The Sam Weeks Consulting Annual Performance Report: 2025 - 2026
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
This admissions cycle at Sam Weeks Consulting, we pushed our client success rate to a new high, set records across every scholarship metric we track, and were ranked in the Poets & Quants Top 5 Admissions Consultants in the world.
Here’s how the 2025-2026 year unfolded at SWC.
Client Success
It was another packed season: 59 clients trusted us with their MBA applications, and 57 walked away with at least one offer in hand. Do the math and that puts us at 97%. That’s the best client success rate we've posted to date.
Zooming out to the application level: clients submitted 209 applications across all their target schools, and 141 came back as offers, for a 67% hit rate per application.
The M7 numbers carried real weight this year:
42 clients went after M7 schools, and 36 came away with at least one offer. That is an 86% M7 hit rate.
34 clients targeted Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton specifically, and 22 got in somewhere among the three, giving us a 65% success rate.
All of our clients who were waitlisted at HBS got off the waitlist.
Every single M7 program said yes to at least one of our clients this year: Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, MIT Sloan, Booth, Kellogg, and Columbia all had SWC admits.
Our clients chasing European and UK programs did even better. 17 applied to INSEAD, LBS, Oxford Saïd, Cambridge Judge, or IE, and 16 of them got in at one or more of these schools. That’s a 94% international success rate.
Scholarships
Funding outcomes hit new territory across the board this cycle.
Roughly 4/5 admitted clients walked away with a scholarship offer, and collectively those offers added up to $4,042,000. Spread across everyone who received an offer, that works out to nearly $71,000 per person. That’s our highest scholarship figure so far!
Read Mario's story (Wharton admit with $851,000 in total scholarships):
Client Profile
A look at who we worked with this year:
Test scores averaged 679 on the GMAT Focus Edition (or the GRE equivalent).
GPAs averaged 3.54 out of 4.0.
Neither number quite reaches typical M7 benchmarks. That means our results aren't coming from screening for the strongest stats, but from the work we do with our clients to present the best version of themselves.
Our combined-services clients prove this: every single one of the 6 people who worked with us on both test prep and admissions this year landed an M7 offer.
By industry, consulting continued to make up our largest client group, as it has in prior years. What changed was the mix underneath that: buy-side finance applicants showed up in large enough numbers that we started tracking them apart from investment banking, and we saw a noticeably bigger wave of tech clients: many of them building applications around how AI is reshaping their own industry.
Geographically, close to half our clients (49%) were based in the US, with India and Canada holding their usual strong share. One shift worth flagging: 4 clients from Saudi Arabia had strong outcomes this year, part of a client base that's been building steadily there through referrals.
Here's Abdullah's journey from Saudi's PIF to the MIT Sloan Fellows MBA.
Wharton Interview Prep
Wharton applicants got extra attention this cycle. We ran 9 live mock Team-Based Discussions with clients this year – our highest count yet for that format — and past sessions remain available to watch on MBAconsultant.com, so applicants can see what a real TBD looks like before they're sitting in one themselves.
Our Process Map
One internal project we're proud of: building a clear, visual map of exactly how we work with clients from the first call through decision season. It took input from the whole team to put together, and the payoff is that anyone signing up for an all-inclusive package now has a concrete picture of what each stage, including our strategy, essay timeline, interview prep, and the post-decision phase, actually looks like.
Our subscription content hub keeps expanding. Applicants now have access to 100+ real essay examples spanning 14 schools, including the full M7 lineup plus Haas, Johnson, NYU Stern, Fuqua, and several leading European programs, along with the Wharton TBD footage mentioned above.
The Reddit Series
We've now logged more than 60 episodes of our Reddit-based roast series, run by Sam, Jon, and Mal, where we react live to real applicant profiles pulled from the community. Taken together, that's north of 200 applicants who've gotten a free, candid read on their profile through the show. We’re also debuting a brand new look for our Roasts; check it out here.
Poets & Quants Rank
For the second year in a row, Sam Weeks landed at #5 on the Poets & Quants list of top individual MBA admissions consultants worldwide. This lines up with how we run things here: a smaller client roster, more attention per person, and stronger outcomes.
Our review count on the platform also crossed a new threshold this year, with 150 five-star verified ratings now on record.
A few notes from clients this cycle:
"I picked Sam after doing consults with a half-dozen other admissions consultants, and I'm confident now that I couldn't have made a better choice." — Admit: Stanford, HBS, Wharton
"If you want a coach who'll stay in the fight until you're holding the offer you actually want, that's Jon." — Admit: Stanford, HBS, Wharton
One client, admitted to HBS, HKS, Wharton with a Lauder scholarship, CBS, INSEAD, and Oxford, said the level of support from the team exceeded what they'd anticipated going in.
Another, who secured a spot at INSEAD along with a substantial funding package, said they'd point anyone serious about their applications toward working with Sam.
A client returning for a second application cycle said they were relieved to have made a better choice this time, landing a fully funded offer at Oxford.
More independently verified reviews are available directly on Poets & Quants.
Looking Ahead
Between the strongest client success rate we've ever recorded, record-breaking scholarship totals, and another top-five industry ranking, 2025-26 was a standout year across nearly every metric that matters to us. We're already gearing up for the next cycle, and for helping the next round of applicants find their way into the programs they're aiming for.
As always, thank you for being part of the journey.
Want to work with us? Get in touch for a free 20-minute consultation.
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