And not just on the content, but on the delivery. Initially, I’d ramble with my answers. But Sandy doesn’t mess around. “Skip anything extraneous to the answer. Just answer the fucking question,” he told me bluntly. Each interview question with Sandy is followed up with how he might answer the question in my shoes. Of course, he helped me with the wording of my responses, but more importantly, helped generate realistic answers using my background and my application. This was invaluable, as he often came up with more impressive ways to say essentially the same stuff. When it came time for the HBS interview, I had practiced what Sandy had taught me, and the answers flowed out smoothly. It worked — I’m off to HBS.