Top Ten MBA Admission Consultants of 2025: Candy LaBalle (top left), Devi Vallabhaneni, Gavriella Semaya, Rajdeep Chimni, Scott Edinburgh (second row left), Karen Hamou, Sam Weeks (bottom row left), Niketa Desai, Eli David, and Rishabh Gupta
The highest MBA admission consultants have remarkable success in helping clients get into the world’s most selective business schools–and you possibly can’t argue with success. These consultants have garnered extensive acclaim from their clients who at the moment are MBA students on the likes of Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, INSEAD, and other world-class business schools.
Consider Rajdeep Chimni, the founding father of Admissions Gateway based in India. His clients consistently highlight Chimni’s structured approach to MBA admissions, his deep industry knowledge, and his unwavering commitment to their success. “Rajdeep’s sessions laid a solid foundation,” says Jahnvi Sharma, recently admitted to London Business School’s Class of 2027. “They helped me push my pondering from the very starting on all fronts—selecting the appropriate schools, crafting authentic and personalized MBA application essays, and solidifying my work experience within the one-page MBA resume. Rajdeep has really helped me transform my applications.”
The numbers back up praise like that. Within the 2023-2024 admissions cycle, Chimni’s firm compiled a record 185 admissions offers for clients to get into this fall’s M7 business schools, with one in every three clients—51 in total—gaining admission to The Wharton School. Greater than 275 of his clients received invites into the Top 12 MBA programs. What’s more, the firm’s clients racked up $12.6 million in scholarships and financial aid for its clients last 12 months.
That success rate, a lifetime best for Chimni, has again propelled the Kellogg MBA into Poets&Quants No. 1 spot in our 2025 rating of probably the most favorably reviewed MBA admission consultants. Amongst The 25 consultants with probably the most favorable reviews, 15 different firms are represented. mbaMission coasts probably the most, with seven of its consultants within the Top 25. Admissions Gateway and Fortuna are next, each with three consultants on the list.
In our evaluation, the ninth annual rating of the highest MBA admission consultants, Chimni gained 38 favorable reviews from clients, achieving an ideal 10.o rating for client satisfaction (see other perfect rating consultants here). Right behind him are several legendary names in MBA admissions consulting: No. 2 Scott Edinburgh, with 32 client raves and a 9.97 satisfaction rating; No. 3 Devi Vallabhaneni, with 29 favorable reviews and a 9.69 satisfaction rating; No. 4 Karen Hamou, with 27 reviews and a 0.96, and No. 5 Sam Weeks, who collected 26 positive reviews and a 9.77 satisfaction rating.
The consultant rating relies on verified client reviews at Poets&Quants from September 1 2023 to August 31, 2024. During that timeframe, clients wrote 1,374 assessments of their experience with 68 admission consultants at 70 different firms. To this point, the Poets&Quants‘ consulting directory now boasts greater than 600 MBA counselors, with nearly 10,000 reviews.
Some 13 MBA consultants this past 12 months achieved an ideal 10.0 client satisfaction rating over not less than 10 reviews. Besides Chimni, Candy Lee LaBalle racked up 25 perfect scores from clients, while Eli David gathered 20 perfect rankings. Rounding out the highest five perfect scorers were Nisha Kaul and Petia Whitmore, with 16 each (see table here).
Hiring a coach to assist navigate the admissions process into an elite MBA program stays an expensive proposition. The costliest consultants on the Top 25 list charge $775 an hour for his or her services or a hefty $14,300 for a comprehensive start-to-finish package of assistance on applications to 3 schools. All three of those pricey consultants–Devi Vallabhaneni, Katharine Lewis, and Debbie Choy–are affiliated with mbaMission, the most important firm within the business of MBA admissions consulting.
Each of those counselors brings significant experience to the sport. A Harvard Business School MBA, Vallahhaneni had spent greater than three years as an MBA Admissions Board member at HBS and has been helping applicants at mbaMission for seven and one-half years. Lewis, who has each a Harvard MBA and a JD on her resume and who has worked at McKinsey, was an MBA admissions reader at Stanford Graduate School of Business for a few years before joining mbaMission where she has counseled applicants for over 13 years. Choy is a Stanford MBA who has worked in investment management at JP Morgan and management consulting at Booz & Co. She has been working with MBA candidates since 2013.
The least expensive on the Top 25? A Chicago Booth MBA, Niketa Desai had been an admissions fellow at Booth and commenced counseling applicants for Admissions Gateway in 2017. After working with Chimni for 3 and one-half years, she set out on her own in early 2021 because the founding father of Admit Beacon in India. Desai, who has coached greater than 200 candidates, charges $300 an hour and $6,700 for a three-school comprehensive package. In 2023, she claims to have helped 28 clients get into Stanford, Harvard, or Wharton; 35 land spots in an M7 school, and 38 in a Top 15-ranked MBA program.
Sam Weeks, founding father of Sam Weeks Consulting, is in the highest five of probably the most favorably reviewed consultants this 12 months with 26 positive reviews and a 9.77 client satisfaction rating
To make our annual honor roll of top MBA admission consultants, every counselor’s review needed to pass a rigorous two-step process. Unlike another pay-to-play and unverified lists on the Web, where advisers fork over a fee to permit reviews on their profiles, this can be a pure journalistic endeavor, not a pay-to-play model. In our database, you’ll find each positive and negative assessments of consultants and firms (if you may have had a foul experience, we strongly encourage you to share it with others in order that they’ll avoid those issues). Whether positive or negative, no review is published unless it passes through a tremendous screen.
First, every review up until our deadline of August thirty first needed to be independently verified by Poets&Quants with each the client and the service provider. Secondly, every appraisal was then painstakingly reviewed in order that only MBA consulting assignments were counted. Eliminated from the count were reviews for undergraduate or Executive MBA applicants, free introductory consultations, profession counseling, case prep advisement, and group sessions for such organizations because the Forte Foundation. Those restrictions often brought down the variety of favorable reviews for the highest consultants and kept others off the list.
Skeptics may argue that consultants who rack up probably the most positive reviews are merely more assertive in encouraging their clients to put in writing favorably about their experiences. Or that the list would exclude part-time counselors who may very well be just nearly as good as full-timers but aren’t exposed to as many purchasers. But MBA applicants who take the effort and time to put in writing their expressions of praise are the final word endorsements of superior consulting work. The more reviews any consultant has, the more credible and authoritative the result. When a client writes a positive referral for a consultant, that motion goes beyond customer satisfaction: It becomes a measure of customer loyalty.
A former admissions official at London Business School, Emma Bond of Fortuna Admissions achieved an ideal 10.0 client satisfaction rating across 13 different MBA applicants up to now 12 months
That’s a high hurdle the most effective consultants must meet with today’s more anxiety-ridden applicants. For a lot of, their help could make the difference between an acceptance to a highly selective program where the overwhelming majority of candidates are routinely turned down or a whole rejection without even an admissions interview. That’s the reason client reviews from successful candidates are effusive with praise–and likewise why applicants who spend $10K or more on a consultant and fail to get right into a goal school should not all that glad.
Admitted to the Class of 2027, a current client of Fortuna’s Emma Bond reveals getting a $100,000 scholarship from Wharton together with a full ride to the Yale School of Management. Bond made each our lists this 12 months, within the Top 25 for getting a high variety of positive reviews but in addition for achieving an ideal 10.0 client satisfaction rating.
“I used to be initially unsure whether I even needed to work with a consultant, but in hindsight, I can confidently say the investment greater than pays off,” wrote the candidate to Poets&Quants. “Emma really takes the time to get to know you and provides tailored advice specific to you, your schools, and your goals. She was there throughout the complete process, from the brainstorming and resume refinement to the interview prep and scholarship negotiations. She is incredibly knowledgeable, organized, and efficient. Even in the height weeks when application deadlines were approaching, her quick turnarounds didn’t waver. Emma strikes the right balance between telling you what it is advisable to hear and being an inspirational and supportive coach.”
The praise heaped on Bond is analogous to other consultants’ favorable reviews. After gaining admits to each Harvard Business School and Wharton, one candidate who used Sam Weeks as a consultant was over the moon with the outcomes. “Never in my wildest dreams would I even have imagined that I’d have offers for HBS or Wharton (let alone each!) and I can truly say that Sam made it possible for me,” wrote the client who can be a member of the Class of 2027 at either Harvard or Wharton.
An MBA from Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, Weeks has been advising MBA hopefuls for the past 4 years, ever since quitting his job as an equity derivatives trader. His enthusiastic client went on to elucidate the hands-on touches that Weeks provided. “Sam is an incredible author and I used to be amazed at how productive our weekly live editing sessions were,” the candidate added. “I all the time left each meeting with clear and actionable steps which made me feel relaxed and on top of things throughout the complete MBA application process. Also, Sam all the time provided me with honest feedback that was aimed toward pushing me to dig deeper and find the most effective version of every aspect I used to be declaring in the appliance. His candidness was much appreciated and played an enormous part in strengthening up my application.”
After all, many candidates might wonder if the price of a consultant is really value it. Many consultants note that an expertly done application to a highly selective MBA program may not only get one admitted; it might also lead to a considerable scholarship to defray a few of the cost of getting the degree.
Through the 2023-2024 admission season, Weeks says that his firm took on a record 60 clients. Some 55 of those candidates secured admits to 1 or more of their goal schools together with $2.4 million in scholarship offers, for successful rate of 92%. Of those, 55% or 34 clients, applied to M7 schools and 22 were successful, for an M7 success rate of 65%, in keeping with Weeks’ published performance report.
Overall, 31% of his admitted clients received scholarship offers, sharing $2.4 million of scholarships amongst them with each grant averaging $43,600. Five of Weeks’ clients got full-ride scholarships for his or her MBAs. No less impressive was the variety of clients Weeks helped get into Stanford, Harvard, and Wharton.
“In total, 26 clients applied to Harvard, Stanford or Wharton, and 12 received offers from a number of of those schools,” he says. “That’s a HSW success rate of 46%. Incredibly, one client received offers from all three of those top schools. One other heroic client received a proposal from HBS with a GRE rating of only 320.” That’s six points below the typical GRE rating of 326.
However, that’s one reason to rent a top MBA admissions consultant.
