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A: Yes. We often hear from students who are resolute about applying to certain schools. In those cases, we take their list of schools and go to work trying to get them in. However, we can’t overemphasize how important it is that you make sure you get the selection part of this process done right. At Brody we’ve visited these schools, interviewed their staff, and read literally thousands upon thousands of pages about them. You should let us help you make the most informed and appropriate decision about where you’ll get your MBA!

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A: You can, but many applicants find that they need someone coaching them along the way—providing the focus, advice, and information that they don’t have on their own. Co-workers with MBAs, if a candidate even has access to them, can be a valuable aid in thinking about business school and changes in careers. But they usually don’t have the nuanced understanding of what it takes to actually get in. Some applicants talk about their business school aspirations with old professors from their undergraduate institution. Again, these people mean well, but they aren’t business school admissions experts.

Brody counselors have a good sense for what these schools are looking for in a candidate, and will focus entirely on the task of improving your applications. Your counselor works for you. Period.

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Brody counselors are also, frankly, tremendous writers and organizers and will in all likelihood do a much better job at this than anyone you know. They do this year-in and year-out and are experienced at helping students develop outstanding and cohesive sets of essays.

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A: We have the best counselors in the business; we provide unrivaled advice; and we have a profound commitment to client satisfaction. Many firms claim connections to admission committees and Ivy League pedigrees, as if that is all you need to truly serve the needs of MBA applicants. We too have connections and pedigrees--but we have a different philosophy from our competitors.

Our counselors have more than just a degree from Harvard College--they are incredible writers and empathetic mentors.

Our advice is not "one size fits all" counseling, but a leveraging of information and expertise derived from scores of campus visits and admissions interviews, admissions data analysis, and continuous surveying of all the relevant literature on the subject.

Our customer service standards require more from our people than a smile and a helpful attitude. They demand us to go to the ends of the earth to ensure client satisfaction. When our clients make their final decisions to attend a school, having worked with us for months or even years, we want them to be utterly convinced that they could not have possibly been served better. We want them to tell all their friends and family that they couldn't have done it without Brody.

If you just want to get an essay edited, there are other services out there. But if you want to work with a counselor who will truly get to know you and will use that insight to elevate your chances of admittance, come to us. We can't wait to meet you.

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A: We work with newly minted professionals to plan out their careers with an eye toward elite business school admissions. We also will help potential applicants think about what they want to do with their business school degree and what schools might be a good fit for them.

For candidates approaching the application season, our counselors focus specifically on the admissions process. They work with them to lay out a timetable for the months leading through the fall and winter of the "season". As the months go by, counselors brainstorm with applicants on essay topics, they help them chart out the structure of the essays, and they edit drafts. Clients discuss their range of honors, extracurriculars and community service activities with their counselors, who give them guidance on which ones have the most impact on business school admissions officers. Our counselors coach clients on whom to ask to write letters of recommendation, and how to ask them, and then how they should be edited, if that's an option. They will also prepare clients for the interview (in many cases, Brody has obtained the actual interview guide used by school interviewers) which is a critical part of the application.

Sometimes clients come to us late in the process and want us to look over their applications or even just their essays. We will do this, but we will not look at an essay in isolation. We may even demand significant changes or even a new draft. It is important to us that our clients strive to submit the best possible application and if we don't think that's possible, we won’t offer our services.

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A: Brody Admissions hires the best and the brightest. Our application counselors are from the nation's top schools and understand what it takes to gain acceptance into such institutions. They are rigorously screened not only for their pedigree (which we think shows admissions savvy and credibility), but for their writing and communicative abilities. They are subjected to writing and editing tests, and given case examples to test their counseling aptitude. Once hired, they are put through a comprehensive training program designed to strengthen their editing and counseling skills, and they are trained in the use of Brody tools and information databases.

During the counseling relationship, your counselor will have access to Brody’s network of experiences with admissions officials and alums from hundreds of schools. Brody managers (all currently Harvard Law School graduates and/or McKinsey alums) are also involved in every case, monitoring the work of each counselor to add an additional perspective and act as problem solvers.

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A: Each case is evaluated individually. Some clients come to us with half-completed applications for an already determined list of schools. Others have not even started to think about the subject. We try to estimate the workload of our counselors for that client and then price our services accordingly. Typically, you can expect to spend between $800 and $2,200, though some cases are more or less.

The business school application process is one of the most important and life-shaping challenges you'll ever face. Getting professional help to make sure it goes well is a no-brainer.

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What exactly is the process for signing up? How does it work?

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A:Top schools use different systems, but for the most part they look for the following in a candidate:

• Strong academic promise
• Demonstrated leadership potential
• Diversity/personal attributes
• Communications interpersonal skills

Wharton, e.g., states that it looks at the following criteria when making admissions decisions:

• Academic profile
• Professional development and goals
• Personal qualities and leadership

For more on what it takes to get into top business schools, read our article.

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A: There are several important parts of the application: essays, short answers, letters of recommendation, to name a few. One of the most important factors in admissions, though, is out of your control by the time you are applying. Namely, your academic record. Did you take tough courses? Is your major considered to be rigorous? Did you get good grades? How did you do on standardized tests? If you have worked for a few years before applying to business school, your undergraduate record will get slightly less emphasis, but your GMAT score may take on more importance.

For MBA applicants with work experience, the nature and scope of that experience is also very important. Schools are looking for students with interesting and/or prestigious careers to contribute to their incoming classes. While some careers, such as investment banking or management consulting, will be very familiar to business schools, others will be less so and thus it will be the your responsibility to portray your career in the best possible light.

Fortunately, though your academic record will tend to limit you to a certain range of schools, there is significant opportunity to boost your chances of getting into the schools at the high end of your range. Your essays, for example, can go a long ways towards proving that you have the strength of character, personal qualities, and leadership ability to be a good addition to an elite school's entering class.

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A: Absolutely. Admissions officers tell us that recommenders are sometimes brutally honest. Brutal honesty is not always a good thing for you. Conversely, a poignant and well-written stellar recommendation can put you over the top in admissions offices. Selecting the right person as your recommender is crucial, and if you can help shape the recommendation they write, that's even better. Some recommenders will allow you to write a draft of a recommendation for them to send. Others just want you to give them a resume with your accomplishments laid out for them. Still others will let you see the letter before they send it out. In any event, you have some ability to shape the story they tell about you.

Selecting that person can sometimes be a difficult call. Many clients think they need to find a VIP or someone connected with the school, but usually this backfires on them. Admissions officers may ignore (and are quick to spot) recommendations that come from someone who barely knows the candidate, especially when they can’t possibly speak to his or her academic achievements, except from afar. Only in rare cases can VIPs make a real difference in admissions, and it is probably not yours. Tuck’s Henry Malin put it this way in Montauk’s How to Get Into the Top MBA Programs,

“ The biggest mistake is picking someone’s title over intimacy of knowledge, choosing a senior VP who hardly knows who they are over a VP they work with daily. Having a Tuck alum write a recommendation would be very valuable IF the person knows you well. It’s always apparent if it’s just a casual acquaintance, and that’s not useful. The second biggest mistake is choosing people who can’t judge their professional or academic qualifications. A crew coach can talk only about character and personality. We’d rather have this as a third reference; it doesn’t add as much value as a supervisor or professor could.”

So that leaves the people who know you and your accomplishments well, probably your direct managers. Business schools really want to get a flavor for your level of demonstrated leadership in the workplace. You need to approach your managers in the positions in which you did your best work, or had the most impact, but leave them an out. You want to make sure that they really want to write a letter for you and that they are likely to say things like, “Had more impact than anyone ever has in his position,” or “Distinctive leadership ability; really made a difference here. Built up a new market providing X, Inc. with $2 million in new revenues in the first six months of last year.” It is also important, if possible, for your recommenders to really show the impact you’ve had and the leadership potential you possess, through anecdotes and even quotes. You can help them do this, even if your help is unsolicited.

You also may want to submit a recommendation from an old professor indicating the degree to which your academic potential and performance matches up well with the requirements at a top MBA program.

The bottom line is: make your recommendations count in a positive way.

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A: The SAT is a test designed to measure overall aptitude to perform in a college setting. It measures basic mathematical skills and thinking, and vocabulary and reading comprehension (basically telling how fluent you are in your own language). The GMAC’s website states that the GMAT “measures basic verbal, mathematical, and analytical writing skills that you have developed over a long period of time in your education and work.” Unlike the medical school admissions test, the MCAT, it does not test knowledge of subject matters, e.g., business, accounting, or economics. It consists of three sections: the Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA), the Quantitative Section, and the Verbal Section. The AWA is in two parts—one section is an issue analysis and the other is an analysis of arguments. The Quantitative section involves both data sufficiency questions and problem solving questions—all are multiple choice. On the Verbal, you will be asked to answer questions of three types: reading comprehension, critical reasoning, and sentence correction. There is a common theme of logical reasoning throughout the test, even though there isn’t a specific section that focuses on logic per se. Your performance on the SAT is partially predictive of your GMAT potential, but it is common to see a very wide gap in the relative performance on either exam. You could just be very good at high school math and be well-read, but not very good at analytical thinking.

Schools may look at the GMAT, or even different parts of it, differently. Some schools will basically just look to see that your GMAT composite score is above a certain number. Others see it as more of a sliding scale with your other credentials. Some schools will look more closely at the quantitative score, while others will not differentiate.

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A: There are three reasons why you should take the GMAT more than once. (1) If you were taking a number of practice tests and were consistently scoring higher than you did on the day of the official test; (2) if you felt that you were not feeling at your best on the day of the exam; and (3) if your official test date marked the first time you ever took the exam.

We would also add two secondary rationales for taking the test again: if your score did not align well with your academic performance and if your score fell just short of certain “admissions cusps.” These two rationales are a bit more complicated. The first is a bit vague: there are certainly people who get all A’s and 500s on the GMAT, just as there are others who get all A’s and get 780s. But it doesn’t hurt to take the test twice just to make sure. What we call “admissions cusps” are those scores that psychologically matter to admissions officers, even if subconsciously: 600, 630, 700, and 750. (By the way, this is even more important for those schools that rely much more heavily on score/grade indexes for admissions and scholarship programs)

Business schools tend to look at only the best score from multiple exams. (See below)

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A: While it is important to indicate to admissions committees that you are an active member of the community, it doesn’t help your case to appear as a “joiner” with a simple laundry list of activities. Brody Admissions encourages its clients to think about which activities have the most meaning to them (as well as which ones tend to resonate most with admissions committees). Admissions committees like to see passion and deep commitment in a few areas. Of course, it helps considerably if you have been a high achiever in one or more of these areas.

This question also should serve as a warning to recent college graduates who are thinking about going to b-school some day—get involved in a few activities and have an impact. Forget about joining every organization under the sun just to pad your resume. It’s not going to help you get into business school.

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A: This is a common application issue. Some students, for example, are only involved in a couple of activities, but have been pursuing them with passion for several years. Some clients have continued to be involved at their undergraduate school; others have become active in Big Brothers/Big Sisters or the United Way. Either of these can be a significant commitment if you are working 60 hours/week. Other candidates are involved in activities at work, such as organizing bike trips or blood drives. These can be valid examples to write about in your essays.

Some applicants, however, are not particularly impactful in any of their few activities. For these applicants, the case is a bit harder. If you fit into this group, your other credentials must be powerful—or consider getting involved in something right now, if you are still in the “thinking about business school” mode. Also, as a last resort, you can think back to your college days. If you were active in organizations that relate to your career goals, you might have a legitimate case for including them in your application. This can be a challenging task and one of the areas where Brody Admissions can be the most helpful.

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A: Yes, you do need to market yourself. But you don't want to sound like you are just marketing yourself! You need to craft a complete and compelling story for the admissions committees about who you are, what your passions are, and where you see yourself going in life. More so than for college applications, business school applicants should give some thought to what they are going to do with their MBA and what they will bring to their business school class. In fact, this is probably the single most important theme to keep in mind as you are preparing your MBA applications.

The essays are one piece in that puzzle, and thus can't be contructed in a vacuum. They must relate to and support the themes you have chosen to lay out in the rest of your application. The essays are the place where you can really show your personality. They require you to sit and really think about who you are and what you are interested in. What do you want to talk about?

They also require you to think about your audience. This is not to say that you should tell them “what they want to hear” rather, you should tell them what you want them to hear, but in a way they will find interesting. There is no bad topic—there are some topics that more easily lend themselves to clichéd, hackneyed writing—but it is not the topic itself that matters. How you let yourself show through in your writing is the key. Have you struggled with ethical dilemmas? Have you had an impact on an organization? What are your passions? Where do you see yourself in 10 years? What are your strengths and weaknesses? These are the types of questions for which admissions officers are seeking answers.

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A: Yes and no. It is important to have your career goals in mind and to let them shine through as you are crafting your application. But you must show maturity. You must have more of an answer than “I want to be a banker.” Bankers serve many functions. They have many roles. Why do you want to be a banker? What do you want to accomplish in an investment banking world? Do you just want to make lots of money? If so, you might want to cut that out of your application essays. Even though a significant percentage of students at top business schools go on to investment banking or finance-related careers, the admissions officers want to hear more from you than that you’d like to be a part of that group.

The same goes for the future consultants of the world. Are you just interested in the prestige that McKinsey offers? The money? The travel? The travel is not fun, by the way—and admissions officials know it. When you travel for a consulting firm you basically go from office to airport to office to hotel to office to airport than home again. Are you interested in using the consulting firms as an avenue to great corporate jobs? Doing what? You need to have these things in mind.

Above all, make sure you understand what associates and managers do at investment banking and consulting firms (or at marketing organizations, or wherever else). Talk to friends; talk to your parents’ friends. Know what you’re talking about.

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A: Not usually. Study abroad stories usually end with a lesson about how much the writer learned about other cultures. These “morals” are often trite and should be generally avoided. While these types of topics might have worked well for your college application essays, or even for law school, business school applicants should avoid the fluffy personal commentaries. You’ve got to be more focused. Admissions committees want to know about you, but they also want to know that you are a professional and relatively serious about this process and this degree.

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A: Luckily for you, most business schools give you the topics. Unluckily for you, they are rather broad. Here are some examples: (1) Describe your career progression to date and your future plans; (2) What are your strengths and weaknesses; (3) Where have you had impact on an organization or community; (4) Describe an ethical dilemma you have faced; and (5) What do you want to do with your MBA? Many will also ask why you want to get an MBA from their school. You must have your overall “pitch” in mind as you answer these questions. Some questions will allow you to hit some high points; others will be tougher for you to relate to your desired “themes.” This is why you should get help.

Discussing your essay topics and structure with a Brody counselor is a vital part of the relationship. This is a tremendously important part of your application—maybe the only place where you can really increase your chances of admittance on the margin. Get help!

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A: You should be you. If you're funny (ask your friends and acquaintances about this!) you should feel free to exhibit your sense of humor in your essays. But keep in mind that your level of maturity will be judged by admissions officers. You can definitely be an interesting writer without making admissions officers laugh.

Admissions officers are real people, too. They have senses of humor, but just like anyone else, their sense of humor may be different from yours. Comedy is often hit-and-miss--don’t throw caution to the wind.

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