Eli’s value prop in the process is pushing your work until it is the absolute best it can be and being very straightforward about where you stand throughout the process. I contacted Eli when I was about a year and a half out from applying to business school, and he was able to give me a very objective assessment of the strengths of my application and things I should change/work on before applying. This type of straightforward feedback was a key part of the process of working with Eli. He pushed me on every essay and short answer to make sure it was the strongest possible, even if it meant doing many many (needed) iterations on some of my essays.
Compared to friends using other consultants, I really think the key differentiator is the time and attention he gives to your application (AKA you get more bang for your buck). I felt that friends who used other consultancies were given much more cookie-cutter guidance and had more rules on how much time could be dedicated to their applications. Eli was more results-oriented. It wasn’t about the time he put in, but about the output. Sometimes we wouldn’t spend much time at all on a piece of work because it was already in a good place. Other times we spent a ton of time figuring out an essay or answer. Throughout the process, he didn’t tell me what I should say or what my story should be, but rather he helped me think through it and iterated on it until it was perfect. His support was invaluable.
I applied to 4 business schools: Stanford, Wharton, Harvard, and Berkeley with a good resume, but slightly lower GMAT scores for these schools. I got into Berkeley and Harvard and will be attending Harvard in the fall. My partner also worked with Eli, and he’ll be joining me at Harvard in the fall. I am really happy with the results in what was a very difficult application cycle, and I couldn’t have done it without Eli.