Essays Only
$1,275 per school
$1,275 per essay
- Application essays
- Unlimited draft revisions
- Privately assigned consultants
- Initial face-to-face consultants
- Email/phone support
Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Princeton, Berkeley. They’re all brands. And they’re all looking for a unique brand of applicant. To them, high GPAs and whopping standardizes test scores are just the beginning.
College application essays are different than anything you’ve ever written before. You must tell a long story with few words, be detailed but big-picture, romantic but realistic, impress but not boast and, ultimately, create an irresistible urge within the reader to help you. Think of it as a pitch to a Hollywood studio to finance a movie about your life. Now, we may not be able to get a $100-million movie financed, but we are experts at helping our clients squeeze every last drop of potential out of their story.
In our case, everything. We help you create an application that is part poet (Twain), part analyst (Einstein). From SAT/ACT/GRE prep to personal statements and supplementary essays, Letters of Recommendation to interview prep, Twainstein is a boutique one-stop shop that helps you gain admission by walking you through every step of the six month-long college application process.
First, we make sure you get a kick-a** score on your test. After administering a diagnostic test to determine which test would suit your natural skill set and enhance your applicant profile, we begin training you to crush the SAT/ACT/GRE/GMAT.
Which schools to apply to? How do they differ? How many? Are school rankings the only things to consider? We help you whittle down your school selection strategically and thoughtfully.
With an initial face-to-face kickoff meeting, we spend two hours getting to know YOU. Then we begin to develop an application branding strategy around your story. Fine-tuning your career arc and college/MBA goals is also part of the process here.
Everyone’s résumé needs tweaking, simply because college admissions résumés are different than employment résumés. We’ll make sure you stretch the heck out of every leadership position, social activity, job function and award you’ve won into a document that screams future winner. Same for your Letters of Recommendation—don’t leave this crucial piece to chance. We won’t!
We love the day you email us with the good news that you’ve been invited to interview at your dream school. The deal isn’t sealed just yet. We’ll run you through a gauntlet of plausible questions and curveballs you’re likely to encounter. Then we’ll mock up the interview. Then you’ll get notes and feedback. Then you’ll do it again. We will videotape our sessions to break down everything from answers, to examples you used, presentation and presence. Think of us as your personal Beauty Pageant coaches (without the tacky tiara).
The fun part. You got in. Now you get to decide where to go, how to negotiate financial award packages based on the leverage you may have, and how to navigate the dreaded wait list you may find yourself on. Not to worry, we’re with you with keen insights and proper guidance until you cross the finish line.
We are a boutique agency and only work with a select number of clients. But our clients aim for the top and we help them get there.
Total number of clients consulted
Average number of schools per client
Average number of acceptances per client
Average U.S. News Ranking of B-schools client attended
Client Questionnaire
We ask incredibly targeted questions. Be thoughtful and honest and tell us everything. Here, we start to identify your most powerful MBA application opportunities.
Discovery / Strategy Session
We get to know you on a deeper level here. We’ll gather and offer insights on what your particular pathway to a successful business school application story will be.
Application Action Plan
At this point, we leverage the secret behind our MBA consulting success, stitching all the pieces together in a concise, custom blueprint/branding bible.
MBA Essay Development
Our approach has no equal. Over four drafts, your business school essays go from ugly duckling to swan, showcasing your MBA assets clearly and persuasively.
Draft Revision Process
Whether it takes four rounds of revisions/notes or ten, we’re with you until your essay is a masterpiece. In this stage, the back-and-forth between us begins until your draft is flawless.
Résumé Support
Your MBA resume needs to show two things: (1) evidence of a career arc/trajectory, and (2) that you are top MBA material (through smart details). We’ll break it down and build it back up, super strong and super tight.
Letter of Recommendation Support
We adjust our feedback to suit your recommenders’ tastes. We help steer the process to help your recommenders improve their message, without compromising anyone’s integrity.
Interview Prep
Over two sessions (phone or Skype), we review your stories, share tips and analyze your performances, helping you bring your A-game to this crucial moment. We provide special prep for unique interviews (Wharton, etc.).
Additional Support
Whatever you need, we’re there to help. Waitlist? Choosing from multiple admits? Got something else you wanna run past us? We’re mentors, baby. If we can help, we will. We're your partners for life.
SSome people are natural writers and so their essays come off as elegant and effortless, while others need to strain to come off sounding clear and sophisticated. The key is to be genuine and present the absolute best version of yourself in your personal statement. A few things to avoid…
Example 1:
My inexorable desire for supremacy in my field led me to search far and wide for the solution that would ultimately prove foolproof.
Example 2:
I hate to admit it, but I can be a perfectionist at times. Still, it served me well when I was charged with finding the only existing solution to our website malfunction.
The first one has a lot of shiny words and complex phrasing. The second one is clear and unpretentious. Rule of thumb: Essays that are devoted to sounding good just end up sounding bloated. Tell your story and rewrite it 15-20 times until it’s perfect—but don’t live and die by a thesaurus.
When composing your story, you want to identify more with the feeling and less with the event. We’re not trying to suggest you turn your essay into a personal diary entry; if you are naturally alpha, let it show, but identify with how that feels and less with how effective it is.
Examples:
Thinker:
Working in risky derivatives on Wall Street enabled me to hone my skills in high-level quantitative analysis. By the end of my four years in the department, after three promotions while leading the division in new clients signed, b-school became the next logical step for career advancement.
Feeler:
The derivatives market can be a scary place for a newly minted college graduate. Like the new kid in town walking into his first day at school facing established cliques and longstanding circles of friends, my first day was terrifying. After four years, several promotions and many missteps, I can look back and recount the experience as the best of my professional life for several reasons. First…
Want to know more about the feeler’s story? So do the adcoms!
No grammar, punctuation or spelling errors. None. Zero.
If you think you can write a generic essay and change the school name, you’re dead wrong! Adcoms are more sophisticated than you can imagine and are intimately familiar with every other school’s essay questions, particularly those that are in the same tier as them. So, if you’ve written statements like the one below, set fire to your essay and begin anew. Research the particulars of the program; examine your own personal history and career trajectory, finally offering a compelling reason why the fit is perfect.
Example:
“After my four years in risk analysis for Deutsche Bank in their Hong Kong office, I’ve gained the necessary experience to pursue my next career venture: opening a boutique consulting firm that provides Chinese businesses with new market analysis for start-ups. Harvard/Stanford/Yale/Stern/Columbia is the perfect place for me to gain the necessary management training to do this.”