B-School Consultants

Posted by in Uncategorized Jan 24th, 2005

Sandy Kreisberg at Ask Sandy's Blog offers information on business schools, consulting and other business related information. Here he links to an article from the Wall Street Journal about using business school consultants to help write and rewrite admissions essays. Kreisberg quoted in the article which is excerpted below.

Despite the cost — between $20 and $400 an essay, depending on the length, and up to $3,000 per M.B.A. application — these are boom times for online essay companies. And they're just part of the growing college-preparation market. Some estimate the total market for test prepping, essay editing and application consulting could be as high as $1 billion a year.

And it's only going to get bigger. In 1998, 14.5 million students were enrolled in U.S. colleges, but enrollment is expected to reach 17.5 million by 2010.Essay Coaching isn't done just by e-mail, either. New York-based Kaplan Inc., a pioneer in the business of college-admission prepping, helps students buff up essays and applications for a fee ranging from $99 to $3,000. Trent Anderson, a vice president at the Washington Post Co. unit, says Kaplan's essay-assistance business has grown 20% annually in each of the past five years.

"The reason you hire an editor is the same reason you don't teach your own child to drive. It is just better done with a third party," says Cambridge Essay's Mr. Kreisberg, 55 years old, who taught a course on writing personal essays to Harvard College freshmen from 1981 to 1989.What a service can do best is "stop the applicant from saying something damaging or politically incorrect," Mr. Kreisberg says. He advises students to steer away from "outward bound" or "climbing the mountain" essays. He says an essay can go back and forth 30 times before he and the client are satisfied.

Did you enjoy this article?