Work · B
MBA admissions
For consultants, bankers, traders, quants and engineers applying to M7, London Business School and INSEAD. Not a generalist MBA consultant, the one for the quantitative applicant.
Free GMAT practice: 239 questions with worked solutions and percentile levels, and a timed 45-minute section. Applying for an Executive MBA: Executive Assessment practice, timed in two modules as on the test.
Why the quantitative applicant is a specific problem
The strongest technical candidates write the weakest MBA essays, reliably and for the same reason. They describe what they built. An admissions committee is not reading for what you built; it is reading for judgement, consequence and the shape of a career. The two are not the same document, and no amount of polish converts one into the other.
I did the LBS MBA after a career in quantitative finance. I can read a trader's or an engineer's story and tell you which parts a committee will find compelling and which will simply not land, because I have been on both sides of that translation.
- GMAT or GRE — 99th percentile on both; the practice is in the GMAT and GRE banks
- School selection — which programmes actually reward your profile rather than tolerate it
- Positioning — the through-line that makes a technical career read as a trajectory
- Essays — as many rounds as it takes; I edit hard and do not write for you
- Curriculum vitae — rewritten for a committee, not for a desk
- Recommenders — who to ask, and precisely how to brief them
- Interviews — including the case and the technical probing that finance applicants get and others do not
- Scholarship strategy — when to negotiate, and when asking will cost you
PDF · Edition 2 · £79
The MBA Admissions Report
188 GMAT, GRE and EA problems written for the report, each with a worked solution, and 18 business schools side by side: class profiles, deadlines, costs, pay, essays and interviews.
I interview for London Business School
I assess applicants for London Business School and run alumni interviews. Most admissions consultants are working from what candidates report back to them afterwards. I am in the room. When I tell you an answer will not land, or that a story reads as rehearsed, that is something I watch happen every cycle rather than something I have inferred.
I wrote about why I chose London Business School, what makes an interview easy to write up well, and, for anyone still deciding, whether an MBA is worth it for people in finance and tech. If you have an interview coming, start with LBS interview questions, from someone who asks them.
How I can help
The strategy hour
Your CV, transcript and scores read beforehand. In the hour, where you stand and honest odds at each school you name.
£250 What the hour covers → 2The MBA Admissions Report
Profiles, deadlines, costs, pay and payback, essays and interviews at nine leading schools.
£79 · PDF See what is inside → 3GMAT and EA practice
GMAT Focus and Executive Assessment questions with worked solutions and timed sections, each with a percentile level.
Open to everyone Start practising →Timing
Round one deadlines fall in September, round two in early January. Essay work should begin eight to twelve weeks before a deadline; earlier if the GMAT or GRE is not yet settled. The July–August window fills first every year. Executive MBA applicants have different dates; they are set out programme by programme in Executive MBA deadlines for 2027 entry.