Calling all HBS 2011 Applicants!! (Including 2+2)

All this anxiety has given me explosive diarrhea.

I don't think I can survive this much longer...I feel like the kid with no date to prom the night before the big dance!

Ding for me too....all the best guys...I am done with my applications...no more page refreshes, no more worries...

This is a painful day for many people... including myself. It's not easy being positive after getting a generic letter in exchange for all the intellect, emotion, creativity and months of preparation that we have put into this application. It hurts. Period.

My plan is to get drunk tonight, sleep in tomorrow, go skiing this weekend and start to take advantage of all the other great opportunities in my life that I have been too distracted to focus on. An application is supposed to reflect your life, not be your life or dominate your life.

I will be back next year.

"ding" sounds so much better than "rejected"

It's a ding here...my friend who was a R1 HBS admit assures me its because they probably think I'm a better fit at Stanford

I think I can get on board with that!

Ding but still believe in myself

To my fellow HBS ding members, don't stop believing! I wish you all the best in your current and/or future applications.

To those going for interview & W/L, all the very best

Ding as well.

In retrospect I am still glad that I applied. The process itself caused me to stretch and dig deep. I learned alot about myself through this application and I know that it only served to strengthen my applications to other schools. I take comfort in knowing that I gave it my best shot. I will not have to wonder "what if I had applied to HBS?" the rest of my life.

Good luck to everyone. Exceptional things await all of us on the horizon!

Just so we can track how we do hereafter, here is the list of everyone who reported R2 interview invites in order of reports on the forum. Some have already mentioned their interview its complete. I am adding this to the spreadsheet as well, so feel free to mention more about your profile there.

smileyface
emont
Cille
downtown
lennman
gobig2011
d3xc
wjjw
matticusfinch
manabs
babyif19
Hessegebbabel
peachapple
LaVerdad07
ATB
consultant462
JLBR
jl12
theacademist
vanidhar
hydropower
kalty
brbBeach
sfmba2011
icemanjs4
zommyboi
mbahopeful5yo
antelB
MBAgirl2010
asca65290
mmbbaaa11
truthin
sl86

I wrote 3a and 3c...I thought they were pretty easy to write based on my experiences.

For 3a I focused on all the outside demands on my time that made the academics much harder than they should have been, as well as how I took lots of courses outside my comfort zone because of my school's largely standardized curriculum. Without directly mentioning my relatively low quant score, I noted all the technical and quant courses I had taken and done well with, saying that my past success gives me confidence that I can handle that type of work in the future.

3c is tailor-made for an "I had this type of problem/frustration in my career, and here's how I dealt with it and overcame it and was productive anyway" kind of approach. Mine dealt with me being disappointed based on unrealistic expectations I had when I started my current job, but how I found ways to improve the situation for me and the organization rather than just being miserable and dragging along.

That was just my approach--obviously any of them can work. If you have a really spectacular career vision that will distinguish you from the masses, go for that. If you have any good stories about being thrown into situations as an outsider yet were still successful forming cohesive bonds with your peers, effective as a leader and a follower, etc. you could write the introduction one pretty easy.

I wrote about the career vision one - about my short term & long term goals. Personally, I think either one will be fine if you have the content to write them well. This is HBS, I don't think the phrase 'too ambitious' has meaning for them :-0. Most of the students (if not all) are very ambitious, so I don't really see that being a problem in essays. Again, it's just in the way you relate the story to them.

The interview is about you not about them. Imho, that'll be a waste of time. You don't know who you'll get as your interviewer until you arrive at your interview location. So researching every possible interviewer is just not a good way to spend your time, instead focus on your story and how you want to come across.

Spinning your answers one way or the other to cater to their background may just end up hurting you especially if they see through it.

No change in HBS interviewing style or questions (for most part) this year, you guys are just mis-modeling this in your head, it is not a job interview where you need chemistry and the ability to beat out four other guys, it is more like a medical exam, where you need to have vision w.in certain range, no super high blood pressure, no cooties, and pass general inspection, think Draft Physical (which I had, and my guess is, not many others on this thread have).
RULE OF THUMB: they inteview 10 peeps, 2 flunk the interivew, see reasons below, 8 are left, 6 out of the 8 are chosen based on whole app (gpa, gmat, pedigree, specialness, diversity, blah, blah).
How do 2 peeps 'flunk' the interview. well, .5 peeps cannot in fact speak English, or have hybrid disabilities, marginal English and recessive personalities adding up to inability to function in case enviro,at least to ear of adcom. Those are easy flunks. The other 1.5 flunks are 1.OK-ish English but English which withered under slight pressure of interview, combined w. bad substantive answers. or more common, totally fine English but 'attitude' problems, think the bottom 20 pct of kids you ever met fr. Bain, turning it ON instead of OFF. Ditto IB types who have not gone to finishing school, and say they enjoy special situations because it is opportunistic and helps create liquidity (vs. correct answer, can help preserve jobs, create jobs and save companies). BUT most common reason for interview failure among competent English speakers is just getting lost, on simple questions, talking too much, winding up w. answer that is 2 standard deviations fr. the question.
E.g. why did you attend School X,
ANSWER: I was interested in medicine growning up, and spent time working in hospital, but while doing that, discovered tht lot of stuff in hospital is doing same thing over and over, and that you dont get to do impactful exciting stuff that often. [Stand Dev 1] I mean dont get me wrong, doctors do great things, and medical research has done great things, so that wasn't it, BUT BLAH, BLAH LET ME EXPLAIN HOW WONDERFUL MEDICINE IS [Stand Dev 2] . . . . . .YOU HAVE NOW FAILED YOUR INTERVIEW.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF ADMITTED HBS KIDS HAVE REPORTS ON THEIR INTERVIEWS LIKE THIS (of course this is master composite list and your experience may vary in some ways, but this is pretty good summary):
1. It was anti-climatic
2. It was corporate friendly, but not really friendly
3. Questions jumped around and were arbitrary. Drilled down on some stuff, and not clear why, not many stress or curveball questions. Lady took lots of notes, but kept occassional and acceptable eye contact.
3. I did not get a chance to to say 1 2 3
4. Not sure how I did, but I dont think I blew it, and gave OK but not home run answers to Q's they did ask.
TRANSLATION: FINE INTERVIEW, YOU PASSED, YOU BECAME ONE OF THE 8 THEY SENT BACK FOR TOTAL CONSIDERATION, AND BASED ON YOUR WHOlE APP, RECS, DEMO, SCORES, and bit of interview mojo, ETC-- YOU GOT IN.

as to how come we are not seeing more 'bad' interview reports on this site, well, could be 1. most bad interviews are folks w. marginal English skills and not typical posters;2. folks who have bad feelings about int. performance are not too interested in posting;3. self-selection of folks on this site, etc. who are prob. better prepped than average peeps. ALL OF ABOVE MASHED UP IN SOME WAYS.

too lazy to remember all the above. just focus on this
[highlight]YOU CANNOT TALK YOUR WAY INTO HBS, BUT YOU CAN TALK YOUR WAY OUT OF HBS[/highlight]

Gimme a break. Consultants are people that make money off of a highly subjective and complex process by charging exorbitant fees for work that a friend who has been through the process can do for you for free. I doubt if people should listen so much to consultants being that most of them never applied to business school. With that being said, if you don't have the network, a consultant can be of help to a candidate.

haha, replaying interview in your head and imaging better answers is also TYPICAL post-interview behavior. I should have added that to my list.

If you're undecided between two or more similar schools, yes. There's no need to visit your safety schools if you get into one of your top choices, but if you get into both your #1 and #2 (or #1 and #1A) then it's probably worth going to the admit weekends to help you make your decision.

You could try sending it to confirmed@hbs.edu with "ATTN: Interviewer's Name" in the subject line. When I interviewed on campus they wouldn't give us direct email addresses to our interviewers but we got that email address and instructions to put the ATTN heading in there if we wanted to send a thank you note. I think that account goes to the receptionist's desk, who would then pass the messages on to the interviewers.

I'm not sure if the off-campus AdCom interviewers work the same way but it's worth a try.

Isn't it amazing that virtually all the admitted students in R1 are in the HBS Class of 2013 group on Facebook? There are 340members - Harvard must have accepted about 400 because R2 applications outnumber R1 applications. I am assuming everyone in the group is in fact an admitted student.