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

Has anyone sent a thank you note to the interviewer in addition to the Post Interview Reflection?

I acknowledged my interviewer in the reflection but did not write a separate thank-you note. I'm not sure if you interviewed on campus, but my interviewer gave me a piece of paper about posting the Post Interview Reflection that said thank-you notes were not necessary. My friend who is a first year student confirmed this.

Anyone knows where I can watch an HBS lecture (case method) recording?

https://www.hbs.edu/videos/inside-the-case-method.html

I had my interview on campus this week! It was a good conversation lasting exactly 30 minutes. The first 15-20 minutes was spent about my current role, my employer and my industry. Later it moved to my post MBA goal (I want to start my company) and details about my business model, challenges, plans etc. We also spoke about my leadership style (what will be team mates say is my biggest leadership trait?). Overall it was a fun 30 minutes and passed by very quickly. I had prepared a lot and though it came handy, wasn't all that necessary.

I am glad I did the interview on campus as I was able to participate in the full day of activities (campus tour, chat with faculty, chat with current students, "What's next" with Dee, etc.) and also sat in a class the next day. This has completely changed my impression of HBS and the value it provides. I had a great time!

Fingers crossed and anxiously waiting for the 25th.

Sounds like it went really well! Mine was COMPLETELY different. My interviewer asked a lot of hypothetical questions - ex. Who would you want to shadow? What language would you want to speak? He had me evaluate my own managers across a list of criteria and explain what steps I would take to mitigate weaknesses. I found it very challenging... there wasn't a single question about my past experiences or my future goals, the bulk of the interview focused on my own introspection and assessment of leadership qualities. I'm pretty worried about how it went, but on the other hand, I can't think of any way I could have prepared for that particular line of questioning.

That does sound very challenging....and one of the best advice I got before the interview was "You might have done a lot better than you think!". And as they specifically said to me, there is no correct answer and they only looking for a certain set of qualities using this conversation.

Best of luck!

It sounds like we had very similar experiences! I also got questions about who I'd like to shadow, the language I'd want to speak magically and evaluation of management using criteria that I previously came up with. Additionally, other unusual questions were criticisms that I did NOT agree with and 3 things I wish I knew going into my job. Did you also have a longer interview?

I actually enjoyed the unexpected interview questions. They pushed me outside of my comfort zone and made the interview more interesting. It certainly forced me to act like myself since I couldn't have prepared for these questions in advance. As for whether the answers were good, that's another story .

This interview is the latest in an Accepted.com blog series featuring interviews with current MBA students, offering readers a behind-the-scenes look at top MBA programs. And now for a chat with Prerit Jain, a future MBA student at Harvard Business School.

Accepted: We'd like to get to know you! Where are you from? Where and what did you study as an undergrad? What is your current job?

Prerit: My parents moved to New Delhi when I was less than a year old. This is where I grew up, went to school, college and have worked. In fact, it’s the only city I have ever lived in. (Well, you have to discount living out of a suitcase as a management consultant; more on that later.)

I went to the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi to study mechanical engineering, and did quite well academically, graduating at the top of my class.

Hoping to get diverse experiences, early in my career, I chose to start my career in consulting. Booz & Company had just opened its office in India, and seemed like an exciting opportunity. I worked there for more than three and a half years, before moving to my current role in early-stage venture capital with the First Light Accelerator Fund. I have been in my new role for only about a year now.

Accepted: Can you tell us about your application/reapplication experience? Where did you apply the first time around? What was the outcome? Where did you apply the second time?

Prerit: I submitted my first set of applications in Sept.-Oct. ’13 (R1 for the class matriculating in fall ‘14). I had worked at Booz for about three years, had been promoted twice, had a clear idea about my long-term goals and how an MBA would help. I was sure that I needed the MBA and the time was right. I applied to four schools: HBS, Wharton, Boothand Kellogg. I was interviewed by all four schools and in my view they all went well. I felt confident of getting admitted to more than one school. However, when the decisions came out, HBS put me on a waitlist and the other three said “thanks but no thanks.” I thought the world had come to an end and spent the next 2 weeks sulking!

Thankfully, I came out of that feeling in a couple of weeks, and began looking ahead. I decided to reapply. However, I realized that my learning curve at Booz had plateaued, and I needed to pursue something else. I was lucky to quickly find an exciting new opportunity (in venture capital), and by February, I had kick-started my new role.

Six months later, I reapplied in Sep ‘14 (R1 for the class matriculating in fall ‘15) to three schools: HBS, Booth, and Columbia. I was interviewed at all three schools, and finally received admits from HBS and Booth. I will be heading to Boston in the fall!

Accepted: What do you think went wrong the first time and what did you do when you reapplied to improve your candidacy?

Prerit: We can only speculate here! When I applied for the first time, I had only worked in one over-represented industry – consulting. Moreover, in hindsight, I perhaps did not practice my interviewing as much.

When I reapplied, I had gained some diverse work experience, and had some more interesting stories to tell. Also, I put in hours of practice before the interviews. I got several of my friends to interview me and I video recorded myself to observe softer elements such as body language and posture.

Accepted: Can you share some tips about applying to b-school as an over-represented minority?

Prerit: Being an Indian-male-engineer-consultant, I knew I was indeed in a fiercely competitive pool. I knew I needed to show that I am both competent and interesting. I looked through the different parts of the application – the resume, application, essays etc. – and made choices about how I would use each of them.

Hard facts and stats went into the CV and the application form. The more differentiated and interesting personal qualities and experiences went into the essays.

Accepted: I see you got a 760 on your GMAT – amazing! What are your top 3 GMAT tips?

Prerit:
• A few weeks of dedicated preparation go farther than months of insincere efforts

• Practice those 4-hour full-tests. The GMAT is also a test of stamina.

• Right from day 1 of your preparation, get used to working under time constraint. Never attempt a GMAT question without having a timer in front of you.

For one-on-one guidance on your b-school application, please see our MBA Application Packages. For specific advice on how to create the best application for Harvard see:

You can read more about Prerit’s journey by following him on Twitter at @preritjain1988. Thank you Prerit for sharing your story with us – we wish you loads of luck!





Related Resources:
• Best MBA Programs: A Guide to Selecting the Right One
• Get Accepted to Harvard Business School, a free webinar
• Harvard Business School 2015 MBA Questions, Deadlines, Tips

Accepted.com's experienced admissions consultants can help you create the most impressive application possible with comprehensive packages, or provide targeted assistance from picking perfect programs to designing a dazzling resume, constructing engaging essays, or preparing for intense interviews…and more! Accepted.com has guided thousands of applicants to acceptances at top MBA programs since 1994 – we know what works and what doesn't, so contact us to get started now!

This article originally appeared on the Accepted Admissions Consulting Blog, the official blog of Accepted.com.

People looking for traditional 9 to 5 desk jobs almost seem to be the exception in 2015. HBS grad and entrepreneur Allison O’Kelly is all for the change.

Want to know more? Listen to the full recording of our talk with Allison, Founder/CEO of Mom Corps and champion of the Flexibility Movement.
00:01:31 – Introducing Allison O’Kelly and Mom Corps.

00:04:13 – The value of the “traditional route” of spending a few years in the workforce before launching a startup.

00:05:41 – How an I-don’t-know-what-I-want-to-do-with-my-life moment shaped Allison’s future.

00:07:27 – Pros and cons of “staffing up” your small business.

00:10:37 – How helpful is b-school for an entrepreneur?

00:16:10 – What people simply get wrong about Harvard Business School.

00:17:46 –The “flexibility movement” – beneficial for employers and employees.

00:20:52 – Want to join the flex movement? Here’s what you need to do.

00:24:23 – Thoughts on enhancing your profile for HBS admissions.

00:26:56 – Advice for future entrepreneurs. (And a word to those who “don’t have it in their blood.”)

00:29:14 – What the future holds for Mom Corps.


*Theme music is courtesy of podcastthemes.com.

Related Links:
• Mom Corps

Relevant Shows:
• Entrepreneurship at Stanford GSB: Carlypso Drives Down the Startup Street
• Making International Student Loans a Prime Investment
• Entrepreneurship at UCLA Anderson
• Valentine's Day, Economics, and Stanford GSB
• MBAs Across America: Entrepreneurs with a Heart
• Life as an HBS MBA Student• MBA Search: Matchmaking for MBAs and Businesses

Leave a Review for Admissions Straight Talk:[/b]








Accepted.com's experienced admissions consultants can help you create the most impressive application possible with comprehensive packages, or provide targeted assistance from picking perfect programs to designing a dazzling resume, constructing engaging essays, or preparing for intense interviews…and more! Accepted.com has guided thousands of applicants to acceptances at top MBA programs since 1994 – we know what works and what doesn't, so contact us to get started now!

This article originally appeared on the Accepted Admissions Consulting Blog, the official blog of Accepted.com.

Harvard Business School took home a whopping six awards and experienced its best showing ever at the 2015 annual Case Centre Awards, a celebration of excellence in case writing and teaching from across the globe that are now considered the case method community’s annual ‘Oscars.’

Awards for cases are presented for nine management categories plus an Overall Winner Award. Each year, an award is made to recognize an individual who has made an Outstanding Contribution to the Case Method.

David B. Yoffie and Renee Kim of Harvard Business School authored the Overall winning case, Cola Wars Continue: Coke and Pepsi in 2010. “The ‘Cola Wars’ have been a classic competitive dynamic and industry analysis case for three decades,” says Yoffie, who is the Max and Doris Starr Professor of International Business Administration at HBS.

“It is an industry that is easy to understand, but complicated to analyse, which always works well in the classroom. Understanding why this industry has been so profitable for so long makes it stand out,” Yoffie explains.

Debapratim Purkayastha, associate dean at ICFAI Business School in Hyderabad, India, won the Outstanding Contribution to the Case Method award for his innovative and forward-looking commitment to transform case teaching and writing.

“To students, I would like to say that the process of case learning is more important than the results. It’s not just about getting a good grade; it’s about developing the skills you will need in your future career,” says Debapratim.
Case-based sessions are great fun when you are well prepared; and a big drag when you are not. Prepare the cases, participate wholeheartedly in the classroom keeping an open mind, and then spend some time for introspection after the class; you will be surprised by the results, Debapratim advises.
A new award debuted in 2015 for Outstanding Case Teacher, which recognizes an excellent practitioner in the case classroom. This award went to Casey Lichtendahl, associate professor at University of Virginia Darden School of Business. He teaches students how to apply advanced statistical and machine learning techniques to key business problems while immersing them in the world of practical data science.

Two case writing competitions are held each year to find an outstanding first-time case writer, and to identify the best new case written on a ‘hot topic.’ Laurel C. Austin, associate professor at Copenhagen Business School, won the Outstanding New Case Writer competition with the case, UCSD: A Cancer Cluster in the Literature Building? Vlerick Business School professors Steve Muylle and Stijn Viaene won the best ‘hot topic’ case with Hello bank! The Birth of a Mobile Bank.

The Case Centre is a non-profit organization that advances the case method worldwide, sharing knowledge, wisdom and experience to inspire and transform business education across the globe. The Case Centre Awards are in their 25th year and have been awarded on a global basis since 2011.
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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.

Harvard Business School announced this week it will open its online learning platform HBX to students worldwide after two successful trial runs over the past year. Business school website Poets & Quants notes that the program will also be available to students admitted to the full-time MBA program in fall 2015.

The HBX CORe program is an online learning initiative that provides a primer on the fundamentals of business with a suite of three integrated courses: Business Analytics, Economics for Managers, and Financial Accounting.

Bharat N. Anand, Henry R. Byers Professor of Business Administration

Taught by a team of HBS faculty members, the program is designed specifically for rising college sophomores, juniors, and seniors; current and prospective graduates; and those in the first ten years of their careers. Bharat N. Anand, faculty chair of HBX, tells P&Q he expects about 20% of the next incoming class at HBS to take CORe this year to get up to speed on accounting and data and become ready to take advantage of the full campus experience.

“The bulk of the learning experience will now happen through CORe which was designed with these students in mind,” Anand adds. “The genesis of CORe was asking how can we create a wow experience online so they can get up to speed with the basics of data, accounting and economics before they come on campus. we are now closing the loop and giving admitted students the option of taking it in February, April or June.”

Applications are now being accepted for cohorts beginning on April 15 and June 3. The CORe online application process takes less than 30 minutes, and admission is based on individual applications that highlight aptitude and motivation.

The fee for the April cohort is $1,500, while the cost of the June and subsequent cohorts will be $1,800. Need-based financial aid may be available to U.S. citizens currently enrolled in an undergraduate degree program.

Applicants should provide insight as to why they want to participate in the program and what they plan to contribute to the rigorous learning community of which they will be a part. There are no geographic restrictions in the selection process; applicants from around the world are invited to apply, and there are no residency requirements for the entirely online program.

Since applications will be reviewed in the order in which they are received, applying early may improve the likelihood of being admitted.
You may also be interested in:
MOOCs and the Future of Management Education
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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.

Harvard Business School has rightfully earned its position at the top of many respected MBA rankings, but even Dean Nitin Nohria acknowledges that the school lags behind MIT and Stanford Graduate School of Business where tech is concerned, a recent Wall Street Journal article reveals.

The case method of instruction relies on tried-and-true business scenarios, which means students almost always grapple with management conundrums that are at least a few years, if not decades, old.  Even though faculty are at work drafting cases on current digital issues, some students gripe that the cases are practically obsolete by the time they make it into the syllabus, the WSJ found.

Whereas HBS once dominated in preparing students for today’s technology, and in fact was the first business school in the country to require every student to own a personal computer, the school now offers courses in this area only as electives in each individual HBS department.

To help bridge this gap, students and recent graduates think HBS should do more to infuse the core curriculum with greater technological awareness, covering topics such as data analytics in marketing, crowdsourcing, information technology and other digital issues.

Demand for electives in technology management is at an all-time high, with courses completely filled and waitlists long enough to fill additional classes to capacity. Professor Marco Iansiti, who heads the school’s Technology and Operations Management unit, tells the WSJ he’s interested in adding more technology-management content and “winding down a bit on traditional operations management.”

Nick Taranto, a 2010 MBA and co-founder/c0-CEO of an online food delivery startup, tells the WSJ that Harvard Business School did prepare him to run his 300-employee organization.

“But preparing for early-stage product management, customer discovery, user experience, Web design—what’s the difference between HTML, CSS, Java Script—I had no idea,” he says. “I had to learn all of that on my own.”

Visit the Wall Street Journal to learn more about the state of tech at HBS, and how things may change following a planned relocation of the engineering school that will put it right across the street from the business school.
You may also be interested in:
IT Skills Sorely Lacking in Harvard MBAs
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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 anticipation for results on March 25th is worse than the anticipation for an interview.

:/

FROM HBS Admissions Blog: SNOW!!

Greetings from Boston. Definitely the topic of the day is SNOW and everyone here is busy making Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, etc. depending on the strength and length of the storm. Yes, we know that we are scheduled to send out Round 2 interview invitations on Wednesday. We have every reason to believe that will happen on schedule. If we need to delay, we will let you know via this blog, a general announcement on the admissions website, and also with a voicemail recording on our general phone line. Here is some GENERAL (non-storm related) information about Round 2 interview invitations: Our planned timing is noon, Boston time on Wednesday. Lots of detail in the invitation about scheduling, dates, etc. The online interview scheduler goes live the day AFTER interview invitations go out (that gives you time to think about dates/times/locations). Two waves of invitations: The first one is Wednesday, January 28; the other is Wednesday, February 4. On February 4, we will also send release notifications to all Round 2 candidates not being invited to interview. How many in each wave? We really don't know yet and that's because we're not actually finished with reading the written applications. So best guess might be 600 in the first wave and 200 in the second. I've said this before, but please don't speculate or develop theories or algorithms about first vs. second. It doesn't work that way. And it has nothing to do with when you submitted, where you live, or the first letter of your last name. ALL 2+2 INVITATIONS WILL BE SENT ON FEBRUARY 4!!! That means none on January 28. Back to the snow. Still too early to tell, but the Admissions Office may need to be closed tomorrow, January 27 if the snow is severe and travel to and from work is prohibitive. We plan to manage the general email box - admissions@hbs.edu - remotely. And watch the admissions website and this page for updates. Most important...if you're in the reach of this snowstorm, stay safe and warm and take care of those around you. And say thanks to all the workers out there who will be doing so much.

FROM HBS Admissions Blog: Round 3 - Should You or Shouldn't You?

I've been staring at this for days. Nagged by my team: Can you please get something up on the blog about Round 3?!!!. Not trying to be lazy, but I can't improve upon this. It's a classic. I hope that the message is clear. --------------------- You want to go to business school. You really do. But the fall season kind of got away from you. You were busy. Work was demanding. You simply didn't have time to hunker down and focus on b-school applications. Now you've got it together. Ready. But there's all this noise about Round 3. Discouraging and worrisome noise. Let's try to address some of the myths. Myth #1: There are no spots available. Not true. We manage the selection process to ensure that there are always spots open for the candidates we want. Are there as many spots open as in Rounds 1 and 2? No. Are there as many applicants? No. Do I think a strong candidate has a fair shot? Yes. Myth #2: We've run out of financial aid. Not true. The very last person admitted to the class has access to the same need-based financial aid that the very first person received. Myth #3: If I get dinged in Round 3, I can't/shouldn't apply the next season in Round 1. Not true. There's absolutely no stigma in re-applying 5 months later. Happens a lot. Many people in our classroom today were successful re-applicants. Myth #4: It's too late for 2+2 applicants. Not true. Not even close to true. Round 3 is a great choice for 2+2 applicants. Why? We can be more flexible about the number of 2+2 admits given that we are not worried about a seat being occupied for this September. College seniors have another semester of grades to show us. And another semester of activities. I also see a 2+2 application as a good dress rehearsal for future applications - and possibly interviews - to lots of other selective scenarios. If you aren't admitted to 2+2, we like to say (over and over): It doesn't mean not ever, it means not now. Besides, it's a great deal. $100 application fee. A chance to get the standardized tests over with when you're in test-taking mode. And, best of all, two or three years to explore and then come to HBS. Myth #5: There's no Welcome Weekend for Round 3 admits. True. But all the interviews will be held on campus so you'll get to see us in real time. And here's some advice about visiting classes and the campus: If you want to see the case method in action, there are many spots available to visit a HBS class this spring. Also, there will be limited availability for visiting a class before the Round 1 application deadline next fall, so this is a great time to visit. Register for a class visit through our online scheduling system. We will also be hosting several other events on campus in the next few months. You can always meet us online, too. We will be hosting Admissions QA webinars to answer your questions before the Round 3 deadline. To learn more, please see the Admissions Events page of our website. Here's a reminder: The Round 3 deadline is April 6. We'll do our usual posts right after the deadline about timing of interview invitations. As always, hope this helps.

I wish I had a time machine. Can't wait for 3/25/2015 12 pm Boston time

For me it's somewhat of a combination between being eager to get the answer and being terrified of it... :-/