVELOPMENT & REFINEMENT
5. ESSAY QUESTION PRIMER
6. ESSAY APPROACHES: profile mapping, content preview
7. ESSAY MAPPING AND OUTLINING: applicant positioning
8. ESSAY EDITING 1: content review and development, incl. message review, strategic assessment, red flag alerts, tactical fixes, suggesting new or additional content, changes of emphasis, etc.
9. ESSAY EDITING 2: attention to structure, paragraph placement, and development and flow of argument
10. ESSAY EDITING 3: style, grammar, word choice and expression fixes, and overall polishing
11. RECOMMENDATIONS: recommender selection, preview, & review
12. SHORT QUESTIONS: file data and paragraph essays.
13. SCHOOL SELECTION: evaluation of best schools to target
14. RESUME REVIEW & EDIT
15. INTERVIEW PREPARATION AND REHEARSAL: One per school
16. SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATION: positioning, essay prep, and review
17. ADCOM COMMUNICATIONS: all emails, and communications with Adcom tactically reviewed
18. UNLIMITED essay, recommendation, resume, and short question reviews
19. SKYPE ACCESS: Anytime Skype chat with Avi Gordon for your application or essay help questions and concerns.
20. WAITLIST SUPPORT: Advice and text support in managing waitlist issues, if required.
PER-SCHOOL PACKAGE DISCOUNT PRICES ($US):
The signup/payment links are HERE.
MBA Studio works all around the world: prices here in $US for convenience. Service price adjustments may be made without notice, but will only apply to new purchases. Rush or weekend charges may be applied, and prices may also be adjusted in cases requiring extensive English-language support. Turnaround is 48 hours or less, excluding weekends, but this is not a condition of service. Informal skype access is anytime Avi Gordon is reasonably available and online, but is not 24/7. Services are valid for the current application year only (expire one year after signup.) Free reviews are provided as trial-of-service and offer may be withdrawn if the prospective client has no apparent need for further services. As client work takes priority, free essay reviews or free spot assessments are seldom done on a 48-hour turn basis. Client confidentiality and data is strictly guarded. Provision of services is not a guarantee of admission.
.
Responses
