Plan Ahead for Your MBA Application

Our Coaches are selected through an extremely rigorous process. We make sure they are knowledgeable, smart, courteous, personable, and professional. Further, you are paired with a Coach based on your profile, background, and interests based on the information you provide through our comprehensive intake form.

However, it is very important that you get along with your Coach. The success of your preparation is directly dependent on how well you get along with them. In the past, we’ve realized building a relationship doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to get to know each other, understand the candidate’s persona, and craft a strong twelve-month prep plan. We try not to prematurely undo progress by switching Coaches.

That being said, if you have any issues, email us as ceo@inspirafutures.com and our CEO will personally reply to you within 48 hours. Your success is our topmost priority and we will go above and beyond to make sure you are ready to apply to your dream school. This includes switching your Coach if needed.

Each applicant is different and while the specifics of each engagement vary based on an applicant’s needs, our Coaches have had a meaningful impact on each applicant's career trajectory and story. Here are a few examples -

An applicant had a strong academic and professional background but no extra-curricular experiences. Her Coach helped her get a Board seat at a regional non-profit, which ended up becoming the central theme of her HBS essay. She was accepted at HBS with an $80,000 scholarship.

Our Coaches helped an applicant create a GMAT prep plan, which he followed and took the test three months before he was going to start his applications. As luck would have it, he did not do well. However, he had plenty of time to re-take the test, which he did and scored 760. He ended up getting accepted at Stanford GSB and Wharton.

An applicant worked at a prestigious firm and had good, but not great leadership experiences. Her Coach brainstormed ways to help get her more substantial leadership experience. She ended up transferring to a smaller, emerging office for nine months and assumed the responsibility of someone two levels above her pay-grade. This helped her get accepted at MIT Sloan, Chicago Booth, and Columbia.

These are just a few examples. We’ve helped many more, but hopefully, this gives you an idea of how we can help.

We tailor the program to your need. The exact duration of the program depends on when you expect to start your business school applications. If you are going to apply nine months from now, we create a 9-month plan for you and schedule check-ins and determine milestones accordingly.

Your Coach will be your primary point of contact during the engagement. However, there is a team working in the background to help you succeed. When you begin working with us, we ask you to fill out an intake form. This helps us understand your background, interests, and ambitions.

You will also be assigned a dedicated Project Manager. Their are responsible for ensuring your project plan is development and executed in a timely and efficient manner. The Project Manager is an alum of a top business school and can also provide strategic guidance and direction if needed. Candidates who work with us through this service can also get additional time with our Former Admissions Committee members at discounted rates. Please email us at mbanextyear@inspirafutures.com for more information about these preferred rates.

You also have access to our proprietary research and business school guides. We have an army of researchers that analyzes and updates the latest trends at business schools. This will help you learn how business schools are changing with changing times and what you need to do to keep your profile relevant and competitive.

Once you get connected with your Coach, you will have a kickoff call to create a plan with concrete milestones based on goals that you need to meet. These milestones will be based on our analysis of your strengths and areas of improvement.

After the start of the engagement, they will get on a call with you every quarter to discuss how you’re tracking against those goals and brainstorm solutions for challenges you might be facing. This will also be an opportunity to re-set goals after you’ve met milestones that were set previously.

In addition to check-in calls, you can send unlimited emails to your Coach. They will be happy to guide you and answer your questions.

Through years of interactions, we have created an extremely streamlined mentorship process. We use calls to establish goals and determine the strategies you will adapt to meet them. We have realized that it is more efficient to talk about everything else over email. Hence, we believe that four calls (in addition to the kickoff) over the course of the engagement is the right number.

If you need to talk every week or every two weeks about your high-level growth plan and change your targets regularly, something is not right. For example, if you and your coach decide that your time will be best served by joining the board of a nonprofit, the next step is to make that happen.

That’ll take at least 1-2 months. The next discussion should be about how to make the most of that position. That’s how strategic planning works. That being said, if you want your coach’s take on how to send a cold email to a non-profit you are interested in working with, that discussion can happen over email.

Last but not the least, it is worth reminding ourselves of Parkinson’s Law at that point which states doing something will take as much time as you give it. We will never shortchange you, but we also want to make sure both you and your coach’s time are utilized to the fullest.

While our Coaches are great at mentoring you on career growth and making sure you build a solid profile for business schools, they are not test-prep tutors. They won’t be able to help if you have specific GMAT or GRE questions. We have a list of tutors we partner with for test-prep. These are tutors who’ve been endorsed by past candidates and vetted by us. For a list of these tutors, please email us at mentorship@inspirafutures.com. 

Your coach will, however, be able to help you create a structured plan to prepare for the test. They will recommend resources and make sure you take the test with, if needed, enough time to re-take it before you apply to business school.

While the overarching purpose of your Coach is to help create a solid profile for business school applications, working with them has many benefits.

At the end of the day, a solid profile is one that has several interesting and impactful leadership experiences. Our coaches push to have more of these experiences, which expedites your professional development.

Several candidates we worked with have gotten promoted six months ahead of their scheduled promotion because of our guidance. Our coaches have also helped candidates find new jobs, travel opportunities, and uncover strengths they never knew they had.