This is a high-stakes, one-shot opportunity to drastically change the course of a person’s career. Applicants shouldn’t have to settle for anything less than individualized, full-time, professional support.
David White, Founding Partner
Menlo Coaching is an admissions consulting, test prep, and career coaching company. It was officially founded in 2012 by Alice van Harten and David White in Menlo Park, California, before moving headquarters to Baarn, a small town in the Netherlands.
The company’s roots date back to 2007, when Alice decided against pursuing a career in academia at the end of her postdoctoral contract with Stanford University. Instead, she transitioned into management consulting at Bain & Company.
During her time there, some ambitious colleagues recognized Alice’s sharp judgment and academic background and began asking her for advice on their business school applications. As more and more MBA hopefuls turned to Alice, she called in David to assist.
Soon, they discovered a shared talent for coaching MBA applicants, and Menlo Coaching was born.
Today, Menlo Coaching stands around 30 employees strong, with a host of talented and dedicated admissions consultants, career coaches, test prep instructors, and a variety of supporting team members collaborating to help you put together the best possible applications.
Menlo Coaching differs from other admissions consulting companies both in the service it provides and the values it upholds.
We are a privately owned firm still led by the original founders, with no outside investors pushing us to compromise our principles to boost profits. This enables us to maintain our high standards.
Many admissions consulting firms hire consultants on a part-time basis, take on more clients than they can realistically help in any meaningful way, and mislead clients about their odds of acceptance.
Menlo Coaching defines itself in opposition to those pitfalls. It is a boutique firm specializing primarily in M7 admissions, particularly for applicants from elite PE, IB, MBB, and family business backgrounds.
We maintain a full-time, interdisciplinary team of consultants with diverse professional backgrounds, all of whom are expert storytellers. Leading the consultant team is Luke Anthony Peña, former Director of Admissions at Stanford GSB—the world’s most selective business school.
Each consultant takes on no more than 12–15 comprehensive clients annually, the lowest client-to-consultant ratio in the industry. We rigorously prescreen prospective clients, accepting only those with realistic but ambitious goals who will truly benefit from our service model.
That service model involves exceptionally comprehensive, end-to-end support, with unlimited one-on-one coaching. Clients appreciate it; we are ranked #1 globally for client satisfaction on Poets&Quants, with a near-perfect net promoter score of 9.98/10.
We also maintain a substantial in-house test prep team, running GMAT and GRE prep courses as well as individual tutoring. All our test prep work follows an advanced curriculum designed by our Head of Test Prep, Chris Kane, targeting elite scores and based exclusively on official test materials.
Right here on our website, we have an extensive, 100% free library of educational resources covering topics such as test prep, guides to the top MBA programs. Check it out here.
You might wonder about the unique cartoon images we often use as illustrations on the site (such as the image of our office at the top of this page). These aren’t generic stock images but actually come from a comic book we commissioned a few years ago—Admitted! Diane & Chad’s Excellent MBA Adventure. You can learn more about the comic and read it for yourself (for free) here.
Menlo Coaching’s expert team are also regularly cited as an authority on everything related to MBAs, admissions, and test prep. You can find a roundup of external articles featuring us here.
Now that you know a little more about us, we’d love to hear from you.