Calling all HBS Applicants - (2015 Intake) Class of 2017

See my post a page or two back--unless you've got 15-20 years of work experience, there's no reason you can't distill your important accomplishments down to a one-page resume.

FROM HBS Admissions Blog: Financial Aid: How We Do It At HBS

You don’t need me to tell you that business school is an expensive undertaking. Beyond the actual tuition and living expenses, there are the difficult-to-truly-calculate opportunity costs. Everyone whom we admit is undoubtedly doing VERY well out there in the Real World. Embarking on a two year business school adventure is a big decision. We want to make it affordable. Last year we awarded about $26 million in need-based financial aid. We plan to increase the amount for the Class of 2017. Where does this money come from? Our alumni. They look back on the HBS experience as having been transformational in both professional and personal ways and they are eager to give back. Their favorite way to do this is through financial aid. You’ve heard this before but I want to repeat it: our admissions process is need-blind. Although we ask for your income, this is more for us to understand different industries/paths vs. anything to do with evaluation. Our financial aid is need-based. Here are 3 bullet points which may be helpful: • We do not award full fellowships. This means that no student will be fully funded by HBS. • You do not apply for financial aid until AFTER you receive an offer of admission. • We have a loan program for international students which does not require a U.S. co-signer. After you have completed a financial aid application, you will receive an award package from HBS. In making our awards, we rely on a formula which takes into account whether you are single or married and can be adjusted for documented exceptional circumstances. Parental income and assets are not considered in the calculation. Let me repeat what I said earlier: we want to make HBS affordable. We want you to make post-MBA career decisions based on your dreams and aspirations, not a burdensome debt repayment obligation. We believe in the value proposition of our MBA - a place where leadership talent becomes a force to make a positive difference in the world. And we are confident that our students will become the alumni who are enthusiastic about enabling the next generation of HBS-aspirants to do the same.

Really excited to go through this process. Almost done with my application and essay. Looks like I can submit by Labor Day. Good luck everyone!

I just wanted to add my 0.02 on resumes:

Do not overlook this piece of your application; in fact, I actually think it may be more important than most people give credit for (and the essay less so). More than half of my HBS interview was spent on two hobbies listed on the very bottom line of my resume. It blew me away how detail-oriented the admissions team was (and I wrote about that in my 24 hour follow-up). Every single line on your resume should be 100% solid; do NOT embellish and do NOT flippantly put things on there. HBS will read it and hold you to it. Know it inside and out like a job interview. And put serious pursuits on there (even hobbies) and be prepared to talk about them with real passion.

If your resume is longer than a page, I would assume you just reduced your chances. HBS applications are about the art of brevity. 1 page max, and don't cheat with itty-bitty margins. Just cut out the air!

Also, while I applied in Fall 2012 (am currently HBS Class of 2015), there were 2 required essay prompts - describe something you did well, and something you didn't do so well at. I think I wrote a much more introspective and better essay for the latter. I'd encourage anyone trying to think of what to write to honestly own up to a failure or weakness in the workplace (or in another context), and how you turned it around.

DO NOT OVERWRITE! Every prior essay was 400 words each. I would shoot for your personal essay to be this length or shorter.

FROM HBS Admissions Blog: GMAT/GRE: How we think about your score

We promised that we’d be a bit more transparent about the GMAT/GRE issue. We’ve said for a while now that not only do we accept both tests, but we are agnostic about our preference. So here are some numbers. Please don’t over-crunch. It’s important to note that candidates this year will NOT have an option to submit both tests. We need to officially verify scores and prefer to do it for only one test per candidate. Total Matriculating Admits Total Applicants during 2013-2014 GMAT 844 8288 GRE 81 1115 Both 10 140 Total 935 9543   Those are the numbers, but the reasoning behind how we look at the scores is probably important for you to understand. We care less about the overall score than we do about the components. And we look at the subscores in the context of the candidate’s profile. For example, an engineer with top grades who’s been doing highly quantitative work doesn’t need a high GMAT/GRE-Q to convince us he/she is capable of doing the quantitative work at HBS. But an English major whose transcript shows no quantitative coursework and has not done anything quantitative professionally or in post-college academics would be helped by a strong GMAT/GRE quant score. The corollary is true too: candidates who don’t have a background that demonstrates extensive practice in reading and writing may be helped by strong verbal subscores. Another important reminder: every candidate needs to submit EITHER the GMAT or GRE at the time of application. We don’t accept LSATs, MCATs, SATs or the fact that you had exceptional undergraduate grades. On our application, you input the unofficial score - the official score report can reach us after the deadline. Hope this is helpful . . . .

Harvard Business School has announced that registration for class visits is now open. In her latest blog post, Director of Admissions and Financial Aid Dee Leopold notes that the first day to visit a class is September 10th, which is after the Round 1 deadline.

Applicants shouldn’t be worried though, as a campus visit bears no influence on the HBS evaluation process. Besides, Leopold points out, if you’re invited to interview and come to campus to do so, you’ll be able to sit in on a class at that time.

Also, the initial visits in September are for second-year classes only, in order to give new students a chance to get comfortable with the case method and their section mates. Visitors scheduled in early October will be able to observe a first-year class in action, and registration for these visits will begin in early September.

Leopold writes that second-year students begin leading HBS tours and information sessions in September, so visitors at that time can and should take advantage of hearing from current students about the MBA program, in addition to admissions staff members. You can check the events section of the Harvard Business School website for the schedule of tours and info sessions.
You may also be interested in:
Harvard Business School 2014 MBA Application Tips

MBA Trends at Harvard Business School and Beyond

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If you are looking for guidance on your MBA application, Stacy Blackman Consulting can help with hourly and comprehensive consulting services. Contact us to learn more. Visit the website for Stacy Blackman Reviews, and check out the company’s e-publications for more in depth school-by-school guidance.

The growing number of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offered at the top business schools is something of a hot button topic these days. Harvard Business School joined the fray this past spring, but rather than using an existing platform such as Coursera to launch its courses, HBS elected instead to create its own proprietary digital platform, HBX.

In a new Harvard Business Review blog post, HBS graduate and former faculty member Pankaj Ghemawat takes a look at what business schools don’t get about MOOCs, which, he argues, is basically that the future of management education will be a combination of these new and traditional teaching methods, not a battle for superiority between them.

As an example, Ghemawat points out the difference in approach between HBS and the Wharton School, which last year announced it would offer a Wharton MBA Foundation Series that would allow students all over the world to learn the same material a first-year Wharton MBA student would. Harvard Business School, meanwhile, is using its MOOCs to target pre-MBAs.

Professor Ghemawat, who has also taught a MOOC for IESE Business School on the Coursera platform, sees the strengths of each of these approaches but calls them seriously incomplete.

“Both schools treat MOOCs as complements to their existing offerings, rather than as substitutes—complements that are disconnected from what goes on in their traditional classrooms,” says Ghemawat, who suggests a recombining of efforts would be more beneficial.

His post covers arguments from the traditional-minded elite business schools’ position, and offers thought-provoking counterpoints to each assertion. As we move further into the digital age of management education, a deeper understanding of the power and possibilities that MOOCs can provide is in order. I invite you to follow the link above to learn more of Ghemawat’s thoughts on the issue.
You may also be interested in:
Harvard Business School Offers its First MOOC

Harvard Business School Enters Online Learning

Weigh Trying a MOOC Before Your MBA

***
If you are looking for guidance on your MBA application, Stacy Blackman Consulting can help with hourly and comprehensive consulting services. Contact us to learn more. Visit the website for Stacy Blackman Reviews, and check out the company’s e-publications for more in depth school-by-school guidance.

Hmmm I appreciate your thoughts. I have heard some people recommend keeping the essay to 800 words, but not 400. Mine is currently 867 words and I am basically ready to hit submit. You've made me question it!

Don't over-think; just answer the question and move on. For some people, this will be well in excess of 800 words, but for many it will not. I think what snowedinboston /others point out is that most people add fluff when they write, and your content will be stronger without said fluff. (This is the same thing every English teacher has pointed out.)

Most of the essays in the Harbus Essay Book are about 800 words each, so I wouldn't worry about your essay length. What matters the most is the content, as TheNightmanCometh pointed out

Keen to get some thoughts on this..would the below count as an extracurricular activity:

I was on the Graduate Committee at my workplace for about 18 months. The role was voluntary and had no bearing on my performance reviews -infact my manager didn't even know something like this existed within the company!

I believe Harvard is mostly looking for community involvement or extra-curriculars during school. I would say yours is not technically either. You are limited to 3 activities, if you have 3 decent activities that don't include the Graduate Committee I would suggest that you do not include it. That said, if your choice is only including 2 activities, or adding the Committee, then by all means add it. It won't hurt.

I don't think that that is the case. I would even say that more recent extracurriculars are more desirable.

As a former Harvard interviewer and a Harvard graduate, I just wanted to state for the forum that one of the most important things that will get you noticed at Harvard and the top schools, is building a powerful bridge between your past professional experience and your future goals.

Admissions committees want to see that you have a careful and logically thought out plan where, even if you want to use the MBA to change careers and enter a different industry or niche, your overall experience and plan makes rational sense.

In other words, “no experience left behind.” Show the ad com that each step in your journey makes sense in terms of your long-term goals. Build that bridge for the ad com between your past and your future by demonstrating how every position you’ve held along the way has helped develop and lead you to your current professional interests and goals.

By paving a very logical and solid road that shows that you value all of your professional experiences and allow nothing to go to waste, you will be demonstrating a type of leadership in your own life that the ad com only responds to favorably.

Jillian
MBA Ivy League
www.MBAIvyLeague.com

There's a ton of things in life - and business school - that are voluntary and have no bearing on your evaluation but that make life a better place for you/your family/your company/your school/your community. So HBS will likely well of it! If anything, the fact that you did it entirely to help out and because you thought it's fun counts for more and is more representative of you than most ECs you could put.

FROM HBS Admissions Blog: The Online Application: Details?

I'm writing this post because I am the person here in Dillon who triages the general admissions mailbox. I don't claim to answer all the questions - and I don't manage the phones because I'm not as nice (or knowledgeable) as the people who do - but, as we approach the September 9 Round 1 deadline, we are fielding a lot of questions that indicate a level of anxiety about details. First, we're happy you're applying. Second, we know you want to get it right. But I hope this post can put some of this into perspective. We're getting a lot of questions about exactly what to put on each line of the online application. Especially in the employment and education sections. Here's how we think about it: We need the online application so we can capture a variety of fields to run some reports, look easily across the applicant pool, etc. The reality is that we are reading your resume and transcripts carefully to understand what you've been doing. Another reality is that everyone reading applications has done this for a long (long) time and gets it. So, as long as what you enter on the online application captures the general facts correctly - the firm where you work, the dates, the website, the school that granted your degrees, the extracurricular activities you want us to know about, test scores and dates - all should be fine. This is NOT meant to shift anxiety from one place to another. We are not hoping to have multi-page resumes with tons of detail. Just want you to know that if you don't know where to put something or how to communicate role changes within firms, the resume is the best place. Maybe this is a way to summarize: Although this is probably YOUR first experience with an HBS online application, it's not ours! We know how to figure things out. We will. If we can't, we'll let you know. Again, hoping this is helpful.

Thanks @gotti, @omegakappa, and @TheNightmanCometh for the advice. Much appreciated .