James Boo, MBA Admissions Consultant

Since 2018, James Boo has served as GMAT Ninja’s master storyteller, helping MBA applicants’ personal stories leap off the page in compelling and creative ways. 

Over the past twenty years, James has cultivated a unique mix of coaching, communication, and strategy skills that help clients unlock the best versions of themselves for their MBA applications. He embraces every consultation as a chance to uncover hidden potential and help applicants find their best personal story; he’s also tremendous at helping with the grind of turning that story into a delightful, original piece of writing. 

James will be the first to tell you that he does not have an MBA or secret knowledge about the MBA world, but he did score a 770 on the GMAT, taught GMAT prep in the past, and rose to the level of a Global Director position at an AI startup. His storytelling prowess runs deep: he has worked as a professional food writer, a documentary filmmaker, an audio editor and showrunner for multiple podcasts, and the founder of a media studio focused on Asian American storytelling.

James’s approach to admissions consulting is holistic and personalized, but it’s also absolutely nonsense-free. James delivers incredibly honest and direct feedback at every turn, with the goal of making it easy for admissions committees to see why their campus needs to be the next step in your career journey. James has served as an MBA admissions consultant at GMAT Ninja since 2018, and his students have gained admission to Columbia, UC Berkeley, MIT, Georgetown, Oxford, London Business School, and INSEAD, among many other schools.

James is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, where he was managing editor of a multilingual literary journal and wrote a weekly humor column in The Daily Cal called “Nerd on Wednesdays”. James doesn’t have much spare time these days, but when he does, he enjoys Chicago dogs, dogs in Chicago, tabletop games, and bike rides on the lakeshore trail.