I worked with Amerasia for Booth and Kellogg this year and I honestly feel I would've been lost without using some kind of consultant (I also used Precision Essay for Duke in R1). It's not that I couldn't have done it on my own, it's that I'm a natural worrier and perfectionist, and without someone there to give me structure and monitor my progress, I was spinning my wheels for weeks without getting anywhere. I was so hung up about my GMAT not being good enough (58% in Quant!) that I felt helpless when it came to promoting my strengths. I spent weeks working on first drafts of essays and would scrap everything and still had nothing decent to show for it. I was running out of time and needed a kick in the butt to stop analyzing and start putting things together.
I was so impressed from the initial 1 hour call and felt he had enough school-specific knowledge to know what they were looking for. He addressed my concern over the GMAT score, and told me the only school on my list that was really strict about the quant percent being above 80 was Haas (only official ding so far, so looks like he was right) and eased my worries by saying the breakdown really doesn't matter all that much. Regarding GMAT, all they care about is whether you can handle the academics (and your high GPA proves this) and that your total score doesn't bring down their averages too much (and your GMAT is lower than their avg, but your GPA is higher so you're pretty much a wash). This made so much sense and made me feel confident about applying, it really made the difference for me.
Duke w/precsion essay was a mad dash, my fault for not leaving enough time. I had plenty of time for R2 and chose to go with Amerasia for Booth. He spent about a week reviewing my profile, resume, notes from our call etc and put together a document outlying my strengths and weaknesses in each area as it relates to Booth's core values. He read my essay drafts in detail and pointed out things that left a bit of confusion about my story and gave suggestions on what I could say to really make it powerful. With the powerpoint essay, he reviewed a few different intial ideas and gave his opinion on which was the best. Knowing he works with lots of clients and hearing him say something like "that's a really unique approach, I've never seen anyone do that before" gave me confidence to run with it, because I knew it would not be like so many others (like my second idea was)
I chose to go with a smaller essay only package with Amerasia for Kellogg as well after I was impressed by their work on Booth. I did feel this one was a bit more rushed, but I didn't make the decision to add this one until the very end. Overall very impressed and glad I went with them, I got into Booth with scholarship (something I thought impossible with a 58% Q from a quant heavy school) and used some of the same ideas in other school essays (got into Ross with the same concepts)