For 17 years I’ve worked on every side of MBA admissions: as Dean of Admissions at Babson, Managing Director of GMAC Tours, and advising schools at EAB. In short, MBA admissions is what I know best (and love most). Today I work with a handful of serious MBA candidates each round, meeting with them every week, because distinctive applications get built through human conversation, not over email or basic line edits. More at mymbapath.com.
AI raised the bar for MBA consultants
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It’s no secret that not all MBA admissions consultants are created equal. But a new dividing line is emerging and I’m making a bet it'll be a really important one. Before, the delineation was around expertiseI’m not going to sugarcoat this one. Those of us who have actually worked in admissions do have a vantage point that is different than those who have simply been helping MBA candidates and trying to reach insights about how MBA admissions works empirically, based on reverse engineering. But now, a new frontier has emerged. Expertise is not enoughHow you make that expertise available and how you apply it on behalf of MBA candidates makes all the difference. Yes, MBA candidates choose to work with me because of my expertise. But most importantly, they choose to work with me because I invest significant time in working with them live. Some of the most valuable work I do with MBA candidates happens in conversations. Meeting of the mindsThere’s no substitute for the process of two minds conversing, brainstorming, shaping ideas live. I take the time, as many conversations as needed, to understand your story, strengths, and aspirations. We laugh, we interrupt each other, we go down rabbit holes. I don’t believe in squeezing you into a template or asking you to fill out a long questionnaire, as if that will somehow help me get to know you. Instead, we talk and think together and in the process, we uncover the most compelling way to present your unique path and potential. We need this work so you can build an application that is both strategic and deeply authentic. And the value of these deep conversations has gone up exponentially in the last year. Blame it on AIRecently, Adam Grant, the famous Wharton professor and brilliant organizational psychologist, contributed to a Wall Street Journal piece on “The 24 New Rules for Succeeding at Work.” Grant argues that as AI makes expertise increasingly accessible, human judgment becomes more valuable: recognizing patterns, making sense of disparate pieces of information, deciding which ideas are worth pursuing and elaborating. Then he takes it one step further. He’s got a hypothesis that “people are becoming increasingly skeptical of written information.” He’s experimenting with calling people instead of emailing them to see if the conversation changes what he learns and the bond they form. My practice runs on human conversationsWell, guess what? I don’t need to run that experiment. I’ve been running it with MBA candidates for years. The real magic is in us, the two humans, conversing, not simply in exchanging edits and comments in a doc. In these conversations, I get to know my candidates more deeply. I notice the patterns and make connections between things they’ve told me weeks apart. I probe something that doesn’t quite add up or is still a bit too superficial. But something equally important happens on the other side of the conversation. My candidates develop deeper insights about themselvesThey understand WHY a particular experience mattered. They articulate an ambition more precisely. They see a connection between choices they had never quite connected before. All because there was a human across from them saying, "Tell me more about this" and "Why?" That’s what high-touch MBA admissions consulting means in 2026. Beyond expertise and more access to me, it’s the opportunity to arrive at insights neither of us would have reached alone. Let’s hear it for the human conversations. Onwards and upwards, Petia |
My MBA Path
For 17 years I’ve worked on every side of MBA admissions: as Dean of Admissions at Babson, Managing Director of GMAC Tours, and advising schools at EAB. In short, MBA admissions is what I know best (and love most). Today I work with a handful of serious MBA candidates each round, meeting with them every week, because distinctive applications get built through human conversation, not over email or basic line edits. More at mymbapath.com.
With the exception of Booth and MIT Sloan, my R1 candidates are done submitting. We won't get much of a break. MBA interview invites will start popping up quite soon. And one thing has become really clear this admissions cycle. This feels different As I was wrapping up the R1 work this week, I kept thinking about just how much the MBA application game has changed. Four years after ChatGPT "burst onto the scene," to use the obligatory cliché, we've reached a point where what used to be a...
How the "why MBA" question got twisted I saw a version of this maddening mistake three times on r/mba this week alone. Sometimes I chime in but it's, of course, a futile battle. The myth persists, kept alive by MBA candidates (or admits) and MBA admissions consultants alike. As a rule, these are people who never sat on the other side of the table as admissions directors. But somewhere along the way, they decided that "why MBA" means you, MBA hopeful, have to prove well beyond reasonable doubt...
Truth or Myth: MBA Essays Can Save a Low GMAT or GRE? You’ve probably heard it before: “Great MBA essays can make up for a poor GMAT, but a great GMAT can’t make up for poor essays.” It’s a saying as old as admissions forums themselves, and while it sounds catchy, it’s far from entirely accurate. Yes, essays are critical. But let’s get one thing straight: the GMAT and GRE measure something entirely different. Your essays won’t tell AdComs how well you think under pressure with the timer on....