While all students can benefit from working with an admissions
professional on his/her applications, you may benefit from this
service most strongly if you are:
- Applying to very competitive programs or schools
- Trying to maximize your strengths and gain admission to the
best program you possibly can
- A weak writer (as essays and packaging are very
important)
- A weak communicator
- Pressed for time as your applications are almost due
- A "non-traditional" applicant for your program type (career
changers, arts graduates applying to business school,
etc.)
- Applying from another country
- A non-native English speaker
Working with our team gives you the edge of expert advice from
an admissions professional. And while current grad students,
graduates or others can offer applicants advice, many lack the
actual admissions experience and resources that our consultants
have. Conversely, admissions books, websites, and seminars can be
a great source of general admissions information but cannot offer
you the personalized guidance that our team can.
Our consultants' credentials, professional expertise, years of
experience, and unique consultative advising approach can help
you make decisions when you're debating choosing to re-taking
your test(s), applying early, or waiting a year to apply. With
your consultant's guidance, you will be able to create a winning
application and submit it with confidence to your target
schools.
- You will receive a welcome packet, email, and survey from
our team. The survey asks you about your targeted program,
goals, schools of interest, region—information to familiarize
us with your unique situation.
- We then use this survey to match you with a
consultant.
- If you have paid for the service fully, our consultant will
call you for an introduction and to schedule your
sessions.
- Your consultant will periodically update you on your
package time remaining.
- Most have served on admissions committees in some
capacity—they have insight into the admissions decision-making
process.
- Most also have the degree that they are consulting on—for
example, most of the medical school consultants also hold their
MDs—which means that they can relate to your specific
situation.
- They have vast experience with all types of students and
schools (from average to highly competitive) and can gauge the
best approach for you—it is a highly personalized service.
- The consultants know how essential it is to preserve the
authenticity of your voice in the application and essays—they
never write the material for you, just help with ideas for
stronger material.
- Most importantly, our consultants desire to see you
succeed—this drives the quality of the service.
We hand-pick your consultant from our nation-wide pool of
experts. You are paired with a consultant whose experience and
expertise matches your survey-stated needs/goals, target schools,
and level of competitiveness (given GPA, scores, and any
experience you may have). When possible, we also try to factor in
geographic location so that you and your consultant are in the
same time zone.
Absolutely not. They can suggest enhancements to your original
work and help you brainstorm on ideas; they do not apply on your
behalf. Remember, you will most likely be interviewing with
people who have read your application. They will realize quickly
if the tones of the application and in-person interview
differ.
All Graduate School Admissions Consulting is delivered
remotely. Our consultants advise students via phone, email and
fax. Thousands of students who are serviced this way give us
positive feedback every year on the delivery. The remote service
enables Kaplan to:
- Offer you convenient scheduling, which is perfect if you
are working
- Mimic the way in which applicants must blindly present
themselves initially to admissions committees—generally in
writing (through applications and essays) and via phone and
email
- Match you with the best consultant for you, based on your
background, needs, and interests and the consultant's specific
areas of expertise (For example, if you're applying to a
University of California system school and live in Chicago, we
may have a Los Angeles-based consultant who is best suited to
advise you.)
- Select a consultant from our nation-wide pool despite your
location—or the consultant's
Just like lawyers, accountants or many other service
providers, our consultants bill for the time answering your
questions and reviewing/critiquing your written application
materials. Specifically, "billable" consultant time includes:
- Conducting initial phone consultation (to review your
initial survey, answer questions, set goals and deadlines,
provide assignments)
- Reviewing your background materials
- Conducting any specialized school research (at your request
only)
- Reviewing/critiquing your essays, resumes or other written
work
- Conducting any brief follow-up calls to discuss critique of
written work
- Responding to your questions (either via phone or
email)
Consultants have time-range guidelines that are asked to stay
within generally for any one aspect of the service. Finally,
consultants are asked to update you on a regular basis throughout
the service regarding the amount of time spent from your package
so that you know how much time you have left.
Yes, you can be reimbursed for all whole unused hours at
$100/hour.
If you wish to add hours upon purchasing a package, you may
add hours at a rate of $150/hour. You may not buy individual
hours by the hour before first purchasing one of our
packages.