Tell Your Story: MBA Essay Coaching
The essay is where most MBA applications either come alive or go flat. The ones that work aren't the ones with the most impressive accomplishments, they're the ones where you can feel the person behind the words. I help you figure out which stories to tell, how to structure them so they're earning every sentence, and how to make sure the finished product sounds like you at your clearest, not like a cover letter or a performance review. If you have a messy background, gaps to explain, or anything that feels hard to frame, that's exactly where I do my best work. 1. Strategy & Brainstorm -Application strategy session: A live deep-dive to define your core narrative themes, which are the through-line that will make your application feel cohesive across schools. -Story mining: We'll dig through your background together to surface the most powerful and revealing experiences, including the ones you haven't considered yet. -Prompt mapping by school: For each school, we'll build your essay angles before you write so you're going in with intention, not staring at a blank page. 2. Essay Development -Outlining: We'll structure each essay before drafting so the narrative arc is clear and nothing important gets buried. -Draft feedback: Asynchronous line-by-line feedback across multiple drafts, focused on structure, specificity, voice, and whether the story is landing. -Final polish: A close read on the final version for clarity, flow, and any remaining rough edges before submission. 3. Consistency Review -Cross-essay review: A review of all your essays together to make sure they're building a coherent picture, not overlapping, repeating, or leaving important things unsaid. -Optional essay & additional info sections: Guidance on how to use optional essays strategically, especially if there's something in your application that needs context or reframing. -Voice check: A final read to make sure the essays still sound like you - not overly polished, not generic, just clear and honest.
What's included
All coaching is delivered through a mix of live sessions and asynchronous feedback. Strategy, story-identification conversations will happen live, and line-by-line feedback will be asynchronous. What you can expect from me: -Turnaround time: I return feedback within 24–72 hours on written materials, and often faster. If a deadline is pressing, let me know upfront and I'll prioritize accordingly. -Personalized coaching: I start every engagement by getting to know you as a whole person: your background, goals, what hasn't been easy to explain, and where you want to go. My coaching adapts to you, not the other way around. -Clear, direct feedback: I don't just flag what's working and what's not. I explain why, and I'll push you past surface-level answers when I know there's something stronger underneath. -Organization: All materials, feedback, and drafts are tracked in a shared Google Drive folder so you always know where things stand and nothing gets lost in email chains.
- A clear narrative strategy with identified core themes before you write a word
- Polished essays with multiple revision rounds from outline through final draft
- A cross-essay consistency review so your full application tells one coherent story
- Support with optional essay and additional info sections to ensure your full story is effectively told
Meet your expert
Kelsey A.
Ross Interviewer | Turning Unconventional Backgrounds Into Winning Stories
I started college convinced I was going to be a doctor until I realized I was a lot more interested in the systems around healthcare than the science behind it. That pivot led me to healthcare consulting, then to Ross for my MBA, where I went in looking for strategic depth, leadership reps, and the chance to think beyond healthcare, and came out ready to thrive at BCG with a much sharper sense of what I'm capable of. A lifelong curiosity has followed me throughout; as a kid I asked "why" so relentlessly that the adults around me were genuinely exhausted, and that hunger to understand has never really left. I bring it to my work, my career, and to every person I coach: getting into your story, finding your "why," and figuring out how to tell it in a way that actually lands. I believe the best coaching starts with understanding someone as a whole person, not just a resume or a case answer. I navigated my own MBA process with undiagnosed ADHD and a GPA that didn't tell the full story, and figuring out how to frame that honestly and powerfully changed everything for me. If something in your background feels complicated or hard to explain, that's exactly where I love to dig in. I'm a California girl living in Chicago, where the weather is a daily exercise in acceptance, but the city has genuinely won me over. Sports are a big part of my life - UCLA women's basketball, volleyball, and gymnastics; Michigan football; the 49ers - I'm drawn to the thrill of competition and the camaraderie that comes with it. I love cooking ambitious meals and hosting dinners, where watching friends from different parts of my life find each other became the best part. I've visited 40+ countries across six continents, am rarely more than ten feet from my dog Hazel, and recently turned a board game I invented as a ten-year-old into a vibe-coded online game. Creative projects, learning something new every day, and saying yes to things I haven't tried yet - these are what fuel me. Sounds like a good fit but having concerns on cost? Let's chat and see if we can work something out. Cancellation Policy: Please cancel or reschedule at least 2 hours before our session. Late changes and no-shows will forfeit 50% of the scheduled session time.
