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DefyingGravity
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Calling all Harvard Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!! 16 Oct 2015, 15:07
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Sorry to those rejected. I know it can cause a lot of self-doubt. To clarify, I do think that HBS finds these types of stories impressive. However, that is only one part of your story. I think it's the combination of the whole person that impacts admissions. There is truly no ideal or typical HBS student.
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Calling all Harvard Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!! 16 Oct 2015, 15:18
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DefyingGravity
Sorry to those rejected. I know it can cause a lot of self-doubt. To clarify, I do think that HBS finds these types of stories impressive. However, that is only one part of your story. I think it's the combination of the whole person that impacts admissions. There is truly no ideal or typical HBS student.
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The idea that Harvard has no "type" is preposterous. Of course Harvard has an ideal candidate in mind. No love lost here buddy. Just saying it like it is. The fact that Harvard rejected me and Chicago sent me an invite shocks me 0%. It's just that everyone else was expecting me to be shocked that Harvard would give my type a look. Jokes on them.
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Calling all Harvard Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!! 16 Oct 2015, 16:26
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DefyingGravity
Sorry to those rejected. I know it can cause a lot of self-doubt. To clarify, I do think that HBS finds these types of stories impressive. However, that is only one part of your story. I think it's the combination of the whole person that impacts admissions. There is truly no ideal or typical HBS student.

The idea that Harvard has no "type" is preposterous. Of course Harvard has an ideal candidate in mind. No love lost here buddy. Just saying it like it is. The fact that Harvard rejected me and Chicago sent me an invite shocks me 0%. It's just that everyone else was expecting me to be shocked that Harvard would give my type a look. Jokes on them.
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Harvard rejecting anyone and Chicago inviting anyone should shock no one. That is an exceptionally common outcome that provides no insight.
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Calling all Harvard Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!! 16 Oct 2015, 17:11
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DefyingGravity
Sorry to those rejected. I know it can cause a lot of self-doubt. To clarify, I do think that HBS finds these types of stories impressive. However, that is only one part of your story. I think it's the combination of the whole person that impacts admissions. There is truly no ideal or typical HBS student.

The idea that Harvard has no "type" is preposterous. Of course Harvard has an ideal candidate in mind. No love lost here buddy. Just saying it like it is. The fact that Harvard rejected me and Chicago sent me an invite shocks me 0%. It's just that everyone else was expecting me to be shocked that Harvard would give my type a look. Jokes on them.

Harvard rejecting anyone and Chicago inviting anyone should shock no one. That is an exceptionally common outcome that provides no insight.
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Then you obviously have no idea how the different schools operate and what each stands for. If you don't think Chicago and Harvard are fundamentally different schools who seek different students, then that's your observational failure, not mine. It is you who have brought no insight.

Good luck to you, hope your essays aren't as transparently thick as your last post.
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Calling all Harvard Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!! 16 Oct 2015, 18:38
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SilverBull, that they are very different schools is my point. Perhaps I misunderstood your original post. When I read it, I thought you were saying that, putting aside whatever individual quirks the respective schools may be interested in, you felt that you were (on the "objective" merits) as strong a candidate at HBS as you were/are at Booth. I just don't think that's the case for anyone, which is why I replied saying that it's difficult to really take any sort of "lesson" from an HBS rejection.
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Calling all Harvard Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!! Updated on: 19 Oct 2015, 03:51
Originally posted by Thot on 18 Oct 2015, 15:25.
Last edited by Thot on 19 Oct 2015, 03:51, edited 2 times in total.
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Hi all. Long time lurker but wanted to contribute to that one.

In my view, HBS has no ‘type’ but must have several ‘types’; if not, it would mean that the process is a bit random and, more importantly, ending-up with 10 well-balanced sections would be a miracle. I do believe that it is a complex and multidimensional process with lots of quantitative and qualitative criteria and some human/expert judgment that aims more at shaping those sections than at selecting the best people. However, what is driving a lot of people crazy, including myself, is not knowing (more precisely and genuinely) what are those criteria.

I mean, I know a ton of HBS guys and they are really great but I know at least the same number of incredible people who did not even get an invite. With all due respect (and I really put the emphasis on that because I do not want to sound arrogant or to offend anyone) I find that in many instances incredible people with amazing stories, work experience, stats, essays etc... do not make it (and I mean really incredible and amazing not “just” going to the best University in one’s country and working for McKinsey… which is pretty impressive but quite common in the pool of applicants) whereas people you would consider less competitive for a spot get in.

I first thought that some of those rejected guys were "too good" and therefore that the adcom did not consider they needed an MBA. Indeed, even with great essays, it is difficult to convince the adcom that you need an MBA when you have done before your 30s things that come in your 40s or 50s when you are particularly successful such ase founding a profitable company or being the manager of a big division at a prestigious firm. Nevertheless, although it may be questionable to admit someone like this for the reason mentioned above, it is a safe bet for the sake of brand recognition because that person is already successful.

The other thing is, although everyone is unique, one still has a “type” and it is astonishing to see how many extremely brilliant people with that same profile are out there. Of course, that does not explain why for a given profile it is not the best applicant who seems to be selected sometimes. I guess it is just that the best is actually selected but we are blind to some criteria and that is in the adcom's interest to keep it that way in order to prevend the applicants from feeding them with the perfect scenario (or one of those scenarios to be consistent with my first assumption).
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Calling all Harvard Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!! 18 Oct 2015, 18:17
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To all hbs applicants,

I am a 1st year hbs student, who was in your shoes not too long ago! I wanted to wish everyone the best of luck and for those who get the good news December 9th - Join the official Facebook Group - HBS Class of 2018 - for all the information on housing, classes, and partying.


PS If you have any questions non-admissions related like housing, recruiting, partying feel free to hit me up!
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Calling all Harvard Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!! 18 Oct 2015, 20:01
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Congrats everyone who got interview invitation from HBS! Those getting their decisions, please update your application status to reflect in the table below.

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Calling all Harvard Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!! 19 Oct 2015, 06:31
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Hey guys! I also got Dinged, as expected but this morning I decided to go back and read the short "release" e-mail more thoroughly and I must agree with all of you here -- I do think they are very prescriptive about filling slots: there's gotta be someone from marketing, someone from corporate operations, someone from real estate, etc. etc. so it's nothing personal. If you're from an overrepresented industry, the chances are slim to begin with! Good luck to everyone on other schools you're waiting on <3 <3 <3 You are all so smart and come from such interesting backgrounds, you're bound to get into someplace really great. It's really HBS's loss! :)
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Calling all Harvard Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!! 26 Oct 2015, 01:59
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I cannot see even a single invite in last five pages. Why is everyone dinged/rejected ? Or is it the case that the individuals who receive an invite don't bother to update ?

I'm targeting R2. But, the posts here are disheartening.
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Calling all Harvard Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!! 26 Oct 2015, 14:25
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Steinbeck
I cannot see even a single invite in last five pages. Why is everyone dinged/rejected ? Or is it the case that the individuals who receive an invite don't bother to update ?

I'm targeting R2. But, the posts here are disheartening.
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Yeah, looking back at last year's data on GMATclub.. for R1 last year, there were 514 applicants with an invite/interview rate of 19% while this year (so far) out of 436 R1 applicants there is an interview invite rate of 8%.

It's interesting to see a drop in applicants AND a drop in interview rate. I can think of many reasons why this would be the case (one of which is people not updating their profiles) but is it possible the ad-com is employing a different strategy where they aim to waitlist more R1's than usual, rather than ding them altogether at this point? Or do they generally hold off on some dings until decision day? Pure speculation, obviously, but regardless it's interesting that there are 15% fewer applicants this year (on GMATclub).
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Calling all Harvard Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!! 27 Oct 2015, 18:09
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FYI Many applicants remove schools from the profiles on Gmatclub if they were dinged, so it often skews the historical data.
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Calling all Harvard Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!! 28 Oct 2015, 07:00
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FROM HBS Admissions Blog: Business as Usual
Greetings.

I know this is such a busy time for candidates - Round One interviews have just gotten underway, many of you (I hope) are in the middle of getting Round Two applications ready, and college seniors are figuring out that Round 3 is just fine for 2+2 applicants!

But I think I should interrupt regularly scheduled programming to give you some news.

You may already have heard through the grapevine that I am stepping down from the Director of Admissions seat at the end of this season. That's true. It's been a fabulous ten years. This is a great job and HBS is an amazing place to build a career. I'm ready for something new and it's a privilege to have senior leadership that helps navigate change.

But this column is designed to be ABOUT YOU - with the goal of transparency, which I hope leads to less anxiety about this b-school application process. SO...I am here on-the-job until the Class of 2018 (that's you!) is all set and ready to go.

As the subject line says, it's Business As Usual in Dillon House. I've told you many times that Dillonites are the Dream Team - and I will say it again.

So please go back to figuring out how to Introduce Yourself and Round One interviewees should be making sure they have clean socks picked out for their interview!

As I always say, onward!
This Blog post was imported into the forum automatically. We hope you found it helpful. Please use the Kudos button if you did, or please PM/DM me if you found it disruptive and I will take care of it. -BB
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Calling all Harvard Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!! 01 Nov 2015, 11:54
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Calling all Harvard Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!! 02 Nov 2015, 14:59
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Probably beating a dead horse here, but just thought I'd mention as a tip for R2 applicants. One of my friends is an Asian-american male who got into HBS about 3 years ago and his advice was to frame your essays in a way that it will be easy for the adcom to put you in a "bucket". He knew being an asian-american male would hurt him so he framed all his essays to be around the fact that he was LGBT and interested in social entrepreneurship. I read his essays and they were not particularly memorable. They were, however, incredibly consistent and talked about LGBT and social entrepreneurship in great detail - all his essays and examples were for these two buckets (bit overkill imho).

Take it for what it's worth. Not sure if the same can apply when the only essay question is "Introduce yourself" but I think there was another candidate on this thread who got an invite and said that his strategy was to have an incredibly consistent story/extracurriculars/passion around Accounting (?). I didn't take this route and was dinged. I wrote about my incredibly hard childhood (left some details out since it would be too much) and how it shaped me as a person. Looking back on it, I think for people who haven't had a lot of hardships or come from privileged backgrounds (most adcoms), it's incredibly hard to relate to or even understand how having a parent in prison affects your life or how having no money for food the next day hinders you.

If I apply again next year, I might just consider going down the humor route ;) I know I'd appreciate it if I was an adcom and was reading hundreds of sob-stories day after day....
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Calling all Harvard Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!! 02 Nov 2015, 22:48
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Discussion thread for Fall '16 Indian applicants, if interested:

calling-all-indian-applicants-2016-intake-199662.html
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Calling all Harvard Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!! 03 Nov 2015, 12:19
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Has anyone had their interview at Harvard yet? Any advice on what to expect?
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Calling all Harvard Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!! 03 Nov 2015, 12:31
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Hello everyone
Ive just read some of your stories and im really impressed. So now I can compare an acceptanse to HBS to winning a lottery :)
Btw, is someone from Russia here?
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Calling all Harvard Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!! 03 Nov 2015, 12:38
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Hey all.
I'm new to this thread. I just submitted my R2 app - targeting to get all of my apps out before the holidays. I may be getting ahead of myself, especially since admissions is in the midst of R1 interviews - historically, has HBS given R2 notifications prior to R2 timing? In other words, have they ever gotten a head start on those submitted earlier?
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Calling all Harvard Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!! 03 Nov 2015, 12:48
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No -- they will announce a few specific days where they send out interview invites and "release" notifications. Nothing will happen earlier for anyone who submitted earlier, sorry!

Good luck!

juvisuccess
Hey all.
I'm new to this thread. I just submitted my R2 app - targeting to get all of my apps out before the holidays. I may be getting ahead of myself, especially since admissions is in the midst of R1 interviews - historically, has HBS given R2 notifications prior to R2 timing? In other words, have they ever gotten a head start on those submitted earlier?
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