By Kerry Miller

Business School admissions officers and for-hire B-school admissions consultants have always been uneasy bedfellows. Although no school explicitly bans the use of consultants, in recent years officers at top schools like Stanford, Harvard, and Wharton have spoken out against them, as well as added specific language to their applications to clarify how much help they consider to be too much.

And while there remains little consensus among admissions officers and consultants about much of anything beyond "selling essays is wrong," the consultants have made one thing clear: They're not going away. On June 16, at the annual Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) conference, about 100 admissions officers and other B-school administrators had a rare face-to-face meeting with the other side, at a panel titled "Admissions Consultants: Love 'em, Hate 'em, Use 'em," presented by four consultants and moderated by Beth Flye, Director of Admissions at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

The forum may have opened the door for more open discussion between admissions officers and consultants. "In the past, it was more: You stay away from us, we'll stay away from you," says Rose Martinelli, associate dean of student recruitment and admissions at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business. Yet neither group says it wants an antagonistic relationship.

GUILT BY ASSOCIATION. "I'd call it a love-hate relationship," says Everett Fortner, interim director of admissions at University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business. "Many of them are our friends and former colleagues, who we have a lot of respect for and who we think can add a lot of value to the process. But many of them don't have that same level of integrity."

One problem, say consultants, is that admissions officers don't always know who is who. "They don't know which companies are behaving ethically and which companies are more fly-by-night, selling essays," says consultant Graham Richmond of Clear Admit (see BusinessWeek.com, 8/16/05, "Applications that Get a 'Yes'").

To help solve this problem, the admissions consultants on the GMAC panel announced plans to form an association to promote honesty and integrity within their field by setting a standard of principles and best practices—an idea that went over well with admissions officers. "If you had a code of conduct and a board of accreditation for consultants, then we'd know exactly what type of assistance they're giving, and that would be a wonderful thing," says Linda Meehan, executive director for admissions and financial aid at Columbia Business School . Richmond says it's still in the planning phase.

WISH LISTS. Yet the information asymmetry between admissions officers and consultants can run both ways. Some admissions officers say what concerns them is when consultants don't spend enough time seeking out current information about schools and what they have to offer, instead falling back on old shorthand and stereotypes.

Admissions consultants, in turn, say they wish admissions officers came to them with information more often. "There are hundreds of MBA programs," says Richmond. "We can't possibly be on top of everything that happens on every campus." Yet Martinelli says the onus remains on the consultants. "I'm not the one making $200, $300 an hour," she says.

Admissions officers at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business have taken a different approach from most. Rather than keeping consultants at arm's length, for two years in a row Tuck has invited groups of them to campus to learn about the school and about MBA programs in general.

ETHICAL ISSUES. "People who have worked with consultants know they serve a purpose," says Christie St-John, senior associate director of recruiting and enrollment at Tuck. "A lot of students feel more secure in knowing they've done the best they could possibly do on their applications."

Along with telling the consultants about the application process and what Tuck looks for in its students, St-John says Tuck spoke to ethical issues, informing the consultants that having essays written by anyone other than the student, or recommendations written by anyone other than the recommender, is strictly against Tuck's honor code.

Many schools have specific wording in their applications to that effect. Darden applicants must sign a statement acknowledging the existence of the honor code, and Harvard Business School's admissions policy states, "Your application must be written solely by you without outside assistance."

GETTING SMARTER. Stanford's Web site goes into more detail, telling applicants, "there is a big difference between 'feedback' and 'coaching.' Appropriate feedback occurs when you show someone your completed application, perhaps one or two times, and are apprised of errors or omissions. In contrast, inappropriate coaching occurs when either your essays or your entire self-presentation is colored by someone else."

Derrick Bolton, director of MBA admissions at Stanford, says his office may need to rethink its approach to the consultants. "We've tried to just state our standards and hope consultants and applicants will honor them," says Bolton, "but maybe I've been a little naive."

Bolton said he was unsure whether that approach would mean engaging with consultants more or not, but said, "I think the status quo won't work." Bolton says he'll be speaking soon with Stanford's undergraduate admissions director, who has years of experience dealing with consultants as well (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/19/06, "What Price College Admission?").

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