How do you decide which consultant to pair me with?
The short answer is chemistry — because in our experience, that’s what most reliably drives outcomes.
Matching based on clinical specialty interest or undergraduate background can make sense for a younger firm with less experienced consultants. At our level, it matters far less. Every consultant on our roster knows the schools, applicant archetypes, and strategic terrain cold. What varies isn’t expertise; it’s working style. The question isn’t “who knows your background,” but “who will think best with you.”
We look at communication style, temperament, intensity, and how you’re likely to engage in a high-stakes, iterative process that — in med especially — can stretch across months of sustained work from primary through secondaries through interviews. When the fit is right, everything moves faster and sharper.
We’re confident making those calls because of how we recruit. Our screening process is blind — we evaluate work product with no résumé attached — and roughly 5–6% of applicants make it through. The result is a roster where every consultant clears what we call the VIP bar: we could assign any one of them, sight unseen, to the highest-stakes engagement we’ve ever taken on and feel completely comfortable. That’s not aspirational language. It’s the standard we enforce.
One note specific to med: some of our consultants are physicians or current residents. Some are not. We address this in more detail elsewhere, but the short version is simple — your primary consultant is selected for excellence at this job, and every engagement also includes strategic input from an MD who is actively inside the system. You’re covered on both fronts, regardless of who leads.
