When shopping for MBA admissions consulting, you’ll probably hear the terms “success rate” and “guarantee” thrown around a lot. Some companies will advertise an overall success rate of 90%+, and others will be more specific and advertise bizarrely high success rates at top MBA programs. Some companies offer a money-back guarantee if you don’t get accepted into one of your target MBA programs.
These success rates and guarantees take advantage of MBA applicants in the early stages of their research, but we are here to help you discern why these supposed success rates and guarantees are merely marketing ploys, designed to remove your skepticism about the efficacy of MBA admissions consulting.
Success rates are one of the cheaper marketing tactics used by MBA admissions consulting firms. Why?
The first thing to think about when you see a company’s success rate is that there is no way for you as an MBA applicant to qualify the veracity of their claim: these figures are self-reported, based on data that was gathered by the company. There’s simply no way to know if they are playing by the rules.
Know that MBA admissions consulting companies advertising 90%+ success rates could very easily be making a generous estimate, following what appears to be the industry standard, or simply banking on your unfamiliarity with the MBA admissions landscape.
If you’re looking at a success rate of 70%+ for a school with a 7% success rate, ask yourself if you really believe any service (short of a genie in a bottle) is truly likely to make you 10 times more likely to be accepted to that program?
The term “success rate” is deliberately ambiguous: it’s very difficult to determine what metrics an MBA admissions consulting company uses to determine their success rate. Even if they are “telling the truth,” it’s almost impossible to establish how they measure their success rate.
If their success rate is the number of clients that get into any MBA program divided by their total number of clients, then a 90% success rate is to be expected.
However, this doesn’t account for a number of factors.
How does this company select its clients? Will they take on clients who don’t have above-average test scores or highly coveted work experience?
What MBA programs does this success rate consider? Is it any MBA program at all, or does this success rate refer to Top 10 programs? Top 20 programs? Top 100?
Any admissions consultant with enough experience will know someone with comparatively low test scores or a less competitive employer who won admission to Harvard Business School, Stanford GSB, or Wharton. They’ll also probably know someone with a 780 GMAT, an Ivy League degree, and a Wall Street job that didn’t get accepted.
Regardless of your statistical chances, there are always exceptions to the rule.
If you’re someone with all the attributes of a desirable MBA candidate, then you want to fortify your chances by highlighting your personal story and how it primes you to be successful in your career goals. Even though your chances of acceptance are much higher than someone without your qualifications, there are still plenty of equally qualified candidates that are turned away every year.
If you have a weaker profile, you will need to establish yourself as someone who has consistently beaten the odds in the past and has a track record of excellence in other areas. Your personal story will need to be interesting and unique, and your career goals will need to be especially realistic (yet ambitious enough to warrant the MBA program’s interest). You’re competing for a comparatively small number of seats in the class, as the majority of the class profile will be made up of more traditionally competitive applicants, and so your chances of acceptance, statistically, are much lower.
Working with an admissions consultant, you should not anchor yourself to a blanket success rate. Instead, you and your coach should take your whole profile into consideration and understand that, in every application round, anomalies exist.
To talk you into a less comprehensive service, some admissions consulting companies will offer you a “guarantee” or a refund. The aim is to make you forget your uncertainty and sidestep the issue that their service does not actually cover everything it would need to in order to truly maximize your chances of acceptance.
In short, guarantees are all about closing a deal.
While there is always a (minor) risk that you won’t be accepted to any MBA programs, if you and your coach take a comprehensive approach to your application—covering your test scores, your application essays and resume, selecting the right recommenders, and preparing you for interviews—your chances of acceptance are very good.
Ask yourself this—
When you’ve received (or not received) your offers at the end of an arduous application cycle, do you want to know that you will see some of the money you invested in the process again?
Or do you want to know that you and your coach did everything in your power to put forward your best possible application?
