Used Spivey Consulting; got rejected from all target schools Forum

[veritasteller]

I paid about $2000+ for Spivey Consulting.

I have 3.8+ GPA and 170+ LSAT and no character or fitness issues.

They did not provide any special advice or personalized approach for my application.

They said, show me your Personal Statement and said it was good.

They told me to write an addendum, which in hindsight killed my application.

They provide barely any edits or detailed comments about my PS.

They always told me how busy they were, etc.

I was rejected from all my target schools.

When I asked for a refund, they showed me the little contract thing you sign at the beginning and refused.

After several years, I applied on my own and got into all my dream schools.

***********
Another review from Reddit

My experience with a Spivey consultant

First I just want to say no disrespect to Mike and others from Spivey who come around to this page and help us out. I've gotten a lot of really useful info from them and I'm not trying to drag them at all. I just wanted to post this in the hopes of helping someone who may be considering hiring Spivey. When I was considering it, I came to these forums and most people seemed to recommend them so I gave it a go.

Second- I hired Spivey for personal statement services only. So this review only speaks to that, obviously.

My experience wasn't great, and IMO certainly wasn't worth the exorbitant fee, which is twice that of some of its competitors, namely 7sage.

The consultant who was assigned to me was constantly traveling and out of reach, and wouldn't get back to me for several days up to a week, even though I was told it would generally be a 48-hour turnaround. I'm guessing that I was given a lower priority than other clients who had maybe purchased the larger packages. Another big thing that bothered me was that the edits I received on some occasions contained grammatical errors, including the "final" version.

Those are just two of the main issues that I wanted to put out there. I had other concerns but don't want to go too in depth. If you are really curious feel free to PM me; I may get back to you. Also, I want to say that my consultant definitely helped me and I might have been a little lost in the beginning without him/her. But I had to budget hard to afford this service and I regret feeling like it wasn't worth it. Again, posting because I just wanted to help someone who may be considering doing the same.

[cavalier1138]

You left out a few pieces of really important information in your Yelp review:

1. What were your actual numbers?
2. What were your target schools?
3. Why were you using a consultant service in the first place? There are multiple people who have discussed being turned away from Spivey if they weren't a good candidate for consulting. Someone with a high LSAT/GPA and no C&F issues doesn't seem like a good candidate.
4. What happened in the "several years" between your first and second round of apps? What years are we talking about?

Without knowing more, it's impossible to tell whether the consulting service had anything to do with your applications not getting the results you wanted the first time, especially because simply working for a few years would give your application a boost at most schools.

[nixy]

Yeah, I’d be curious about the addendum and whether the addendum killed the app, or whether whatever the addendum described was an actual problem that was minimized years later with distance from (whatever).

In any case, axe grinders aren’t really that convincing.

[veritasteller]

I followed every word Spivey Consulting told me to do, including writing an addendum and its content, and it led to rejections.

My point is: I did what Spivey Consulting told me to do, and didn’t get into any of my target schools.

They didn’t even inquire about my results.

[Pennoyer v. Meh]

But without knowing your exact stats, what schools you were targeting, and what your addendum was about, it's hard to properly judge your complaint. Right now this just looks like unjustified griping--it may have substance behind it, but we don't know that. You need to give us more.

[cavalier1138]

But without knowing your exact stats, what schools you were targeting, and what your addendum was about, it's hard to properly judge your complaint. Right now this just looks like unjustified griping--it may have substance behind it, but we don't know that. You need to give us more.

This.

If your stats were 170/3.81, and you targeted HYS, then even the best consultant in the world might fail to get you into those schools. And without knowing why you were writing an addendum (you said you had no C&F issues, and your numbers don't sound addendum-worthy), it's impossible to figure out why you had a consultant in the first place, much less why it was their fault that you failed to get in to your unnamed target schools.

[nixy]

I followed every word Spivey Consulting told me to do, including writing an addendum and its content, and it led to rejections.

My point is: I did what Spivey Consulting told me to do, and didn’t get into any of my target schools.

They didn’t even inquire about my results.

or, you were going to be rejected without their assistance, and what they told you to do couldn't make any difference?

Did you tell them your results?

[HopefulSplitter0000]

Your post has several problems:

First, your original applications sound like they may have been sent right out of college. In that case, what you did between cycles may have helped.

Second, you say that they asked you to write an addendum. Why did they do that? What was the glaring problem with your first application? Why did the addendum allegedly hurt your app?

Third, you did not say when you applied. Distinct cycles have distinct medians, and your numbers may have been weak in one cycle and strong in another.

Fourth, why did you copy-paste a reddit review? Do you think that adds validity to your post? No two applicants are identical (even with identical numbers), and even if you were extremely similar, you paid for different packages and got different consultants.

[Birdman1330]

I used Spivey and they were awesome. I got into a lot of great schools (just not HYS) with a lot of scholarship money. Also, they were very attentive and worked closely with me. I feel like their help definitely helped with my apps. That's just my experience though.

[Ultramar vistas]

I reached out to Spivey about 7 years ago now because of unnecessary concern about my application. They basically refused to take my money, talked me out of writing the addenda that I was so worked up about, charged me a minor fee for the time and the read of my application and told me it would all be fine. I got into 2/3 of HYS and appreciate them today not letting myself over think the process.

So, maybe things have changed a lot in the last 7 years but I figure 90% of people who try to use Spivey don’t actually have much that Spivey can ethically help with. They can’t rewrite your statements for you, you know? This just sounds like one of those cases - at the end of the day, an addendum is a judgment call, trying to predict how an admissions officer will respond to it. I’d take the opinion of an ex admissions officer over a friend, but at the end of the day the final call is yours. Knowing what we know about admissions, I doubt your addendum had much impact either way. If Spivey signed off on what you sent, I very much doubt it impacted negatively.

[Hiheyhi]

I used Spivey Consulting when i was a law school applicant. One of the consultants edited my personal statement and after making the changes (the marked up redlines), I submitted it. Later, i went back over my personal statement and realized there was a spelling & grammatical error in the first/second paragraph.

They basically refused to offer any help afterwards.

[cavalier1138]

I used Spivey Consulting when i was a law school applicant. One of the consultants edited my personal statement and after making the changes (the marked up redlines), I submitted it. Later, i went back over my personal statement and realized there was a spelling & grammatical error in the first/second paragraph.

They basically refused to offer any help afterwards.

Were you rejected because of the error?

Again, that sounds bad if the job of the service is to act as your last-step editor for your personal statement. But I feel like that isn't what consultants offer...