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Product ApplicantLab On-Demand Admissions Guidance Tool
Consultant Maria Wich-Vila
Before I write anything else, I want to confess one thing here:
There were two main reasons I subscribed to applicantlab:
1. It’s was just 300 bucks (~ 20000 INR)
2. It’s a HARVARD Alumna product
The low price (when every other consultant, including the Indian consultants in the world, is asking for thousands of dollars) gave me a feeling that even if it does not help I am not loosing much and the Harvard tag gave me an assurance that I am in safe hands. Plus when I attended one of its webinar (organised by e-gmat), I came to know about Maria’s experience of helping students in their applications for more than 10 years, I had little doubt left that I want to subscribe to applicantlab. So I subscribed. And I must admit, it turned out to be one of the best investment I ever made. (Trust me. I am a Gujarati and we people are known for our shrewd business and financial acumen ;)
Afterall, I got 200x return in terms of scholarship :p
What did it do (Read BEST FEATURES of Applicantlab):
- It gave me insights into my profile’s strengths and weakness.
- Gave me suggestions on how to mitigate / address those weaknesses and leverage those strengths.
- Gave me direction on how to research more deeply about my goals / vision.
- Provided ideas to approach people for informational interviews
- Helped me brain storm ideas about my personal story
- Provided prompts to brain storm stories on leadership, teamwork, persuasion, failures, etc
- Gave me school / essay specific suggestions and directions
- Kicked me right direction to research school specific details
- Helped me prepare my recommender
- Helped me build my resume
- (Bonus) Provided a tutorial on how to make a video essay (which is becoming common with more and more bschools every day). Trust me it’s a real struggle if you are not a pro in that field.
- And my favourite is the Interview Module. I will just say this “I appeared in 3 interviews so far and have cleared all of them”. And trust me I have not used a single other source but applicantlab for interviews. In a word / sentence, I would say “It is simply the BEST in the market”.
Methods provided on the module to practice your interview skills, the framework on for each for each of the commonly asked questions in bschool application interviews and more importantly what not to do for each question make the interview module the highlight of applicantlab.
In case, you still have doubts about applicantlab, read this:
When I applied earlier this year in R1, I was in-between jobs (had to leave the previous one without having a new one in hand), but still it did not affect my chances much because I had covered it that weakness well through other parts of my application and I could do that only because of Maria & her applicantlab.
About myself: Mostly I will be matriculating at Kelley but awaiting a couple of other results before I make a final decision.
E-gmat verbal, I would say my savior ..I was literally struggling to remember the rules in the Manhattan SC book ...and the less i talk about my application of those rules in official question, the better it is...After about 3-4 weeks of studying Manhattan SC I was not getting even 50% of the question correct ...then from somewhere I got this link for free webinar for SC ..and trust me within half an hour of the webinar I made my decision to join verbal live prep from e-gmat ..but then the usual skepticism started so I waited to attend another free session which was 15 days from then ...and finally made my decision to join ...
If I regret anything about my preparation, it is those 15 days I wasted in thinking about making the decision..which could have well made a difference of another 20 points atleast to my score...
Very often we find ourselves in a situation where we are done with the official question and still lack confidence and hence in need of some extra practice question ..of course you will find loads of question on gmatclub for free but then how would you gauge your progress and strength / weakness ...to me I found my answer to the above question in scholaranium..
Though the question for CR are a notch extra difficult then the official question but they will build ur stemina and help you in pattern recognition skills ...though I never got more than 55%ile in ability score ..I hung up there and finished each and every question on CR ...The best improvement I got through scholaranium is in RCs ..I used to finish OG RC with decent accuracy but will always find myself missing the timing by around 2-3 mins in a passage of 4 question ..and with scholaranium I was able to find my weakness in Type of question (e.g Detail type) and Subject of Passage (e.g Humanities) where I use to lag ..after that it was all practice for another couple weeks on Scholaranium (about 15-17 passage ) and I started getting 85% accuracy within time pressure ...