What is an MBA Admissions Consultant?

Choosing an MBA admissions consultant is not a decision to take lightly. Making the right decision in consultant can mean the difference between starting a business career off right and doing serious damage to your career prospects. Beyond admission, MBA admissions consultants are given to lots of leverage in terms of their clients’ positioning and overall chance of advancement.

In the simplest terms, an admissions consultant plays a support role in assisting students in their ambitions to start business school and kick-start their career ladder climbing campaign.

In addition to providing consultancy to the people who come directly to them for advice, admissions consultants also actively work to promote themselves just as much as contractors in other industries. Consultants will oftentimes have a schedule built around independent publishing, branding and community engagement in order to demonstrate their expertise and thought leadership in the industry.

Providing Insight Based on Personal Experience

Because the specific kinds of experience possessed between different MBA consultant contractors can vary by a wide margin, the best fit for an MBA admissions consultant for any potential business school applicant is not only based on the consultant’s professionalism, but also their unique goals and affinity with the consultant on a personal level – this ensures that the right quality of communication is possible.

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An MBA admissions consultant doesn’t just help applicants by being adept at consulting potential applicants on the admissions process in a “by the books” fashion, but also by drawing from their own personal experience in business themselves.

Many MBA admissions consultants begin consulting after they have already demonstrated proficiency in their own business-oriented careers, giving them the credibility to those who are on the path to furthering their education to start business careers of their own.

Larger Versus Smaller Firms

The different firms people can choose from to find an admissions consultant can vary between larger-scale firms and smaller-scale firms. Larger-scale consulting firms tend to have access to a wide range of resources and potential pool of connections than smaller firms; at the same time, larger-scale firms tend to employ their admissions consultants more on a freelance basis, which means that their capacity for quality control can potentially be slightly less than what is possible for smaller and more personally-oriented firms.

Though smaller firms may not have the same industrialized mass of resources that larger-scale firms do, their ability to provide one-on-one care can be more attractive to those who desire a more personalized and fine-tuned approach to the process.

Demand for Consultants

Currently, despite the varying results that applicants have gotten from MBA consultants with varying levels of professionalism and knowledge, it is projected that anywhere from about 25 to 33 percent of all applicants to the top-rated business schools in the nation make use of MBA consultants’ services.

It is not uncommon for applicants to Harvard, Stanford, and other similarly rated institutions to pay anywhere from $5000-$10,000 for the services of a credible admissions consultant to help them in their path.