Stacy Blackman Hourly Services

Meghan worked with me in an hourly capacity on my Wharton and Lauder applications. She helped me with my essays from the first draft to the final product. She also helped me interview prep and even negotiate additional scholarships/fellowships post-acceptance (at no extra cost).

Meghan 's guidance helped me to clarify my career goals and focus on 2-3 specific ways that Wharton would help me to get there. Every time I thought an essay was done, she would come back pushing me to be more focused, more concise, or dig deeper. However, each piece of feedback unquestionably made my essays stronger--despite how much I wanted to just submit them as is!

I highly recommend Meghan Ellis and honestly feel that I would not have achieved the same results without her.

My experience with DD and Stacy Blackman is very satisfying. Everything goes very smooth and efficient. The consultant spent time understanding my story and needs, and matched me with DD. DD is very helpful, she discussed with me and built a strategy. During the process, she responded very quick and gave very objective option. With her help, I got admitted for a couple graduate programs, and most of them offered me scholarship/teaching assistant position.

Having been rejected by three M7 schools in the last application year, I was highly doubtful if I would be successful at my MBA applications this time around. My brother happened to recommend SBC and I opted for the 10 hour service. SBC then matched me with Beth and I cannot thank them enough for it. I have mentioned this numerous times to Beth and would say it again that my Booth admit would not have possible without her guidance and support. Beth’s inputs in every aspect of the application – Resume, short answers, choice of recommenders, essays, tips on video essays and inputs on how to tackle final interviews were highly valuable. One of the aspects that I loved working with Beth was she would push me further to draw my story out and shape it in the best way possible. Highly recommended!

Laura was so helpful and kind throughout my application process!

I was admitted to all 6 schools to which I applied to and received scholarships with every program in addition to some fellowship opportunities.

Laura helped with resume editing, essay editing, interview preparation, and even school analyses!

I am very thankful for all of her help! She has been a great asset towards my future professional career and I will be forever grateful.

Catie

I worked with Laura on my NYU Masters Application and I'm very grateful for all her help. I had less then 2 weeks to get everything in order an her help was CRUCIAL. We had a online meeting to discuss and set everything that needed to be done and she guided me all the way: helping, editing, structuring and perfecting my essay. She always responded very fast (even though we had a huge time difference) and was professional and friendly. Highly recommend her service!!!

Thank you Laura!!

Let me cut to the chase: Margaret is the consultant you will never regret to work with! Margaret is the consultant who brought me to the next level, pushed me further, and kept challenging me on essays while I felt exhausted after 6, 7 revisions: three days before one school’s deadline, I thought my essays were final but Margaret kept pushing me to the next level. She clearly laid out the strategic applications plan for me and a lot of the information I had never thought about even after tons of research both from online and from peers who had applied MBA programs. Down the road, because of the enormous experience she has, she even predicted the “career goal confusion” I would face after networking with too many current students and alums, and gave me advice on how to handle it. She even predicted that the strategy some schools use to give offers and I was able to get admitted after her encouragement knowing that it’s one of the strategies the school uses. I did tons of research online before I finally decided to work with Margaret, and one of the questions I asked every consultant is: “what drives you to be a consultant.” Margaret’s answer resonates with me so much: “to help others make their dreams come true is also a dream come true itself, right?” She took time to understand who I am, in order to help my strengths, uniqueness, shining through both in my application materials and interviews: really focusing on who I am. I could keep writing the good things about Margaret forever… but to sum: I was admitted to two S16 schools, with scholarship at one of them: None of this would be possible without her help. I would recommend her to anyone: I recommended Margaret to one of my close friends who is also applying this year: “she is popular and GOOD, I MEAN GOOD! and you better get on her calendar quick!”

My experience with Stacy Blackman Consulting was positive from the jump. I had an onboarding call with Esther Magna, from which I was already able to take away important information about my application process. I felt Esther thought carefully about who from her team it made the most sense to align me with as my main counselor. I was pleased to connect with Dione, who is a graduate of Stanford's GSB and a former application reader for that very AdCom. Stanford was my first choice, and from our initial conversation and throughout the process, I felt I could really benefit from Dione's first-hand experience and intel on that school's particular process and outlook.

I needed to maintain a pretty modest budget for this process, and I appreciated Dione's understanding and consciousness of that as we worked together on an hourly basis. She was generous and extremely prompt over email, providing plenty of information that way so that we could really dive in to the nitty gritty when we spoke on the phone.

I come from a pretty unusual background as far as MBA applicants go, and I also wrote a very personal essay for the "What matters to you?" prompt. It was the kind of essay that could have very easily felt like an overshare, but Dione gave me the advice I needed to properly frame that writing up so that it felt relevant to the AdComm's process while also being true to my experiences. She was sensitive, kind and discreet as we spoke through challenging material and the best way to convey a messy personal story to an AdComm. While I didn't pursue Dione's help for a "Flight Test" final read of the essay, I feel I could not have written the essay successfully without the conversations she and I had to set up my mindset for the prompt.

I also received resume feedback from Dione, wherein she was straight-forward and extremely helpful in helping me understand what the AdComms are scanning for. Especially as someone coming from a non-traditional background, I think it's very, very useful to do a resume edit with someone as knowledgeable as the counselors at SBC, who can help you shape your career story to really engage an MBA application reader.

All-in-all, I was grateful for Dione's generosity, thoughtfulness and very relevant intel in my process. I ultimately succeeded in getting in to my first-choice school, and I believe the help I received from SBC was instrumental in achieving that. Best of luck to you all!

"I could not recommend Sherry highly enough. She made the entire process so much more manageable. From the start Sherry was responsive, understanding, and friendly. I had an interview at Duke the next weekend, and she immediately offered to walk me through a mock interview to help me prepare, even before we did the initial call. She read all of my essays and responded promptly - even essays that were for other, non-MBA programs that I was applying to. She completely reworked my resume and made me feel like I had a handle on the process more than I ever thought I would. After being in the working world for 4 years before deciding to go back to school, Sherry was exactly what I needed.

Being international and not having a vast network of colleagues/peers in top business schools, I knew starting off that I would need help with my application process. Additionally, considering my age and other personal factors, timing was critical from my side, and I absolutely needed to put my best foot forward in my application.
Going primarily off of online reviews, I decided to try out SBC. However, I was a bit skeptical about the whole thing initially given the high cost of services. I was paired up with Bill, and at the very outset, was pleasantly surprised by his professional yet warm attitude. He was genuinely interested to build a good working relationship and he even suggested that I purchase hourly services to keep my costs low (and my costs indeed turned out much lower than I had initially anticipated). I was also very impressed by his knowledge of the whole admissions process. Quite honestly, although I knew I wanted to do an MBA, I was a bit fuzzy on my exact career path, and by way of the application process, Bill explained the business world really well and prepared/mentored me on possible career paths based on my background, interests & goals. I must emphasize that the interview prep session was especially helpful and I will carry my learnings from that throughout my career. I had only applied to one top business school and was thrilled when I was admitted to that program.
I definitely recommend his services to anyone considering consultation for his/her application.

I decided to apply to INSEAD in March of 2016, just 5 weeks before the application deadline. After starting the application, I realized that there are 7 essays required for this application and that if I were dinged without an invite to reapply, I wouldn't be reconsidered for future admissions.

I decided to hire an admission consultant to help me with the process. Karla from Stack Blackman was extremely helpful and professional. She was a former INSEADer and worked in the admissions office. Within the first 15 minutes of our call, she had convinced me on her credibility because she understands the metric that INSEAD used to select candidates. After consulting her, Karla suggests that I use the 10-hour package and that she will expedite the process for me and help me meet the application deadline.

5 rough edits later, I was able to submit all of the essays within 3 weeks, well ahead of the 5 weeks deadline! When I was invited to the 2 alum interview, she gave me a mock and feedback on how to handle some of the more difficult questions such as what 3 unique values do you bring to the program. Overall, it was a great experience with Karla and I cannot recommend Stacy Blackman enough. The packages may be expensive but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the entire MBA investment.