No. Sorry. In our experience we’ve found that if your “foundation” (your overall career vision) is weak, then its not a good use of time (ours or yours) to get into the details of your individual essays – especially since your career vision will carry over into nearly every school’s essays, and since the resume is THE most important document in your application.

Back when we USED to offer strategic essay reviews without requiring the Sanity Check first, we'd get essays with career visions that were so terrible, or "Why MBA?" reasons that made no sense, that our feedback often had to include: "Go back to the drawing board!"

Our essay reviews are designed (and priced) to be reviews of HOW you're telling your story - ONCE you've ALREADY solidified what that story is. We would have to raise the prices of our essay reviews if we needed to review both elements in one session.

So why not bundle them together? Well, we used to do that too...

The problem was, if someone would wait until they had made a lot of progress on their essays to send us BOTH documents (normally close to the deadline), then sadly, there often wouldn't be enough time to course-correct / do the "homework" necessary for a strong career vision / why MBA foundation.

And, since folks would wait until late in the process, at that point it was:

1) Often TOO LATE to make big changes and

2) They might have to RE-WRITE many of the essays all over again, once they realized where they had gone off the rails with the career vision, etc.

Your resume is needed early on in order to have it available for recommenders, to use for networking during your career / school networking, etc..

Splitting "Sanity Checks" up from Essay reviews has been working MUCH better all around and we've been doing things this way for a few years now - it allows people get squared away on the foundational elements earlier on in the process and also evens out demand for reviews throughout the application cycle as opposed to a HUGE last minute rush.

If you skipped the “Part 1” step and have already written your essays, it’s not the end of the world, but you’ll need to book a Sanity Check before you can book a Strategic Essay Review. It's short-term effort that yields ongoing benefits.

Even if you THINK your career vision is strong and your resume is solid, you will still benefit from a Sanity Check. We have NEVER seen a resume that couldn't be stronger in SOME way.

FAQ Strategic Reviews