Do you work with candidates with challenging profiles — low GMAT, non-traditional, career changers?
Yes — all of them. Every background, every profile type, every competitive starting position.
This is one of the biggest differences between us and many of the firms that market themselves as “the best.” We work with MBB consultants targeting only M7 and first-generation professionals who’ve never set foot on a business school campus. Candidates with 780 GMATs who need help telling a story that isn’t forgettable, and candidates with sub-700 scores who need a very different, careful, and intelligent frame. Career changers. Military officers. Entrepreneurs. International applicants navigating a system built around assumptions that don’t apply to them.
We don’t cherry-pick clients to protect a marketing statistic. That’s worth saying plainly, because it’s common in this industry and almost never acknowledged. When a firm quietly turns away candidates with real risk and then advertises pristine success rates, that number isn’t measuring consulting quality — it’s measuring intake selectivity. When you have the skills to do this work well, you don’t need to screen for safety.
That said, we’re honest about what’s realistic. If your target list is misaligned with your current profile, we’ll say so — not to cap ambition, but to ground the strategy. Our job isn’t to co-sign fantasy lists; it’s to build smart portfolios with real reaches, credible targets, and well-chosen safeties. Sometimes the most valuable thing we do is tell you the truth you’re not hearing elsewhere.
The candidates who thrive with us tend to share one trait that has nothing to do with stats or pedigree: they’re coachable. They engage, they reflect, and they’re willing to be pushed past what’s comfortable. If that’s you, the rest is our job.
