Kristen began developing her expertise in graduate management admissions in 2011 when she joined the Admissions team at the MIT Sloan School of Management, but her passion for education began long before that.
As an elementary education and English double major at Boston College, she learned the importance of strong communication skills and storytelling in order to reach a diverse group of learners.
She began her professional career at a publishing start-up and discovered an interest in recruiting, interviewing, and training new interns and full-time hires. After earning her MS in Leadership and Human Resources Management from Northeastern University, she moved onto MIT Sloan in order to pursue her passion for recruiting and evaluation.
During Kristen’s eight-year career at MIT Sloan, she evaluated hundreds of applicants to the full-time MBA, Master of Finance, Leaders for Global Operations, and Master of Business Analytics programs. She has experience giving Admissions presentations worldwide, reading applications, conducting interviews, and managing the waitlist. Kristen ultimately oversaw the evaluation process for all programs, leading the Admissions Committee and training readers and interviewers on Sloan’s evaluation criteria. She was also a member of the team that rolled out Sloan’s new MBA Early Admission Offering.
Kristen is passionate about demystifying the application process for her clients and preventing them from making costly mistakes that jeopardize their candidacy. She enjoys helping applicants craft their unique stories and show their authentic selves to the Admissions Committee. She has helped candidates gain admission to MBA and finance-focused degree programs at Wharton, MIT Sloan, Yale SOM, Cornell Johnson, Duke Fuqua, NYU Tandon, and London Business School, among others.
Kristen is also a devoted mom to two little boys and enjoys traveling and attending BC football games with her family.
School Package Prices
| Package | Price (USD) | Savings |
|---|---|---|
| ▶ Start with 2 Schools | $7,495 | – |
| ▶ Start with 3 Schools | $8,995 | $1,000 |
| ▶ Start with 4 Schools | $10,495 | $2,000 |
| ▶ Start with 5 Schools | $11,995 | $3,000 |
| ▶ Start with 6 Schools | $13,495 | $4,000 |
Package Savings: You have 30 days to add schools at the package rate. After 30 days, adding schools is $2,500 USD per school.
Selected Testimonials
Here are just a few of Kristen’s recent success stories:
Admitted to MIT Sloan (Early Admission)
Without Kristen’s guidance, I cannot imagine how I could have received an interview with MIT. Her patience, empathy, and deep understanding of MBA applications really helped me nail the application.
During our initial conversations, she invested a lot of time to understand my background and my motivation for an MBA. After these conversations, I better understood why I wanted to pursue an MBA and, more importantly, how the admissions committee would evaluate a candidate. In addition, she helped me to be more aware of my strengths and weaknesses. As a result, we developed a very effective strategy for my MBA application.
Her abundant experience with reading essays also enabled me to learn a lot about essay writing. Kristen was extremely helpful during brainstorming. Very often I would have random ideas and not know how to express them. Kristen was always able to grasp the shining part and help me present it in a succinct way.
Over my time working with her, Kristen was more than a counselor. Every time I shared with her my concern and anxiety regarding the application, she was always able to provide reassuring advice. She definitely became my go-to person whenever I had doubts about my application.
It was such a pleasure to work with Kristen. I would recommend her to anyone who has a strong motivation for an MBA program. I can confidently say that Kristen is able to dramatically help candidates achieve admission to their dream schools.
Admitted to Cornell Johnson
Magic Turnaround! When I started to prepare my MBA application, I was very confident that I could show my love for my dream school, so I spent over three months DIY, and when I finally received a cold rejection letter, I was heartbroken and discouraged. I learned my lesson here, no matter how confident you are, to get into a dream school, you need more than passion, hard work, and a score. Knowing what you don’t know and get as much help as you can is also important.
When I sent my old application file to Kristen, she instantly noticed many mistakes I made (I really wish I had known these when I prepared my #1 dream school application). Kristen encouraged me to keep trying because my application content was good, but needed a better strategy to make me stand out.
After our first call, she gave me a clear, simple, and smart strategy which was tailored to me and made my story more compelling. The problem I previously had was I had too many ideas, and I could not express my thoughts in a few hundred words. When she returned my essays, I felt, yeah, Kristen’s guidance was so smart! She not only polished my ideas, but also raised questions to prompt me to add details by myself, so my essay is still MY essay, which reflects a real me, but in a much better way. Comparing when I asked other friends to help, sometimes, either they make little real contribution, or they rephrased my essays in a way that I felt was not authentic or killed my character. But with Kristen’s guidance, she was very good at finding my shining points and helping me to explore them in more detail. With her profound experience, Kristen knows how to set a good theme, and express ideas in a nice strategy that I wanted but found hard to express by myself.
Kristen’s direction on my resume also upgraded my resume to another level, making me realize that my resume can also be a compelling tool, too. I thought my resume was perfect, however, after her consult and edit, I felt it is much more impressive tailored to the MBA admissions office.
I strongly recommend Kristen and felt her help was worth the money. She also quickly turned around feedback in three days, and substantially alleviate my pain when my application was due in a week! It may have been my last application, but still, I got in! I am very glad that I asked her for help and this decision made my dream come true. Thank you for your excellent help!
Admitted to Duke Master in Quantitative Management, NYU Master in Financial Engineering, Columbia MA in Financial Mathematics
I truly believe that working with Kristen is the key reason that I was admitted to some great programs.
First, in the summer, Kristen spent time deeply understanding my background and my interest and giving me a detailed timeline of each important step. Then she shared her insight into different graduate programs, which is very helpful in constructing my school list. During the application process, she provided much useful information and suggestions on recommendation letter selection, course selection, and many other important aspects.
Kristen is such an expert in the financial industry, and she lets me know much better about my career goals. Moreover, she is very responsible for revising my essays. We brainstormed many times on how to design my essays. She gave me much insight into constructing my essays to show my unique advantages and passions for each different program. Every time, she would send me detailed comments on my essays. She is a skilled writer, which enables me to have well-written essays, which I think I would never have such essays without her help. Additionally, Kristen helped me a lot in preparing for my interview.
It was a great experience to work with Kristen for my graduate school programs. I highly recommend her to any applicants!
Admitted to Wharton Advance Access Program, Yale Silver Scholars Program, and London Business School Masters in Financial Analysis
When I first spoke to Kristen, I knew she would be the teammate helping me through the challenging but rewarding graduate application process.
Applying to top finance-related masters can be stressful, even for a candidate with a 3.99 CGPA coming from a top 20 university, where the average CGPA is around 2.3. Although I had researched extensively which programs I planned to apply to, Kristen provided me with exact information regarding the “hidden” requirements of each program, something I looked for but in no way can simply find out by just browsing websites. In addition to top finance master’s programs such as the Masters in Financial Analysis (MFA) from London Business School, our proudest triumph is getting into the Silver Scholars MBA program at Yale SOM (my dream school). With its annual class size of around 15 students, the Silver Scholars Program (SSP) has continuously been referred to as the most selective one among many other renowned deferred MBA programs at Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, MIT, and Columbia. What makes Yale’s SSP even more unique is its structure to allow college seniors to enter directly into the regular MBA program without the need to defer for two to four years after undergraduate studies, truly one of a kind. I am delighted with this result, a process I went through together with Kristen.
As an international applicant who speaks English as a second language, I have been struggling to present my motivations and tell my story in a “local” and effective way. Kristen has been the most brilliant counselor I have ever met to teach me the writing skills particularly needed for application-type essays. She can express the same content in a more precise and authentic way, an essential skill she acquired not only because she is a native speaker but also attributed to her many years of experience at MIT Sloan as an Associate Director of Admissions. Simply put, she knows which sentences are redundant and which parts of the essay are something the admissions committee would not like to see. Without her help, I could easily walk into application traps, the kind of “life-saving” secrets I would rather wait for you to learn from Kristen directly in the future.
An important step during an application process, as many of us have known is the interview stage. Admittedly, interviews are always important so that every applicant should pay extensive time and effort to prepare them. However, programs vary a lot in terms of the weight of the interview on an applicant’s overall profile. I learned from Kristen that usually depending on selectivity, the survival rate from interviews can vary from 1/4 to 1/2. Therefore, knowing which programs pay special attention to the applicant’s interview performance can help you prioritize among them, another “life-saving” tip during the typical interview preparation stage.
Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude to Kristen once again for her help throughout the past several months. Time goes fast, and I could not have ended up with today’s achievements without Kristen. From finance masters to MBA programs, Kristen has demonstrated her ability to be among the best counselor to help you get into the dream programs you deserve!
BTW, Kristen is a very kind person to work with. She will try to get back to your essay edits within a couple of hours during your tough times, she will always try her best to accommodate your needs, such as scheduling an urgent video talk in the next hour, etc. I believe that her very caring and approachable personality is something that motivated me to continue my journey during those past stressful periods.
Admitted to Cornell MPS in Management; Columbia MS Economics, UChicago MAPSS ($31K scholarship)
Having an incredibly responsible and professional counselor like Kristen is my luckiest decision throughout my application. She gave me the highest and all-around support since our first Skype meeting in the summer of my junior year.
After thoroughly understanding my background and career passion, Kristen created a detailed and customized plan for me, which makes my application extremely organized in the next 6-7 months. I can completely trust her and share any concerns and confusion with her because she is so knowledgeable about different programs as well as every facet of the application and could always quickly help me solve all my concerns.
I genuinely appreciate her incredible effort and expertise in helping me discover programs that highly align with my career objectives, strategically explore each program and brainstorm topics for statements of purpose, and most importantly, polished my essays with the highest quality edits until ready to submit. Throughout the 7 months that I closely worked with her, Kristen adhered to her promise of “We are working as a team to submit the highest application for review.” This collaborative counseling style works perfectly for me.
My application is particularly time-consuming as I applied to a combination of research-oriented and industry-oriented programs from business schools, schools of engineering, and economics department from the graduate school of arts and sciences – Kristen helped me discover the best strategies for each of these programs with her extraordinary acumen, research, and expertise in the application process. I am a very picky person both on myself and others, but there is absolutely nothing about Kristen’s counseling that I am not satisfied with full praise and appreciation. The whole application season is very stressful, yet she is the only person who can ease all my stress throughout the application – often responded to my emails of concerns even in late evening and weekends with very thoughtful solutions and suggestions.
I had a fantastic time working with Kristen and sincerely believe she is the most important person who helps me achieve admissions to my dream programs.