Harvard 2013 (HBS) - Calling All Applicants

Congrats to everyone who got an invite today!! Please don't forget to update your profile, so it shows on the front page.

Congrats Big Red! HBS here you come.

According to the HBS Applicant Summary on the first page only 6% of the R2 applicants pool have been invited to interview. This number should be around 20% if our sample is representative (I believe not only its representative, but biased towards stronger profiles). Thus, a lot of invitations is yet to come on Feb 6 (or many forum members haven't yet changed their status to "invited").

That is exactly what happened to me yesterday

Did sign in sheet give the names of interviewers, in the recent past Charles Allison did the interviews in Mumbai and Dubai (HBS usually sends one person to cover both ) and Eileen Chang does Shanghai. Past performance is no guarantee, etc. Sarah Lucas has also done Shanghai, and they used to have some freelancer who is now not with HBS do Shanghai but lately it has been Chang.
There is a HUGE diff between Allison and Chang--Chang is no day at the beach but she asks typical HBS questions, Allision is a lively guy with a set of questions unique to him, and they can throw you, esp. if you are unprepared. E.g. what would your best from from High School say your 3 strengths and weaknesses were? Your best friend form College.? No offense, but that is a moronic question, and even worse, it is not a normal question and it can cause you a good deal of trouble as a lead off versus,"Hi there, tell me what you are doing now at work?" which gets you started on the right foot most of the time, and is a Q you can prepare for.
Anyway, the only thing that matters in choosing between Shanghai and Mumbai/Dubai is who is doing the interviews.


My best friend from High School would say my 3 weaknesses are:
1. always blows smoke rings inside other smoke rings, and is very proud of this, and it becomes annoying at Poker games.
2. Roots for LA DODGERS even tho they suck, because he once lived in Brooklyn
3. Is very quick to criticize others for stinky farts but seems unaware of his own habits.

comments like these from people interviewed/admitted to HBS make me wonder what kind of "leaders" HBS interviews/admits ... i was under the impression that leaders were people who trust themselves enough to start guerilla warfare, new markets and **** (gandhi, che, branson, mandela, bill gates, castro) ... not people who can't even decide ... on their own ... if they should e-mail some admission officer sitting in Cambridge ...

Perhaps you hold HBS in too high regard.

The admissions process does brutal things to people. GC is a forum for everyone to ask questions about the process, however inconsequential in hindsight those might be. Relax, wait for your results, and see what happens.

everything

I see the same. Let's just rip this bandaid off and get it over with already.

Dinged, as expected.

Oh well. I just had to try.

Got an invite. Nice to get after the long wait list - wait.

Ding... But I'll live..we all will...

Reapplicants do get in on occasion. However small your odds of admission are, I can guarantee you that they're higher than your odds of getting in without applying.

Hey, so I was one of the lucky/blessed ones that got an interview. My friend (who's currently going to Harvard) recommended using HBS guru, does anyone have any experience with them?

See my post a few pages back. The median age at HBS is pretty low because the median age of applicants is pretty low, not because they discriminate against older students. There's just not that many applicants to full-time MBA programs who are past the age of 30, because at your Goldman/McKinsey/Google-type companies the top performers are heading to business school 2-4 years after finishing undergrad. But I'm 31 and off the top of my head I can think of at least 15-20 classmates who are older than me, from both traditional and non-traditional backgrounds. There's even one guy in my class who's in his late 50s or early 60s.

Hello woofbearus

I had my interview on campus last Friday, and everybody I have spoken to so far have said that the interview was casual and personalized and went well overall. I don't know how 50% of the interviewees will be rejected. Fingers crossed!

query007,

That's fair enough. I think perhaps the takeaway is that HBS will always do a good job getting to know you in the interview (thus the casual interview that "goes well"), and will decide based on how much they like your story versus how well you were able to convey it? I guess that makes sense?

It could also be that people who didn't have their HBS interviews go well aren't as likely to share this information? So we are seeing some selection bias. In any case, the finger crossing seems useful!