The following is reflective of both my and my significant other’s thoughts.
The Pros:
- Moshe really really really cares about the work you put out. He treats every application like it’s him applying to law school again. He’ll start the brainstorming process (writing out lists of potential ideas for all your essays) before you start and continue thinking about how to refine your essays well after they are “done”. He loves to tinker, so he’d often direct my attention to an essay we marked “complete” to solicit more ideas about how to improve word choice or broader content. He won’t let you submit anything until it is something that both of you are proud of.
- He is super open to criticism, himself. Every couple weeks, Moshe would check in with questions like “Do you feel like you are getting a value from this service worth the money spent so far?” and “Is there anything you think I could be doing better to serve your needs/expectations?”
- He really emphasizes getting YOU to improve to a point where you earn a spot at the school you want rather than just paying him to throw together your materials for you. More so, he focuses on getting you to connect your background and experiences with why you want to pursue a career in law. It takes a long time and many drafts (which I’ll elaborate on later), but I truly feel that I am better prepared for law school having gone through it, which I’ll elaborate on at the end.
- He is his own service. When you work with Sharper Statements, you get Moshe. When we first started working with him, Moshe didn’t have any clue that my s/o and I were together. Still, we often discussed our experiences with Moshe and both felt we were getting a similar level of quality. That is something we believe we wouldn’t have had had we worked with a larger consulting firm. When first seeking a consultant, both of us independently decided on Moshe because during our initial consultations with other services, we felt that the experience was very impersonal and somewhat unpredictable. Additionally, the way larger firms explained their services made them seem formulaic and not particularly adapted to the individual.
- The best thing about Moshe’s services for me, personally, was his help regarding application strategy outside of the essays: Who to contact, from which schools, how to speak to them, how to integrate those conversations into the app, switching from RD to ED at Penn. He also helped tremendously in preparing me for the interviews with admissions officers.
- Regarding the switch from RD to ED, I am incredibly grateful for his insight. With the way the cycle was panning out, both myself and my s/o were starting to give up on attending the same school, especially one in the t14. Moshe gave us info about what kinds of scholarships we could expect from schools we were considering (if they accepted us of course) and let us decide whether or not we were willing to forego merit-based aid for a more solid chance of attending the same school, especially our dream school. We ultimately decided that Penn was our top school and we would feel much worse if we gave up that opportunity for an amount of money that we are confident we can pay back. After seeing the incredibly disparate outcomes other splitters had this cycle, we are pretty content with this decision.
The Cons:
- His tons of ideas can become difficult to balance as he sometimes forgets that for people without his experience in this space, some things aren’t always obvious. Early on, we got into a few heated disagreements because he would give me 2+ ideas to implement into my work, but the 2 ideas seemed contradictory to me (I think he wanted something to be both more specific in 1 way and less specific in another). That improved over time as I got better at asking for clarification and he got better at understanding what I didn’t find as obvious and went more in depth in his explanations.
- He is very blunt, sometimes to the point of being an asshole. When I sent him a draft he felt was subpar, he wouldn’t pull his punches saying, “this is trash”. His bluntness was equally present when giving positive feedback, sending me voice notes hyping me up after a particularly good draft. Still, Moshe needs to learn to temper this, at least when giving negative feedback. Overall, not a huge dealbreaker for me, as my experience in law firms has given me plenty of exposure to similar headstrong types.
- I should also note. I don’t come from a wealthy family. I am paying Moshe what I see as a lot of money out of my own pocket. Especially towards the end, I grew quite fond of Moshe, but I did not pay him that amount of money to be my friend. If I am paying someone that much to critique my work, I much prefer they be honest and to the point than waste my time beating around the bush.
The Pros for us but (potentially) Cons for you:
- Frequent voice memos and text messages. Moshe is super responsive to text. He usually responds within 20-30 minutes and always within a day in my experience (Side note: Moshe has a weird sleep schedule, so he is generally not responsive in the morning, but that was not an issue for us as we never needed him then). As he is always coming up with new ideas about how to change the materials, he will think out loud and send voice memos of his thoughts. It can be a lot at times. We sometimes didn’t respond for a day or 2 if we needed to not think about apps. He was generally understanding and didn’t expect us to keep up with his level of responsiveness. I personally liked the system because he always made himself available, but I could engage with him based on my convenience/energy.
- We saw this as a pro because it showed us that he was not just thinking about our work when we asked him to. Whether he was walking his dog, Pebbles, eating dinner, or preparing for a date, our materials were always in the back of his mind. This level of personal attachment to the work was the determinant in our choosing his services to begin with.
- The drafts, dear god the drafts. My s/o is a much better writer than me, no doubt. Between a general personal statement, specialized personal statements for schools without optional essays, diversity statements, why Xs for each of 7 schools, other optional essays, addenda, and resumes, she had a total of 156 drafts (29 general personal statements, 29 diversity statements, 76 Why X’s, 19 resumes, 3 addenda). I, on the other hand, had just a tiny bit more at 255 (59 general personal statements, 23 school specific personal statements, 18 diversity statements, 102 Why X’s, 26 resumes, 27 addenda). That’s not a typo. It was grueling. With how much active work Moshe put into the drafts, it must’ve been nearly as bad for him. He would make tons of written/spoken notes about ideas that could be better fleshed out, where to take an idea, what kind of research to do online to better inform the direction we were heading in, but he would never give us the exact sentences he wanted to see. TBH I hated it as I did it. But now on the other end, I believe that I gained so much in that process. I learned how to properly research the law and precedents relevant to my points. I learned how to create a cohesive story across multiple essays. I developed a lot in regards to writing a more conversational essay, as college writing did not emphasize the skill. And I learned to show rather than tell. While it was arduous, I figure that reading and writing for 10-15 hrs a week for ~4 months is probably good practice for law school.
At the end of the day, both of us are very thankful for the position we find ourselves in. It took a lot of hard work and Moshe’s direction was invaluable as it made us both consider things we never would have without him. Very skeptical that we could have achieved such heights alone.
9/10 would recommend
