Graduate Admission Consulting Services

To equip yourself for excellence in your applications, Maxx Associates’ strategy development sessions are your first best step. These intensive, one-on-one discussion will:

• Examine the mission of your prospective programs to ensure your alignment with them
• Assess your graduate school learning goals and your career vision
• Develop a strategic plan to build and enhance your profile
• Address additional programs or institutions for your consideration

You will also gain an informed approach to executing on your application materials, acquiring everything you need in order to:

• Create program-appropriate resumes
• Write powerful, compelling, resonant essays
• Select and guide your recommenders
• Address your weaknesses and highlight your strengths
• Upgrade your overall application presentation

The goal of strategy development is simple: to give you a personalized and comprehensive approach for completing each and every application. Consultations are conducted via telephone or video conferencing or, in certain circumstances, in-person. Strategy development sessions run approximately two hours in length. 

For excellence in execution on the page, Maxx Associates provides keen editorial insights into your essays, resumes and short-answer responses. To upgrade the content, style and presentation of your application, you will receive:

• Strategies for generating appropriate content quickly
• Suggestions for advancing and enhancing your materials
• Alternatives to problematic responses
• Concrete, actionable notes on all written work
• A rationale for the editing criteria used
• A bedrock understanding of what your words are intended to convey

The strength of Maxx Associates’ editing is a final examination of your application in its totality, addressing the overall continuity of your application from its alignment with the MBA program’s mission to its consistency across the online application fields and essays. This affords you the opportunity to address any subtle issues that have arisen and to finalize the hidden opportunities that all applications have.

While Maxx Associates is happy to coach you on as many applications as you like, our underlying goal is to teach you not only what we know, but also how to be your own editor. Therefore, while we’re editing one application (usually your toughest or most problematic), we will also give you tips, techniques and strategic insights that you can apply to other applications you might write.

While not all graduate programs offer an interview as part of the admission process, it is considered a crucial element of the selection criteria to those programs that do. To shine in such circumstances requires a strategic understanding of the interview process, techniques for top performance, and thorough preparation. Maxx Associates provides all of these elements as we help you:

• Establish your goals for the interview
• Prepare responses to challenging questions
• Showcase your strengths
• Communicate your career vision effectively and powerfully
• Improve your pace, poise and tone
• Seize opportunities that you may have overlooked.

Your interview simulation will leave you well equipped to conduct your interviews with a clear sense of your objectives and approaches, and with a bit of experience under your belt.

The initial reaction to receiving a waitlist decision is usually one of disappointment; after all, you didn’t get admitted. Actually, though, a waitlist decision is a positive step. It means that your application is strong enough to be considered for admission once the school has seen more of its applicant pool and recalibrated space available for the incoming class.

So now the question is, what can you do to leave this limbo behind? Maxx Associates helps you address that question, along with others you may have, such as:

• What new information should you share? When and how?
• Should you exploit an alumna or other connection at the school?
• Can your interviewer intercede on your behalf?
• Should you secure additional letters of reference?
• Can you appeal directly to Admissions?

The main thing to know about the waitlist is that it’s not the end of the road, but merely a step along the way. Because, if you’re still on the waitlist, you still have a chance, and you can make the most of that chance.

Considering graduate school but not yet ready to apply? A forward-thinking strategy allows applicants to create, grow and shape the professional and personal profile that they will ultimately present to Admissions. For those engaged in long-term pre-planning, Maxx Associates can help you:

• Prepare a timetable for professional growth
• Identify opportunities for professional development
• Define your graduate school goals
• Develop and elaborate your career vision
• Increase the quality of your community engagements
• Add honors and distinctions to your profile
• Refine your approach to testing

Maxx Associates offers a pre-planning consultation to help individuals map their long-range professional and graduate school plans. We also help keep you on track throughout this phase of your professional development. If you know that graduate school is part of your future, Maxx Associates can help you chart your course.

For international candidates, applying to graduate school presents its own set of challenges, everything from language barriers to geographical distance and cultural differences. Above all, the application itself requires an understanding of cultural nuance in areas such as overall strategy, essay construction, content balance and testing. Maxx Associates has facilitated cross-border opportunities for clients on six continents, and can help all international applicants in the following areas:

• Understanding each MBA program’s underlying philosophy
• Shaping application materials according to programs’ goals and mission
• Presenting content relevant to diversity and international experience
• Writing essays with international considerations in mind
• Achieving authenticity, subtlety and depth in essays and online short answers
• Deconstructing and transcending cultural idioms

Graduate schools welcome applicants from diverse cultural and geographical backgrounds, but they do not always make it easy. If you are ready to meet the unique challenges facing international applicants, Maxx Associates is ready to help.

Not all applicants get admitted. This happens for a variety of reasons, including problematic academics, low test scores, underdeveloped professional profile, mismatched goals, application errors, lackluster interviews or simple supply and demand. Whatever your circumstance, if you are ready to make your next attempt, Maxx Associates helps by analyzing your prior approaches and guiding you through the process of reapplication. We will help you address such questions as:

• Was and is your choice of schools realistic?
• Is reapplication to a specific program a viable option?
• How can you counter candidate saturation by profile or industry?
• What new, difference-making information can you share?
• How has your understanding of your career vision changed and grown?
• Is your resume doing its job?
• What else can you do to stand out?

The reapplicant faces the daunting task of turning a no into a yes. It is never easy, but if you are ready to give it one more try, Maxx Associates is ready to help you get where you want to go.

You did everything right. You excelled at work, outpaced your peers, engaged in your community, earned competitive test scores, secured great recommendations, wrote compelling essays, and applied in a timely manner. With some programs, you may even have obtained an invitation to interview. Yet, when all is said and done, you did not get accepted to the program or programs you most desired. Why? What else could you have possibly done? And if you had, would it have made any difference? Through our Ding Analysis, Maxx Associates will help you explore:

• The image you portrayed and the messages you conveyed
• Your choice of programs and the competition you faced
• The relative value of reapplying
• How prior outcomes impact future outlook
• Is a graduate degree still relevant to your goals?

Armed with this knowledge, you can make an informed decision on whether, when, and how to reapply. Turn to Maxx Associates for an enlightening evaluation as you seek to turn yesterday’s no into tomorrow’s yes.