Switching Consultants: HBS & MIT (with scholarship)

At first, I had worked with a different counselor but the consultant’s personality was not a good fit for me, so I was at a loss and not making any progress on my essays. At that point, a colleague introduced me to Bryan.

The most important aspect of the MBA application process - writing your essays - is identifying every event in your life, from achievements to failures, analyzing what you felt and what you learned from them, and assembling a meaningful story from them that reflects who you are. Therefore, in order to write a really good essay, you need to share with your counselor everything that has happened in your life so far, literally everything. It takes a lot of courage to reveal such very personal things to a stranger, and to be honest, I could not do it with my previous counselor. However, I was impressed that Bryan was very sincere in dealing with the personal events I shared with him and never overreacted or had a negative reaction, which gave me a sense of psychological safety. I’m sure you can also sense this immediately from his word choice or reactions in his emails and zoom calls.

After we got to know my essence together in this way, I also really liked Bryan's approach in terms of what kind of story we could build it into. He carefully read the draft I submitted (and amazingly, his comments came right back overnight!) and he was eager to clarify what I was trying to convey and to see if there were any further episodes to support it. As I answered his questions, I was able to naturally identify my feelings that I had not been able to verbalize, and my essays became stronger.

Honestly, I feel my essays — especially my main essay for HBS — is very moving and strong and reflects well what I am even after reading it over and over again myself, and I believe that this would never have been possible without Bryan.

If you want to write a very strong, winning essay that is the result of facing yourself and exposing yourself and that expresses your essence, there is no better consultant than Bryan.