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albrechtjames7
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HBS ECs & Awards - Picking Top 3 07 Dec 2013, 09:28
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I'm thinking these two questions will be of interest to many, with the R2 deadline only about a month away for HBS!

1) Is there any best approach or guidance on how to shortlist your ECs to your top three? Should we be picking from our best ECs whether they were post-college or during college? Should we consider recreational/hobby-type ECs or only community-type ECs? Basically, how should we go about short-listing?

2) When picking awards, should we be highlighting our three very best, even if we know some of them will be highlighted elsewhere in the application? For example, I know my manager will talk about an important piece of professional recognition, should I mention this anyway? As another example, would it make sense for these top three to also be included on your resume? Basically, how should we go about short-listing, and how to handle overlap with other application parts?

Thanks to all who have thoughts on this!
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HBS ECs & Awards - Picking Top 3 11 Dec 2013, 04:38
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albrechtjames7
I'm thinking these two questions will be of interest to many, with the R2 deadline only about a month away for HBS!

1) Is there any best approach or guidance on how to shortlist your ECs to your top three? Should we be picking from our best ECs whether they were post-college or during college? Should we consider recreational/hobby-type ECs or only community-type ECs? Basically, how should we go about short-listing?

2) When picking awards, should we be highlighting our three very best, even if we know some of them will be highlighted elsewhere in the application? For example, I know my manager will talk about an important piece of professional recognition, should I mention this anyway? As another example, would it make sense for these top three to also be included on your resume? Basically, how should we go about short-listing, and how to handle overlap with other application parts?

Thanks to all who have thoughts on this!
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Good questions!

1) There are lots of considerations here. But basically:
- Choose the one with the most impressive results
- Choose the ones with the most leadership
- Choose the ones with the best prestige factor (i.e. brand name)
- Try and diversify
It will be different for every person, but if you follow these guidelines, you should be doing pretty well.

2) Yep. Choose the best three. The question of overlap is more difficult esp. when it comes to HBS because it gives you so little space in the application. That's why I tend to advise to diversify. Have different things on your resume, application form and essay (I mean of course your job will be in all three... but in the extra stuff at least). But otherwise, if you do mention something once in the application, once in the Resume, once in an essay it is quite normal. It's more a question of if you have the space to do so.

Hope this helps!!!!