First off a bit about me. I am from India and work in the Semiconductor High Technology area in the Silicon Valley. I am 34 years old.
I took the GMAT twice in 2011 scoring 610 and 640 respectively. The second exam was in late September. Since the application deadlines were right around the corner, I was torn between retaking the exam to improve my score and continuing with the application. After about two weeks of deliberation, I decided to continue with the application.
Given my lower score and interest in California schools, I decided to go with an admission consultant. After speaking to a couple of consultants, including a local consultant, I was not really convinced much.
Then, I read a lot about Amerasia consulting on the GMATclub threads. I was impressed with Paul Lanzillotti's depth and experience and the ease and geniality with which he addressed people's questions. Also, it appeared that Paul didn't look down upon low GMAT scores. I got in touch with Amerasia about their two school package. Adam got in touch with me and provided some initial guidance on what to expect. He was very clear upfront that given my lower GMAT score and interest in some top schools, my chances were at best 50-50!
I was then put in touch with Drew. Drew was professional from the word "go"! He setup a 30-minute call to understand what were my expectations and what to expect out of working with him. He followed this up with a very good questionnaire to get a better sense of my background, personality, and what were the best aspects about myself to showcase.
We decided that I'll use my two school package for UC Berkeley Haas and UCLA Anderson.
Then Drew wrote up a really unique strategy memo that outlined what was unique about each school and how to take a crack at their essays. For the first memo, he clearly outlined the protocols for us working together, including response times and document exchange plans. I think this was very good since it setup a solid foundation for our working relationship and kept things professional. My schedule was another challenge since I had a two week vacation planned in December.
Then we got into the guts of writing essays. I came up with an initial set of essays and Drew went to work magically transforming the way the words were presented without making any change in the meaning I wanted to convey. In a sense he made my essays richer. Within 3-4 revisions, I could see how it was totally amazing compared to where we started.
Then came a small challenge of meeting the word count/page size limits. Again Drew snipped words intelligently without any noticeable impact on the quality of the essays. One of the big areas of focus for Drew was to turn the attention from everyone else in my essays to me. This was especially present in essays about my family.
Most important to notice in this effort was how we was appreciative of every essay version while being constructive in his suggestions for corrections. He always got back with his feedback on time.
Completing work on one school made things easier for the second school. However, Drew didn't take his feet off the gas pedal even once. He stuck to doing the same quality of work and sticking to the same schedule. Eventhough he was working with other applicants, he always made me feel that I was his only applicant!!
We got done with the essays about two weeks before the deadlines. Then Drew helped complete the applications by doing final reviews of what I wrote as answers to supplemental questions.
Within a few days of submitting my application, I got invited to interviews at both schools. Drew was immediately available to provide guidance on how to prepare for excelling on the interviews. He did a 30 minute mock interview in which he asked pretty much the standard set of questions of any MBA interview. For a couple of questions that I got stuck on giving really long answers, he helped trim the answers to be simpler without loss to the essence of the answers. For questions such as "have you applied to any other schools?", Drew suggested that I provide honest answers and the interviewer can be trusted to use this information responsibly.
Needless to say, come March, I was admitted to all the schools I had applied to. While I was very surprised at the result given my GMAT score, Drew had a HUGE role to play in my success. I can't thank him enough.
In closing, I'd very strongly recommend Drew and Amerasia consulting for an excellent job done in admission consulting. Their professionalism, integrity, genial nature, and very well developed communication infrastructure is unparalleled.