Approximately one year ago I did this Q&A about being accepted and attending HBS. A week ago I finished my last final exam of my RC year (1st year) at Harvard Business School. I have had some time to reflect on the experience (and some spare time before I start my internship this summer) and I thought it might be interesting to some in the community if I shared my experiences (I suppose you can call this "Part 2," if you will). I am happy to answer anything about the 1st year MBA experience at HBS (e.g. academics, career resources, social scene, etc.) No question (within reason...) is off-limits. This is the place to ask the questions you want to ask admissions people/alums at official info sessions, but can't because you are worried you will come off as boorish/insane/etc. (I won't judge you) I am going to mostly ignore questions about the admissions process, my pre-MBA background, etc. For those, you can refer to my previous Q&A (see link above) from one year ago. Fire away!
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Hi Deo, congratulations on finishing your first year! Here are a few of my questions ...
1) After being there for a year, how does HBS compare to your initial impression of the place? 2) What will you be doing for your internship? 3) I know a recent business school grad who "avoided all school career resources" and used networking alone to get offers -- what approach did you take when it came to using HBS career resources and what is your opinion on those services? 4) What do you like most/least about the social scene?
1) Slightly worse - primarily on the administrative front. I was expecting the MBA program to treat us with a level of respect appropriate for our age (adult professionals), but many times we felt like we were being treated like children. Worse yet, the MBA program has done a number of things for the Class of 2018 that are without precedent and of questionable value, e.g. going on FIELD trips - an approximately 2 week immersion which is supposed to complement the case method - at the end of the Spring semester after classes but BEFORE final exams, then forcing students to return to campus after their immersions for a "Capstone" event (or face penalty if they fail to do so), don't even get me started on an alumni fundraising scheme disguised as a student assignment... and many more...
2) Technology-focused venture capital
3) I took a similar approach to the "recent business school grad." There is no question that networked searches are a lot better than on campus recruiting. Would you rather be competing with 30 of your peers for interview slots or none? A lot of the firms I targeted did not even have formal summer associate programs and so I had zero competition (I was the only candidate who they were considering for a position)
For career changers looking into consulting or investment banking, school career resources are essential since firms in those industries do things through the traditional channels. I might be simplifying things a little bit, but it seems like any career path other than consulting or investment banking will require some amount of networking.
4) Like most - the section experience. Being forced into a group of 90 or so strangers with Type-A personalities and spending class 5 days a week with them might sound like a terrible experience, but it actually really worked (mileage may vary). Your section becomes a sort of support system and you end up doing a lot of social things within your section, and your involvement can be as a little or as much as you want it to be. You definitely end up making close relationships with a select few, but even the people who you barely talk to are approachable and they are always just an email or phone call away.
Like least - a significant proportion of people here who cultivate a persona or image of themselves that seems disingenuous to me. Even worse are the social climbers with psychopathic tendencies who are charming/nice on the surface but are manipulative and will do anything to get their way. There were a few times when the thought ran through my head "Is this person being nice to me because he genuinely likes me or does he only want to get to know me because of my family background or because I might be "useful" to him in the future?
Same question as last year: how far can you punt a football?
I never punt. Always go for it on 4th down.
Did you frequently wear your HBS class jacket to Boston bars whilst strutting around and acting like you own the joint? Did you spend your year oozing success, confidence, swagger, and basically all other attributes of alpha males?
The HBS class jacket (actually a Patagonia fleece) is not available to 1st year students until after Thanksgiving, but once they became available people were definitely wearing them a lot.
I'm more of a blazer or sportcoat kind of guy when I go out, so no, I did not frequently wear the HBS class fleece to Boston bars.
There certainly is an illusion of the "Mr. Perfect" Harvard alpha male, and some of my peers would do their best to maintain the charade, but inevitably there will be a moment when people will think "wait a minute, this guy is full of shit." As cliche as it sounds, my best advice would be to cut the charade and just be yourself.
How you like dem apples
I prefer Gala or Fuji
A few East Coast VCs (generally smaller shops) recruit on campus but the vast, vast majority of people who are working in VC for the summer have had to do networked searches outside of the standard on-campus recruiting. Also, the recruiting timeline for VC is much later than other industries. For example, I did not secure my internship until early May.
It depends. Generally, during the fall semester, people are more intense about preparing for classes. In the spring, people start to chill out a little bit and take class (somewhat) less seriously. For me, fall semester and spring semester was about 6 to 7 hours and 7 to 8 hours of prep outside of class, respectively. Yes, in my case, outside prep time actually increased... mainly due to a class called "BGIE" (See below). I read every single case (I think we had over 250) during RC year but there were a lot of my section mates who "winged it" on a lot of cases. In terms of performance, I don't think it made much of a difference. In fact, the people "winged it" might have benefited since their comments (if they chose to speak in class) turned out to be "memorable."
The only thing you want to avoid is being cold called at the start of class and not having anything to say. If you read the case, this should not be a problem. If you did not read the case, hopefully you have friends who gave you the "cliff notes" version of the case via notes, or discussion group (in the fall semester, all students are required to participate in morning discussion groups from 8:00 to 8:50, in which you discuss the cases for the day before class starts at 9:10) There is, understandably, a lot of anxiety about cold calls, and that brings me to my next point about preparing notes.
Some students prepare notes that they use for "talking points" in class. Other students never prepared notes and just sat back and allowed the discussion to develop and waited for their moment to jump in with a comment spontaneously thought up on the spot. Obviously, the students who are writing up notes for class are spending a lot more time outside of class for preparation.
My observation was that students who prepared notes seemed (on average) more bookish and quiet - perhaps less confident with their public speaking abilities. The ones who didn't prepare notes, in general, seemed more confident and were comfortable "thinking aloud" with whatever thought popped into their head and (hopefully) developing it into a coherent comment. It could be a coincidence, but female students tended to prepare notes for class... male students less so.
If you had to choose one strategy, the latter might be the better choice. Being able to raise your hand (even if you don't 100% know the answer), start thinking out loud, and formulating an answer that is halfway decent is much better than being the person who prepared comments in their notes, but never got a chance to speak because other students already "stole" their comments (by saying a similar comment first) or the discussion had already moved on to the point that making one of their prepared comments would have been inappropriate (HBS classroom norms is that a good comment that is made too-late is useless, e.g. not worth any points).
Fall semester:
Finance 1 (FIN1) - 30 minutes to read the case, 1 hour to do basic model in Excel (e.g. usually a DCF) 4 quizzes assigned throughout the semester which are 90 minutes in length (the number of quizzes and the length may change in subsequent years) Financial Reporting & Control (FRC) - 1 hour to read the case + supplementary readings (there are a lot of these in FRC) Leadership & Organizational Behavior (LEAD) - 30 minutes to skim the case, no additional preparation necessary (in my opinion) By far the easiest class to BS your way through a cold call. 5 written reflections required throughout the semester (150 to 200 words) that must be submitted online. Marketing (MKT) - 1 hour to read the case, 30 minutes to crunch a few numbers (optional). The key to getting high participation points in MKT is approaching cases from a quantitative angle, I spoke half as much as one of my female friends in Section but I still ended up doing better than her because my comments were quantitative in nature, whereas hers were mainly qualitative) Technology & Operations Management (TOM) - 2 hours to read case (these cases, at least for me, were harder to get through due to my lack of domain knowledge, I had to constantly stop reading and look up stuff or refer to previous handouts to understand the content). Two blog posts required throughout the semester (these take several hours in terms of upfront research, actual writing, editing, etc.) I would conservatively say expect to spend at least 5 hours for each (you are given about a week to complete them)
Spring semester:
Business, Government & International Economy (BGIE) - 2 hours to read case, 30 minutes preparing some talking points - BGIE is an intermediate macroeconomics class with long cases (twice as long as the typical HBS case) that are dense with a lot of data, it's good to have some talking points prepared beforehand (one of the few times I actually prepared notes) Finance 2 (FIN1) - About the same as FIN1, modeling work in Excel becomes a little bit more complicated (But nothing too hard, at least for the average person on WSO) Leadership & Corporate Accountability (LCA) - Similar to LEAD, 30 minutes to skim the case, also easy to BS your way through a cold call (except for a few of the fact-based readings, where there is an actual "correct" answer) Strategy (STRAT) - 1 hour to read case, 1 hour to crunch a few numbers (optional) STRAT is similar to MKT in the sense that you could choose to go quantitative or qualitative in your comments (quantitative comments are obviously higher valued, although good qualitative comments are still worthy of merit) The Entrepreneurial Manager (TEM) - 1 hour to read the case. Having a tech background and/or finance background is an advantage. Some spreadsheet tutorial assignments (take 1 to 2 hours max) are assigned throughout the semester which are a pain to do, but useful in terms of learning the material.
No former professional sports players in my Section (sadly, it would have helped us in intramural sports!). I know some people in other sections that were former Olympians or D1 athletes. I knew a couple guys who played D1 football and made an attempt at the NFL but it didn't work out.
There are certainly some children who fit the profile of "children of royalty" - both actual royalty and "modern-day royalty" including children who are heirs/heiresses of major businesses, students whose father own NFL teams, but they are in the minority.
I think the main "non-traditional" cohort of students are ex-military. They generally tend to be older and have families/children.
There are a handful of people who are already successful entrepreneurs in their own right who are treating business school as a "sabbatical."
Still, I would say that 90% of students are ex-consultants and ex-investment bankers. The "official" statistics paint a different picture because HBS only considers the "last job" that a student held before matriculating... so a student who did 3 years at Goldman Sachs and then went to work for a non-profit would be classified as coming from a "non-profit" background/industry.
RT: I am going to mostly ignore questions about the admissions process, my pre-MBA background, etc. For those, you can refer to my previous AMA (see link above) from one year ago.
Deo et Patriae thanks for the AMA...my questions to you are as follows:
1.) Did you meet or have classmates with unusual or different backgrounds (i.e. Former Dance major, musician, engineer, etc.)? What was your impression of them (just curious)?
2.) What's the academic rigor like at HBS? I've heard so long as you have a pulse and you do the work you'll get a B+ or better but I've heard at some schools the classes are actually challenging.
3.) Do professors interact with students much outside of class or no? Is there a general sense of getting to know your professors outside of class?
Thanks in advance!
1) Yes. Plenty of classmates with unusual/different backgrounds. Former NAVY Seal. Former aerospace engineer who worked at SpaceX. Classmates who worked directly for Obama in the White House. Former professional musician (classical) Art history PhD who opened an art gallery in Paris and London. I could go on...
I actually enjoyed meeting and getting to know people from non-traditional backgrounds better. Why spend time with people who are similar to yourself?
2) Three categories of grades at HBS. I, II, and III (there is a 4th, rarely used category IV which indicates failure to achieve minimum standards) Category I = Top 20%, Category II = Middle 70%, Category III (and IV) = Bottom 10%
The key is to avoid getting too many Category III grades during the first year. I think the rule is 5 or more Category III grades (out of 10 classes) and your performance will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis by a committee (composed of administration and faculty) that will vote on whether you should be allowed to continue in the MBA program.
3) This varies a lot. Some professors love spending time with their students outside of class, while others will do the absolute minimum. Generally, there will be "coffee chats" and/or "lunches" organized in each class for groups of students and the professor throughout the semester. There is also standard office hours (usually by appointment) throughout the semester.
"In the shower I use a water-activated gel cleanser... then a honey-almond body scrub... and on the face, an exfoliating gel scrub. Then I apply an herb mint facial mask which I leave on for 10 minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine..."
From what I can tell, partners are well integrated into the HBS community. The vast majority of people in my Section had partners (you were in the minority if you were single) at the beginning of the Fall term. Of course, the definition of partners is stretched to also include "boyfriends/girlfriends"... Partners are almost always welcome to all informal student-organized events (including section retreats, section charity auction, and various trips/treks organized by clubs or groups of students). There are also a good number of school-organized events in which partners are welcome/encouraged to come, including things like the winter formal ("Holidazzle"), spring formal (Newport Ball)...
I would say it was an even split between partners who lived on campus with their student counterpart and those who lived off-campus. Students who have kids tend to prefer off-campus, although there were certainly plenty of little children roaming around campus...
As far as I can tell, living off campus with a partner will not cause you to suffer socially. If anything, it's probably good to get out of the "HBS bubble" from time to time. All social events (within your section) are usually posted on GroupMe/Slack and they are very inclusive. As long as your partner is okay with you spending evenings together with your classmates, it should be fine.
One thing I noticed with people who were married/had kids, especially if there was a big HBS student club sponsored party happening at a club in Boston, is that they would usually go to only the "pre-game" (held at someone's apartment or house) for a few drinks and would fade out as people started ordering ubers to the night club. That way, they still get to hang out with their section mates and get to know them, but they don't have to commit to staying out until 2:00 am at a club/bar/whatever and potentially getting into trouble with their wife/husband/partner/whatever.
the baker scholar part. think it's wort it to put in the over time to graduate in the top 5%?
1) Not worth it, because even if you sacrifice extra-curricular/non-academic parts of the MBA program, the odds are against you of making Baker Scholar. This past year's class (Class of 2017) had only 48 students make Baker Scholar. I can only imagine how student No. 49 (who just missed it) must feel if they were seriously going for Baker Scholar. Sacrificing the non-academic (Read: fun) parts of the MBA experience and then still not getting it... not worth it, in my opinion...
2) The private equity guys at HBS are collectively known as "private equity bros" and are detested by a lot of the student body (especially female students) who think they create a hostile environment in the classroom. I think it's a little bit unfair, and its more of a case of a handful of "bad apples" spoiling the entire barrel. Yes, there are certainly some condescending and elitist male students (always male) who worked in private equity who are arrogant/cocky, but most people I know who worked in private equity pre-MBA are decent people. One of my close private equity buddies in another Section provided his section mates with all his technical interview guides (close to 50 pages worth of material) and generously organized Finance Final Exam Review study sessions and Excel Modeling sessions.
Assuming you're straight, how many girls have you hooked up with during your first year at HBS?
and if you're gay, how many dudes?
That's truly eye opening. Based on famous users that have educated the WSO community on HBS in the past (Brady4MVP, mbavsmfin, etc), I was under the impression that previous relationships don't last past October and HBS students are hooking up like rabbits. Basically a non-stop orgy.
Town of Disillusionment Population: Yours Truly
"Private equity bro" are a different crowd from "Section X." To illustrate this, I will write down some things that have been actually said in actual conversations with persons from each group:
Private equity bro (Imagine a gorilla-shaped guy with ADD who probably auditioned for "Jersey shore" back in the day but got rejected for IQ being too high)
"Yo Deo, what's up? You coming tonight? It's gonna be awesome! You know, at Goldman Sachs, we partied the Goldman Sachs way. Then at Carlyle, we partied the Carlyle way. Now we are at HBS, so we are gonna party the HBS way. It's gonna be so sick, bro! By the way, did you know I like to go to the gym 2 times a day?"
Section X-person: (Imagine a thin, well dressed European with an exotic accent)
"Hello Deo, how are you? I'm going to fly (on a private jet) to my family's villa in the Caribbean for the long weekend with my girlfriend and a couple of friends, would you care to join us?"
Pretty much waited until HBS to start recruiting for new career. Plenty of people who switched careers before HBS (e.g. consulting/banking into tech or a start-up were fairly common)
I think a handful of people go the search fund route. We did a case study in Entrepreneurial Management called "Jim Sharpe: Extrusion Technology" which got a number of people interested in potentially going the entrepreneurship through acquisition route.
1) Somewhat useful. Certain classes were more useful than others. Finance, for example, was essential for career-switchers hoping to land jobs in investment banking
2) I felt a decent amount of internal competition with regards to academics. Grading is on a forced curve, and you don't want to be on the wrong side of it. Every class the professor brings in an updated seating chart which has information about students' participation. A student whose photo is normal did not speak in the previous class or two classes (normal odds of getting cold called). A student whose photo is faded spoke in the previous class (less chance of getting cold called) Finally, a student whose photo is shaded yellow means they haven't spoken in three classes, which ups the odds of getting cold called considerably. Before class began, I would glance at the seating chart (the professors would usually leave it on their desk out in the open) to check what my status was. The key was to never turn "yellow" because you want to be able to pick the right moment to make a value-added/insightful comment and not be put on the spot involuntarily.
Did not feel any competition in terms of recruiting or bragging rights.
3) A decent number of PE guys are sponsored, so they usually return to their firms after graduation. Some of them do experiment with other areas of finance (hedge funds are pretty common) over the summer. Anecdotally, a lot of them seem to dislike public markets investing...
4) I do not know what recruiting is like at other schools but I'm guessing it's pretty comparable.
I can't believe I did this for you but I went into the student directory and looked this up for you.
23 students listed their "home region" as Canada
A significant number of people had experience in both consulting and "finance" or "others." I categorized them based on whichever they worked in longer (e.g. 3 years in consulting, followed by 2 years in private equity would be counted as "consulting")
Consulting (8) Finance (10) Others* (5)
*Others included Energy, Metals & Mining and Technology
I was just hoping you might give me some insight into the evolution of the market economy in the southern colonies. My contention is that prior to the Revolutionary War, the economic modalities, especially in the southern colonies, could most aptly be characterized as agrarian precapitalism.
Of course that's your contention. You're a first year grad student. You just finished reading some Marxian historian, Peter Garrison probably, and you'll be convinced of that until next month when you get to James Lemon and then you are going to talk about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That's gonna last until next year, you're gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood talking about the pre-Revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.
Seems to be a decent amount of female presentation in PE. I counted 47 women (approximately 5% of the entire class and 30% of people with private equity experience) working in front office PE roles (the number would be a little higher if you include middle/support roles)
The "PE guys" gang is all men. My experience (anecdotally) is that women who worked in private equity downplay their experience. In general, I see less women pursuing jobs in careers that traditionally have poor work-life balances (basically anything in consulting and finance). Of course, these industries have always been male-dominated to begin with... Women are definitely higher represented in CPG and social enterprise-type roles (for the latter, virtually zero men pursue this).
1) At HBS, for better or for worse, the section is your family and identity for life. You have every class with the same exact people every day of first year. Social events are very frequent (maybe even too frequent...) and regularly coordinated by the section which immediately gives you a social group. People definitely make friends with people in other sections through student clubs, student-organized treks or other activities but a lot of the social life at HBS is coordinated around the section.
In the fall, discussion groups meet from 8:00 to 8:50. These are assigned by the school. 6 students per discussion group. Some people get really close with their discussion groups. Other discussion groups fall apart. Halfway through the fall semester, you have to fill out an online poll about whether you want to stay together as a discussion (if even a single person says they wish to be reassigned, every member will be reassigned to another discussion group).
In the Spring, your FIELD Global Immersion cohort (the country you get assigned to) will be another opportunity to meet with people from different sections. My cohort was about 70 or so students (so smaller than the typical section which is 90 students), 8 (including me) were from my "home" section and the remaining 62 were from different sections. For me, this was the primary way I got to know people from other sections.
2) Definitely a fair amount after the turkey dump/drop after Thanksgiving (in which people who were in relationships prior to HBS break up with their girlfriends/boyfriends. If you are articulate, in shape and have good hygiene, it's not that hard to hook up with another student (especially after both of you had several drinks) Just make sure its consensual/take steps to protect yourself.
3) Very competitive. A lot of the career changers (with no previous finance experience) who were interested in finance actually went for roles in AM first (for whatever reason, there was the perception that AM roles are "easier" to break into than private equity or hedge funds). A few managed to make it, but a lot of these guys failed, but they still wanted to do finance, so they settled for investment banking. The people who broke into AM are mostly guys with previous finance experience (usually investment banking or corp development type roles). The ones who broke into hedge funds had previous buyside experience (public markets or private equity) as well as AM experience. A small number with only sell-side banking experience managed to break in for the summer but it was an uphill struggle for them.