Did you ever feel, ‘ He finally heard me. Things are falling into place.’ This was exaclty my feeling when I heard from Darden’s admission office that I’m being offered a place in the class of 2021. You’d expect me to think of my loved ones first after hearing that. Well, quite literally yes. I thought of Applicant Lab and Maria.
Applicant Lab is want I needed. I was an MBA aspirant who wanted a shift in industry using an MBA but had no idea about admissions process. After my GMAT, I started talking to different consultants and taking free profile evaluations. The funniest part was, I couldn’t get a proper genuine evaluation from any one of them. Some of them tell me I should be applying to HBS and Stanford. When I tell them I myself donot believe that I could get into HBS they start selling their service. I was fed up with everyone. But suddenly I came across someone who for the first time gave me an honest review of my profile,didn’t try to sell me her product and genuinely wanted to help me. @Maria.
I came to know about Applicant lab from an e-gmat webminar. Thanks for Rajat and Payal. In my first interaction with Maria over e-mail. She clearly told me not what I want to hear but the actual scenario in admissions. She told me where I should go and not where I can go. There’s a lot of difference. She only talked to me about my post-MBA goals and life ambitions and not where I want to study. She then told me how I should select my schools. I never thought I’d say this, but I started thinking, “Nah! I would choose Darden over Wharton” She recommended me no schools but taught me how I chose my schools perfectly.
This is exactly what’s great about applicant lab. Applicant Lab makes you competent to say your story the best way possible. In my experience with applicant lab, forget about writing MBA essays. I learnt a lot about myself, my traits, my stories, my character, my strengths and my weaknesses. It was like a 2 month introspection into myself.
Applicant lab’s process is the most streamlined I ever saw. It is as smooth as it can get and you’ll never feel stressed. All the material in the lab is hand crafted specific to each school by Maria and it is amazing to see specific strategies for each essay question in each school. You’ll get surprised by the amount of detail that’s put into the material.
The best thing about Applicant lab is, you are doing everything. Today I have the satisfaction of writing my own essays and still getting admitted into one of the best schools. Applicant lab doesn’t craft your essays. It makes you capable of writing the best essays. Applicant lab helps you choose which one of your stories to go with which essay. This will in turn make it easy for you in your interview, because you are going to be the same person on writing and in person.
Applicant Lab’s greatest strengths are it’s process and school specific material. I can assure you, you can never get so much information and guidance from anyone other than Maria.
For people like me, who couldn’t afford a full time MBA admissions consultant for thousands of Dollars, Applicant lab is a boon. You may have to put in a little more effort than you would with a full time consultant. But for what you are saving economically and mentally, it’s not even a tradeoff that you should think twice about before making.
I very strongly recommend Applicant Lab to everyone, especially those who are starting your application from scratch. Believe me, you’ll never regret your decision. Applicant Lab and Maria are the best thing that happened to me in my MBA admission process.

View the VERIFIED review on GMATCLUB.com.