As an international applicant, the MBA application process felt daunting and confusing to me. I initially engaged a consultant (hourly services), but when a friend from Stanford told me about ApplicantLab later on, I signed up immediately.
I used ApplicantLab’s processes and was admitted to Stanford (my dream school), Berekely, Wharton and MIT, and also received $50k+ in fellowship awards.
Here’s how ApplicantLab helped me:
• Modularized the ENTIRE MBA application process into bite-sized chunks from start to finish. Every single piece of information is essentially codified into digestible blocks e.g. setting your strategy, why MBA, brainstorming essays, recommendations, short-answer questions, interviews etc. The Lab also has a to-do list for you to keep track for your application process, which helped me stay organized
• Packed with Information. Each module is jam-packed with so much valuable information, either through text or videos. If you’re in a hurry, there are TLDR sections where you read the important points and move on, saving you precious time
• School-specific advice. This is GOLD. ApplicantLab provided really specific advice for each school, including the schools’ brand, traits they’re looking for (e.g. leadership/innovation) and essay advice. This helped me to craft my essay to fit the school’s profile
• Brainstorming exercises. Introspection and self-reflection do not come naturally to me, so the brainstorming prompts and questions from ApplicantLab helped me to think of my personal story and weave it into my application so that my authenticity can be felt
• Customized help. I signed up for ApplicantLab’s value-added services and worked with Luqzan for my essays. I am forever grateful to Luqzan for pushing me on my essays to dig deeper and refine my stories to answer the question (especially for Stanford and Harvard essays!). The process is also extremely convenient, and because the feedback was given in a video format, I could replay the video multiple times over to internalize the feedback
Overall, ApplicantLab gives you way more bang for your buck – I was paying more per hour for a consultant than what I paid ApplicantLab. You really do get a wealth of information and customized support from the team. Also, I love the story and mission of ApplicantLab – I believe access to information should be democratized to level the playing field, so thank you Maria and team for creating ApplicantLab!
