Harvard 2013 (HBS) - Calling All Applicants

I don't particularily like the new HBS website. The older version was better. One school that has nailed its website redesign is Booth. They have a stunning new one.

Hi, you are not quite right - 9000 is the total number of applications, not just round 1.

Good luck to everyone,
A.

haha! that is true. well, it still a lot of apps!

Not really... In round 1 the number of applications should be roughly ~3000: which is roughly 130/day if you add weekends.. Now if an application gets two reviews multiply that by a factor of 2... So you have 260 apps to read/day.. Assuming an adcom strength of around 5.. Every ad-com member will read roughly 52 applications a day... If they spend 10 minutes on each app... 520 minutes or 8 hours and 40 minutes of reading per person per day....

Adcom is bigger than that...I don't know exact numbers, but I know there's far more than 5 of them. They all have responsibilities in addition to reading applications, so I'd be very surprised if any of them are reading apps for 8 straight hours per day. Much more likely that they have 10-15 people who read for a few hours, do other admissions-related stuff, read for a few more hours, and so on.

Has anyone broken out "engineers" into disciplines or industries? i.e. software, IT, aerospace, energy, electrical, chemical, industrial, etc? Simply saying "engineer" seems woefully inadequate to me, a mechanical engineer (but working business development in cleantech).

How could I break them into disciplines if they do not provide the information?

Sorry, I was not meaning to imply you could with the data available. My question was more generic in wondering if anyone had seen the data broken out to that level of detail.

This seems unnecessary. I know plenty of companies that hire chem E's, ME's, EE's, etc for the same position. I think business schools look at your degree and see engineer, that's it. Even you said that you are an ME but your job doesn't pertain much to mechanical engineering.

To many engineers, this would be offensive (though I dont think you intended it that way, so pardon my upcoming rant).

It is like saying finance degrees are the same as the business and economics degrees, so we should just lump them together as well. Unless the job simply needs someone who can handle math, you would never hire a software engineer for a mechanical engineer job or an industrial engineer for an electrical engineer job. The vast majority of engineering jobs are not so vague. Plus, the difficulty of these degrees are significantly different, so to those who obtained the harder degrees this simplification is ignoring the extra work we had to do.

Also, I never said my work does not pertain to engineering. I work a business development role at an energy startup, where I have to know the technical details inside and out for the systems in order to be able to speak intelligibly to it. Everyone working BD here, as well as those in other highly technical companies I have worked, have engineering or otherwise technical backgrounds.

However, I will agree that this level of granularity is not necessary…but then again, no breakout is necessary at all. Does knowing this information change your willingness to apply? No. You will apply to your school choices either way. It doesn’t mean I’m not curious, though.

Speaking as an engineer, I know that it is generally accepted that a Chem E degree is more difficult than EE which is more difficult than ME which is more difficult than IE, but I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that business schools only see "engineer" and automatically associate that with the ability to do quantitative work. That is why I think breaking down engineering is unnecessary.

However, I do think the original breakdown given is helpful because when I first started thinking about applying to business school, I went to see Harvard's admission stats. When I saw that 40% of the class of 201X was engineering, it gave me hope and provided motivation to look further into the process. If, early in my research, I saw a stat saying that 1% of engineers make it into Harvard, I seriously doubt I would have applied because the odds would have been heavily stacked against me.

That is why I respectfully disagreed with you when you stated, "Simply saying "engineer" seems woefully inadequate to me."

*sigh* I’m in the minority on this one - I know the vast majority of applicants and adcoms would never need this breakout, but I still think knowing the spread of the type of engineers concentrated at different schools would lend some insight into the school’s industry strengths or areas of focus...but continuing the debate in this thread is getting off topic.

Getting back on topic, how well are fellow R1 applicants doing with NOT thinking about the next three weeks while waiting for interviews??? I’m failing at it...

Definitely failing here as well.... So hard not to think about it... haha, well what can one do.

A little late to the party here, but applied in R1!

A quick question:

I did my undergrad from a top 20 institute in India where GPA is on a scale of 10.0 and isn't relative. I topped my class with a GPA of 9.08. How will HBS compare this with people on a 4.0 scale? I know they ask us not to convert anything but was wondering how they do it.

Will it be 4.0 since I was the topper?
or
Will it be 3.6 (~4*9.08/10)?

I mentioned my rank in the app.

Whenever I started feeling anxious about the interview, I either did practice questions and prepped or I worked out. That helped a bit.. But it's rough.

My general strategy was to turn my anxiety into productivity. Hope this helps.

As they mention frequently on their website, the adcom is very familiar with different ranking systems and know that a 3.9 at an Ivy League is not the same as a 3.9 from an unranked school. In that respect, I am sure they will consider both your school rank and your class rank alongside your GPA. I feel you have nothing to worry about.