Is BeMo Academic Consulting Worth It? Is BeMo Any Good?

First, as you may be already aware, most accepted students use some form of admissions preparation, while most rejected applicants just try to “wing it”. For example, almost 50% of students end up re-writing their admissions tests such as the MCAT, at a huge cost of time, money and energy. Let’s examine the costs vs. benefits of working with us. If you're wondering can a medical school advisor or medical school admissions consultant help you with your medical school interview preparation or your medical school application, check out our blogs for the answers.

Short-Term Cost vs. Long-Term Investment

Let’s get this out of the way at the outset. While we could argue about whether learning should be evaluated in terms of its price tag, there’s no avoiding the question of cost. Yes, working with our Admissions Experts costs money; but, when viewed in terms of an investment in your future, the benefits far outweigh both the financial cost, and the cost in terms of your time and effort.

If you’re beginning the application process, or have even started looking into it at all, then you know the hefty price tag that accompanies simply getting your foot in the door. There are application costs, secondary application costs, the cost of travelling to interviews, and so on. These things add up quickly.

Would you like to learn about medical school admissions consulting: the SURE way to get in? Watch this:

Now, imagine you go through all that, spend all that non-refundable money, and you don’t get in. Where does that leave you? Well, it leaves you going through the whole process again next cycle, with all the same costs (if not more – reapplicants often cast a wider net, applying to even more schools, and those application and secondary costs are subject to potential increases each year!). Since BeMo has successfully coached countless students through their application and secondary essays, CASPer, the MMI, and interviews of all sorts, we can help maximize your chances of admission, meaning no re-applying again next year. The cost of our services is frequently a fraction of a cost of the re-application process.

As well, if you do have to re-apply, that means an additional year between you and your goal of being a working professional. To put it another way, being rejected and having to re-apply takes away a whole year of possible earnings in that profession! While short-term cost is certainly a factor, long-term cost is also worth considering. Obviously, the annual salary of those working in careers that require graduate and professional education far exceeds the cost of coaching to ensure your application is the strongest it can be the first time you apply.

Relatedly, the cost of coaching services is dwarfed by the typical lifetime earnings of working professionals in such careers, so – whether you’re applying or re-applying – the long-term benefits of gaining acceptance far outweigh the short-term costs of mentorship.

Let’s do a quick calculation as an example: Suppose you were applying to medical school. The average annual salary of a medical doctor is $250,000. Each year you are unable to gain acceptance is a quarter of a million dollars lost! On the other hand, our services cost considerably less and if you compare them to tuition costs, our fees are insignificant. We also offer interest-free installment payments to make it easy for everyone to take advantage of our services. Lastly, we make a lot of our videos, course material, and books available for free to allow everyone to give us a try first. So, is it worth it investing in yourself with us to secure a career that pays an average of $250,000/year for life, provides career satisfaction, and lifelong autonomy? So far students have said yes!

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

Finally, in the very first book of financial advice written in the United States, The Way to Wealth, none other than Benjamin Franklin famously said, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” You know this is true, because you’re about to make the biggest investment in your life – professional or graduate school – and that investment is precisely intended to help you gain knowledge. Sometimes, preparing for a large investment means making smaller investments along the way, especially when the door to entry is notoriously narrow. Graduate and professional programs have always been competitive, and – if anything – they are more competitive now than they’ve ever been. Getting in the door requires knowledge of the process, its expectations, and how to cultivate and highlight your strongest qualities. Investment in getting in the door is simply part of that larger investment in knowledge and, in turn, your future.

Time

Our students spend considerably less time preparing for their CASPer test and interviews, and less time writing personal statements and secondaries, because they get clear guidance.

Let’s look at two possible scenarios:

First, you spend relatively little time on your application essay or interview prep. You crank out a draft and submit it, or you go in and wing it on interview day. No matter how strong a writer you are or how personable you are naturally, this will likely result in one thing: re-applying next time. In the entire admissions process, there are a wealth of unknown-unknowns – that is, things that you don’t even know exist yet because you don’t have the foundational knowledge necessary to even acknowledge their existence, let alone recognize and understand them. It’s not just about being a good writer, having an affable persona, or “just being yourself”. We can long for a world in which that is the case, but it’s not the world we actually inhabit right now, the one in which you must compete. Throughout this process, everything about you – your history and projected potential, your habits and your values, what meaning you derive from the work you do and how you will use that work to impact others – is under the proverbial microscope. You will be under more intense scrutiny than you ever have been, and most of us are simply not naturally prepared for that.

You wouldn’t enter an operating theatre to do heart surgery without robust knowledge of the entire circulatory system and how it impacts other bodily systems, right? You wouldn’t enter a courtroom without a knowledge of both current law and precedent relevant to the case, right? You wouldn’t attempt to publish a dissertation if you’d only read the first chapter of every book in your bibliography, right? Then why enter an arena of similar scrutiny without understanding that arena first? The results in all of these scenarios are the same: losing something precious and – in the best of circumstances – having to start again. In the case of admissions, that means losing a whole year of time that could be devoted to your education and to your career, your calling.

Now, the other scenario: You do get someone else to read your essay or to sit a mock interview with you, but these people are not Admissions Experts, or they are people who care deeply about you and want to preserve your feelings – friends and family. They review your essay and beam with pride at how articulately you’ve listed every accomplishment on your CV (which you should NOT do in an admissions essay!); or, they conclude a mock interview with you, marvelling at all you’ve done and how far you’ve come, because they love you and cherish thinking about your journey. These are lovely sentiments, but they are distractions from what actually needs to be done, and they are simply not the kind of feedback you’re going to get from experts. Those lovely sentiments have a similar result as the previous example: another year between you and your goal, because you’ll be going through the process all over again next cycle. Worse, you’ll have spent a lot of time and invested a lot of work in practice and preparation, but it’s incorrect practice and thus ineffective preparation. 

"PERFECT practice makes perfect!"

We have a saying at BeMo, “Practice doesn’t make perfect. PERFECT practice makes perfect!” If you are preparing ineffectively and with people who cannot provide objective, expert feedback, that can be even worse than not preparing at all, because you’re learning and internalizing bad habits, while getting validation and positive evaluations for doing so.

You need someone who can be legitimately objective (let’s face it, no matter how hard they try, family and friends just cannot be wholly unbiased), and you need someone who knows the admissions system inside and out (knowledge usually only accessible to those in, or directly connected to, that system itself). Our experts have one job: to help you make your overall presentation of your unique, authentic self as compelling as possible to help you compete in an intensely competitive marketplace.

This means turning a critical eye to your work, looking for both positive, effective articulation, but also identifying every gap or whole – including those only visible by those with knowledge of the admissions system. While we will be supportive and help you understand why some areas of your performance are weaker, how they can be strengthened, and what differentiates the two, we will never soften the truth or avoid offering commentary. We will do so in nurturing ways, as mentors, but we’ll always tell you what you need to hear to make you as competitive as possible.

In practice, that expertise means less time needed to prepare, because you’re going to be practicing perfectly, guided by an expert. For example, most of our Admissions Experts go through 2-3 rounds of editing with students who submit application essays – 1 review with commentary on the initial draft, which is returned to you with suggestions and resources for improvement, and then 1 review of that edited document, returned with final notes for polishing before submission. Sometimes, that second review indicates a few more significant areas that need attention, meaning one more round of editing and review. Because our experts are assigned specifically to you, we have a guaranteed turnaround of 2-3 business days. That means that, in the span of a week, monumental transformations of your work are possible, if you begin implementing changes right away and only 2 rounds of review are needed. Imagine sending a copy of your essay to 5 of your friends and family members. Not only are they likely lacking the expertise to effectively evaluate your work, they also have work and lives of their own! Who knows when they’ll have time to get back to you!

Working with BeMo, you know exactly what to expect and when to expect it. We know how to reflect on your own unique journey and how to help you articulate that journey effectively, whether in personal statements, secondary essays, CASPer tests, or interviews of any kind. Having someone devoted to your success, who is familiar with the process and requirements, and who can help you practice perfectly means less overall time in preparation and less time between you and achieving your goals.

There’s no value you can put on time. Famous billionaire Warren Buffet once said: 

“It’s the only thing you can’t buy. I mean, I can buy anything I want, basically, but I can’t buy time.” 

If he can’t buy time, neither can you.

Effectiveness

To put it plainly: our services work, and our students love working with us!

Our Admissions Experts are deeply devoted to student success, helping each student refine and present their best selves, using techniques with proven effectiveness. This double-blind study shows students in our program increasing their MMI and CASPer practice scores by 23-27%, following multiple coaching sessions. As such, we’ve seen first-hand that CASPer and MMI are highly coachable, and that BeMo’s preparation methods work.

As well, you can check out our ever-growing list of Student Success Stories, with students gaining admission to graduate and professional programs of all kinds, all over the world. The enthusiasm of students for our programs speaks for itself! Here is a list of schools where BeMo’s students have gained acceptance – as you’ll see, our students have been accepted to the most competitive programs globally such as medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, law, nursing, PhD/Master's, physician assistant, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, and many more. We’re also now collecting video reviews from students, and you can view that playlist here.

Additionally, prestigious schools like McGill University and the University of Michigan have recommended BeMo’s resources for medical school admissions, preparing for the MMI, and preparing for the CASPer test. In fact, their Career Centers keep our books in their collections!

Finally, you can look at our TrustPilot Reviews, where hundreds of students have reflected honestly on their experiences working with BeMo. Here, you will see students enthusiastically recounting the growth they’ve experienced, praising the care and commitment of their mentors, and expressing gratitude for the knowledge they’ve gained in working with us. These honest reflections are a precious resource to us – when students succeed, we succeed; when students are satisfied, we are satisfied.

The Value of Mentorship

When you think of “success”, who comes to mind? The answer is likely different for everyone, and dependent on how each person defines “success”. But, regardless of whom you consider “successful”, they all have something in common. They all had mentors.

As you may have noticed, all the best-known authors have mentors and editors. Pick up your favorite book – whether academic or non-academic, fact or fiction, I guarantee you’ll see an editor mentioned in the acknowledgements (often “with deep gratitude”!).

Professional athletes have coaches.

Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and the whole Silicon Valley group? They have mentors.

Albert Einstein? He had a mentor (whom he met every Thursday).

Aristotle had a mentor, Plato (and Plato’s mentor was Socrates!).

The point is that pretty much all top performers have a coach, mentor, or some other touchstone for their ideas. Trying to do everything on your own ultimately deprives you of two key resources: wisdom and time. Wisdom can be gained in many ways, but key among these is time. Quite frankly, you need someone who has been around, who has been through the process, who has seen how these things play out, who knows enough to see the “big picture” and who can guide you accordingly.

Our consultants are experts in their fields and have explored admissions from every perspective. They have been rigorously trained and tested to make sure they understand the admissions process inside and out (in fact, fewer than 5% of applicants who want to work with us actually get hired here at BeMo!). They know what is expected of applicants, and – as importantly – what key qualities are sought in future professionals in the field. They know how to help you articulate your best qualities in persuasive ways, demonstrating to admissions committees that you’re a “good fit” for their program and for the profession itself.

Only you can traverse the path, but it doesn’t need to be a trail you forge yourself. That is what a mentor is for – to point out the paths that work and those that lead to dead ends, to help you find the best in yourself, and to nurture your talent so you can maximize your own potential. If you’d like a walkthrough of this process, follow this link to learn what it is like to work with a BeMo consultant during the application process!

Professionalization

If you look through some of those reviews and success stories linked above and sprinkled throughout this post, you may notice something interesting. Several of our students go beyond praising our techniques in the context of applications, interviews, and admissions, and discuss the ways in which their work with us has impacted them at the broader professional level. That’s because we don’t just teach you cheap tricks or single-use tactics, and we don’t give you answers to memorize. We don’t try to turn you into someone else.

Rather, we teach life-long skills regarding professionalization; we give you the opportunity to reflect on difficult issues in the ethics of your field; we help you articulate your own self-narrative in compelling ways; we help you understand what it means to present yourself as a professional to other professionals. Obviously, those skills are useful in the admissions process, but they’re useful in life, as well. We help you learn to ask deep, probing questions about yourself and the world around you, avoiding bias and reserving judgment, and give you tools for crafting your own answers to those questions.

This isn’t about passing a test or jumping a hurdle – for you or for us. We take seriously the idea that we’re helping the next generation of doctors, nurses, lawyers, scholars, and other highly regarded professionals, and we want you to take that seriously, too. That’s one reason our experts are so devoted to the work that we do. As fellow travellers in this world of ours, we have a vested interest in helping advance the kinds of nuanced reflection that this world desperately needs. Though we may have a small role to play in all that, it’s a bit part we take to heart.

We Stand Behind our Work

Finally, we stand behind the work we do. Our programs come with a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee, and select top programs even come with a Get In or Your Money Back^® Guarantee. It’s simple: if you aren’t satisfied, we aren’t satisfied. We are confident in the services we offer, which is why we put our (literal and proverbial) money where our mouth is! Come work with us and see for youself!

To your success,

Your friends at BeMo

BeMo Academic Consulting