I worked with Alice on my re-application to Harvard and Stanford (plus a few schools that I applied to for the first time). I contacted 5-6 consultants to get a feel of the people out there first, and chose Alice because of her amazing reviews (to which I am adding) and the fact that she seemed like the only person I spoke to whom I could truly trust from the first time we spoke. I was originally going to reach out to Sandy Kreisberg about HBS afterward but decided to go with Alice after we spoke over the phone. This trust factor I think is important above all else. Alice pointed out a few broad themes and was realistic, telling me that I probably would not succeed (just based on the facts and stats), but that I had strong material to work with. Given Alice’s background at Bain, I expected her to be a hyper-structured, no-nonsense type who would put everything I needed to do in buckets and help me manage my process as if it were a consulting project. In reality, Alice is a very warm person whose coaching sessions were more of a natural, free-flowing conversation. However, she’s very firm in her advice, extremely organized, and clearly spends time when you’re not working together thinking about what your strategy should be and whether you should be making any changes or pivots given new information or updates to your profile. Alice and I worked to overhaul my entire application, including essay, resume, application short answers, recommendations, and interview prep. I was a candidate without a clear brand or an obviously fascinating story to tell, and Alice was hugely helpful in identifying what to highlight, including things that were perhaps not the most exciting but absolutely necessary information to include to connect the dots for admissions. Before I received my interview invites, I would at times have major cognitive dissonance when it came to some of Alice’s advice. Would schools really want to read about a significant experience that I had all the way back in high school? Should I really ask this specific person for a recommendation? Should I really submit an essay that I personally found kind of boring (but was not boring to other people)? Should I really not mention Why X school in my essay AT ALL? The answer to all of these questions turned out to be yes, and I luckily took Alice’s advice (this is why it’s important to have a consultant who you can truly trust, instead of a consultant with whom you have a transactional relationship/you treat as a second opinion). I had to get over the fact that I would never be able to come up with an essay that could compare with one of those “WOW!” essays about being in combat in Afghanistan or overcoming crushing adversity or digging 1,000 wells in a developing country, and just tell the story I had to tell. I’m not sure how I would have fared in a second attempt on my own, because I would have repeated many of the same mistakes I made the first time. This is specific to my personal experience and style, but I think Alice is a great partner for over-achievers who overthink and overanalyze. In my case, those tendencies resulted in a lot of convoluted essay drafts and short answers that took 100 words to say what could be conveyed in 20. Alice reminded me REPEATEDLY (I really did not get it fast enough) throughout the process to write and speak in a simple, honest voice, even at times when it would have been much easier for both of us to just work off of what I had. For example, the morning my HBS post-interview reflection was due, I basically had to revamp my draft after I received her feedback. It made for a stressful morning, but Alice will not hesitate to tell you to go back to the drawing board and how to approach things differently, because she just knows what does and doesn’t work. I got into HBS, and am so grateful to have found Alice. Absolutely no regrets on spending the time and money to work with her, and hope that many others will achieve their goals with her help in the future. She is someone you will be grateful to know, and who genuinely cares about her clients.
