The Top MBA Admission Consultants Of 2025

The consultant ranking is based on verified client reviews at Poets&Quants from September 1 2023 to August 31, 2024. During that timeframe, clients wrote 1,374 assessments of their experience with 68 admission consultants at 70 different firms. To date, the Poets&Quants‘ consulting directory now boasts more than 600 MBA counselors, with nearly 10,000 reviews.

Some 13 MBA consultants this past year achieved a perfect 10.0 client satisfaction score over at least 10 reviews. Besides Chimni, Candy Lee LaBalle racked up 25 perfect scores from clients, while Eli David accumulated 20 perfect ratings. Rounding out the top five perfect scorers were Nisha Kaul and Petia Whitmore, with 16 each (see table here).

Hiring a coach to help navigate the admissions process into an elite MBA program remains an expensive proposition. The most expensive consultants on the Top 25 list charge $775 an hour for their services or a hefty $14,300 for a comprehensive start-to-finish package of help on applications to three schools. All three of those pricey consultants–Devi Vallabhaneni, Katharine Lewis, and Debbie Choy–are affiliated with mbaMission, the largest firm in the business of MBA admissions consulting.

Each of these counselors brings significant experience to the game. A Harvard Business School MBA, Vallahhaneni had spent more than three years as an MBA Admissions Board member at HBS and has been helping applicants at mbaMission for seven and one-half years. Lewis, who has both a Harvard MBA and a JD on her resume and who has worked at McKinsey, was an MBA admissions reader at Stanford Graduate School of Business for a couple of years before joining mbaMission where she has counseled applicants for over 13 years. Choy is a Stanford MBA who has worked in investment management at JP Morgan and management consulting at Booz & Co. She has been working with MBA candidates since 2013.

The least expensive on the Top 25? A Chicago Booth MBA, Niketa Desai had been an admissions fellow at Booth and began counseling applicants for Admissions Gateway in 2017. After working with Chimni for three and one-half years, she set out on her own in early 2021 as the founder of Admit Beacon in India. Desai, who has coached more than 200 candidates, charges $300 an hour and $6,700 for a three-school comprehensive package. In 2023, she claims to have helped 28 clients get into Stanford, Harvard, or Wharton; 35 land spots in an M7 school, and 38 in a Top 15-ranked MBA program.

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Sam Weeks, founder of Sam Weeks Consulting, is in the top five of the most favorably reviewed consultants this year with 26 positive reviews and a 9.77 client satisfaction score

To make our annual honor roll of top MBA admission consultants, every counselor’s review had to pass a rigorous two-step process. Unlike some other pay-to-play and unverified lists on the Internet, where advisers fork over a fee to allow reviews on their profiles, this is a pure journalistic endeavor, not a pay-to-play model. In our database, you’ll find both positive and negative assessments of consultants and firms (if you have had a bad experience, we strongly encourage you to share it with others so that they can avoid those issues). Whether positive or negative, no review is published unless it passes through a fine screen.

First, every review up until our deadline of August 31st had to be independently verified by Poets&Quants with both the client and the service provider. Secondly, every appraisal was then painstakingly reviewed so that only MBA consulting assignments were counted. Eliminated from the count were reviews for undergraduate or Executive MBA applicants, free introductory consultations, career counseling, case prep advisement, and group sessions for such organizations as the Forte Foundation. Those restrictions often brought down the number of favorable reviews for the top consultants and kept others off the list.

Skeptics may argue that consultants who rack up the most positive reviews are merely more assertive in encouraging their clients to write favorably about their experiences. Or that the list would exclude part-time counselors who could be just as good as full-timers but aren’t exposed to as many clients. But MBA applicants who take the time and effort to write their expressions of praise are the ultimate endorsements of superior consulting work. The more reviews any consultant has, the more credible and authoritative the result. When a client writes a positive referral for a consultant, that action goes beyond customer satisfaction: It becomes a measure of customer loyalty.

A former admissions official at London Business School, Emma Bond of Fortuna Admissions achieved a perfect 10.0 client satisfaction score across 13 different MBA applicants in the past year

That’s a high hurdle the best consultants must meet with today’s more anxiety-ridden applicants. For many, their help can make the difference between an acceptance to a highly selective program where the vast majority of candidates are routinely turned down or a complete rejection without even an admissions interview. That is why client reviews from successful candidates are effusive with praise–and also why applicants who spend $10K or more on a consultant and fail to get into a target school are not all that happy.

Admitted to the Class of 2027, a current client of Fortuna’s Emma Bond reveals getting a $100,000 scholarship from Wharton along with a full ride to the Yale School of Management. Bond made both our lists this year, in the Top 25 for getting a high number of positive reviews but also for achieving a perfect 10.0 client satisfaction score.

“I was initially unsure whether I even needed to work with a consultant, but in hindsight, I can confidently say the investment more than pays off,” wrote the candidate to Poets&Quants.  “Emma really takes the time to get to know you and give tailored advice specific to you, your schools, and your goals. She was there throughout the entire process, from the brainstorming and resume refinement to the interview prep and scholarship negotiations. She is extremely knowledgeable, organized, and efficient. Even in the peak weeks when application deadlines were approaching, her quick turnarounds didn’t waver. Emma strikes the perfect balance between telling you what you need to hear and being an inspirational and supportive coach.”

The praise heaped on Bond is similar to other consultants’ favorable reviews. After gaining admits to both Harvard Business School and Wharton, one candidate who used Sam Weeks as a consultant was over the moon with the results. “Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that I’d have offers for HBS or Wharton (let alone both!) and I can truly say that Sam made it possible for me,” wrote the client who will be a member of the Class of 2027 at either Harvard or Wharton.

An MBA from Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, Weeks has been advising MBA hopefuls for the past four years, ever since quitting his job as an equity derivatives trader. His enthusiastic client went on to explain the hands-on touches that Weeks provided. “Sam is an incredible writer and I was amazed at how productive our weekly live editing sessions were,” the candidate added. “I always left each meeting with clear and actionable steps which made me feel at ease and in control throughout the entire MBA application process. Also, Sam always provided me with honest feedback that was aimed at pushing me to dig deeper and find the best version of each aspect I was putting forward in the application. His candidness was much appreciated and played a huge part in strengthening up my application.”

Of course, many applicants might wonder if the cost of a consultant is truly worth it. Many consultants note that an expertly done application to a highly selective MBA program may not only get one admitted; it may also result in a substantial scholarship to defray some of the cost of getting the degree.

During the 2023-2024 admission season, Weeks says that his firm took on a record 60 clients. Some 55 of those candidates secured admits to one or more of their target schools along with $2.4 million in scholarship offers, for a success rate of 92%. Of these, 55% or 34 clients, applied to M7 schools and 22 were successful, for an M7 success rate of 65%, according to Weeks’ published performance report.

Overall, 31% of his admitted clients received scholarship offers, sharing $2.4 million of scholarships among them with each grant averaging
$43,600. Five of Weeks’ clients got full-ride scholarships for their MBAs. No less impressive was the number of clients Weeks helped get into Stanford, Harvard, and Wharton.

“In total, 26 clients applied to Harvard, Stanford or Wharton, and 12 received offers from one or more of these schools,” he says. “That’s a HSW success rate of 46%. Incredibly, one client received offers from all three of these top schools. Another heroic client received an offer from HBS with a GRE score of only 320.” That’s six points below the average GRE score of 326.

Then again, that’s one reason to hire a top MBA admissions consultant.

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