The Dispatch

24%. 17%. 13%. 8%.

These are the MBA acceptance rates at some of the so-called M7 business schools - the network of elite American colleges that includes Stanford, Harvard and Columbia. In a best-case scenario, you have around a one-in-three chance of being accepted into one of their MBA programmes. At worst, it’s less than one-in-ten.

This intense competition at the world’s leading schools has created a thriving sub-industry - the world of admissions consultants, who help eager MBA applicants win a place in the world’s most coveted programmes. And they’re growing in popularity, with significant rises in the numbers readily available. Some charge as much as $20,000 for a three-school package.

At first glance, these figures seem barely believable - $20,000 is more than the total tuition at several leading European universities. But this is the MBA economy , where the top programmes can cost as much as $180,000 and graduate salaries can top $200,000.

Yet consultants have long been the elephant in the room of MBA admissions offices around the world. Some argue that their premium pricing is creating a pay-to-play scenario, where applicants who can afford a consultant stand a much better chance of being admitted. Others say that the investment is a drop in the water compared to the overall cost of the programme, and is more than worth it given the salary boost that an MBA could provide.

So, is admissions consulting unfair, or is it just a natural extension of the hyper competitive world of MBA admissions?

There’s plenty that can be said about admissions consultants, but one thing seems pretty certain: they work. Satisfaction rates among the leading consultants exceed 95 percent, while plenty of others boast a success rate of over 90 percent. Simply put, it seems that if you use an admissions consultant then you have a far better chance of being accepted into an MBA.

Sam Weeks is a highly-rated admissions consultants. His prices start at $5,300 for a single school, but his record speaks for itself: 92 percent of clients are admitted to at least one of their target schools. Does he believe that admissions consulting is unfair?

"I don't push back on that - it is unfair. We are expensive. I totally agree,” he begins. “ The way that I have always thought about this, is that we've had hundreds of years of nepotism in universities. Putting together a compelling application and getting into university is something that parents have historically been able to help with.”

Weeks argues that because such a low proportion of MBA applicants are first generation university students - they make up just 11 percent of Harvard’s MBA class, for instance - they don’t have a network they can call upon to help them with their application. It leaves the other 89 percent at a natural advantage. ”Their application is going to be a [lot] better than the person whose parents did not go to Harvard.”

Fellow admissions consultant Amy Duckworth agrees that they can support the people who may otherwise have nobody to call on. "What admissions consulting is about, is that there's a lot of people who've got potential and who could be a great asset to an MBA cohort, but who maybe don't know how to tell their story and sell themselves to a business school."

It’s also worth pointing out that the $20,000 figure is at the extreme end of the price scale. Plenty of consultants offer more cost-effective packages, which can range from coaching by the hour to access to MBA admission resources. The cost of these options falls in the hundreds rather than thousands column.

Another issue is that of authenticity. Louise-Marie Fischer-Dallée is the Director of Recruitment and Admissions for the MBA suite at Imperial College Business School. “Admissions professionals sometimes observe that heavy reliance on consultants can diminish the authenticity of an application, which is a crucial element we value when evaluating candidates,” she says.

Fischer-Dallée goes on to highlight some of the ways that an application can come across as inauthentic, or overly reliant on a consultant. For example, it may be suspicious if an applicant uses language that seems “unusually polished” compared to their academic record or other communication with the school. And if a consultant follows a “formulaic approach” with all of their clients, an admissions team sometimes notice the same patterns appearing in multiple applications.

That idea is rejected by Duckworth, who previously led the MBA admissions teams at multiple leading UK business schools. "I think it's going to be quite obvious if the person in the application is not the same as the person who is in the interview.” Duckworth’s client contract also states she won’t write any content herself - though that doesn’t mean that other consultants will do the same.

One report from 2017 states: “Despite accounting for 20.8 percent of the US millennial population and earning 12.0 percent of the total number of bachelor’s degrees conferred in 2014-2015, Hispanic Americans accounted for just 7.7 percent of unique US citizen GMAT examinees in the most recent testing year (TY 2017).” In 2023, another GMAC report found that the proportion of MBA applicants from underrepresented backgrounds had barely changed since 2017.

In fairness, this lack of movement on diversity isn’t down to a lack of action on the part of business schools. For instance, there are more diversity scholarships available today than ever before - something that Weeks is quick to highlight in his own conversations with applicants. “Scholarships in those [underrepresented] groups are very, very aggressive. So, we will encourage that particular client to apply to those particular schools, because there's a strong chance they're going to get scholarship money from there.”

Weeks argues that these barriers persist because so many candidates still don’t have the personal connections that he referenced earlier. And he believes that admissions consultants can actually play a role in lowering them. “There are entire groups of society that wouldn't know where to start writing an MBA application, but they can find $10,000. I agree it's not ideal, but it's better than just being locked out.”

Whether that’s true or not is unclear, but what does seem clear is that admissions consultants aren’t fuelling this inequality. Instead, they’re simply a symptom of a system that favours the well-off and well-connected.

For now at least, there seems to be a tacit acceptance of admissions consultants in the industry. As long as those inequalities persist, we’re unlikely to see any drop-off in their appeal.