I was not very confident about how would a tool help me write essays or get me into top business schools. I was like “Are you really serious? This is just a tool Man!”.
I must admit today I laugh at myself when I think what I used to think about this tool. Since it was just for a few bucks, I thought let’s go for it. I bought the tool and started working on it. I showed my last years Resume to a couple of people and everyone was like “Hey, did you really apply to Business schools with this resume?”. I was highly embarrassed. Come on, I paid so much for this and now you are laughing at me on this resume?
Trust me: I got awestruck when I saw Maria’s advice on how to build a resume for MBA school. At that time, I wanted to punch my consultant too badly. I mean how dare he made me make a resume that was the worst resume in the world. Maria has made a comparison on what a good resume is and how badly you can make your resume. And all the qualities of a bad resume were there in my old resume. It was a BS.
I worked on my resume again and followed the advice that was provided on the tool. I felt a bit confident that atleast I have made something better this year than what I did the previous year. This also made me realize that some of the “big” consultant companies are using their big names to get the business but are hiring low quality consultants to provide services.
I started working on other modules of ApplicantLab. Initial modules brainstorm you alot by asking you to think alot and answer alot many questions. I felt a bit less confident on how boring it was. But I realized its worth once I started writing my essays. I felt that whatever the questions were asking was already brainstormed by the tool in the initial stages. It got so easy to just pull the information/answers I already wrote and plug them in the essays to make a story. There are many sanity checks that ensure that you are adding the information that the essay is looking for. The best thing is you have very specific information for every school.
I even realized that my previous consultant was not even providing me any direction or ideas to write my essays. He was just asking me to remove this and add something better. But ApplicantLab has very well explained videos for every school. Maria has provided alot many ideas/examples for you to think and has provided right directions to help you get further ideas.
Feeling more confident now, I started working on my first essay and this way I ended up submitting 10 applications within 30 days.
It was Diwali night (A North Indian Festival) when I received my two interview invites within a span of 30 minutes. I got excited and opened the interview module of ApplicantLab and started preparing for interviews. My experience with interview module was again awesome. All the general and behavioral questions are very well explained and they guide you to generate many ideas to talk about. This went in my favor. I prepared well and started receiving interview calls from a couple of more schools in the mean time. My interviews went awesome.
I ended up spending less than what I spent last year and got admitted to 3 schools with huge $$$s.
It was 2 weeks after the interview of one the schools that I came to know I got admitted and that too with unexpectedly high scholarship.
I have added my detailed story here: https://gmatclub.com/forum/stepping-into-my-10-years-long-dream-thank-you-applicantlab-262884.html
Happy learning!
