I'm taking a look at the HBS admission statistics. Last year 8,900 people applied. 900 were accepted. I was wondering since 8,000 people were rejected, what kind of stats would I need to be competitive? In your opinion, is this competitive?
- 700 GMAT
- 3.6 GPA
- Undergraduate degree @ University of Michigan Economics
- summer internship @ Big 4
- Average extracurricular activities
- First generation college graduate
Harvard Applicant Profile
Here are some statistics pulled directly from the hbs.edu/mba/admissions/class-profile/Pages/default.aspx”> HBS Class Profile. We are going to focus on median numbers because it is allot easier to discount any outliers.
Average GPA of HBS admits
The average GPA of HBS admits is 3.7 when averaging from schools using the 4.0 grading scale.
Most Dominant Industries Pre MBA
- Venture Capital and Private Equity: 16%
- High Technology and Communications: 16%
- Financial Services: 11%
Average GMAT Scores of HBS admits
- Median GMAT Score
- 730
- Median Verbal Score
- 42
- Median Quantitative Score
- 49
Key Takeaways
- HBS is still very competitive. However even if you check all the boxes score wise, you can still get rejected.
from certified user @petergibbons"
Rejected without an interview last year.
750+ GMAT
Honors graduate from Top LAC
Varsity Athlete and Club President
Would've come in after 2 years at MBB (I know it's young, but multiple classmates were accepted)
Alumni recommendation (but realistically, most MBB folks will have this)
Spent a lot of time on essays (hard to say whether they're objectively good)
...white dude.That said, I know many people with similar backgrounds and stats who have gotten in after 2-3 years at MBB. Point is that nothing's a guarantee, but I know at least a few who "beat you" on most of the dimensions you listed and didn't get in
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Work on your GMAT score and hopefully you are doing a great internship right now. Other than that have a great personal statement.
No. You need real work experience.
You probably need at least a 750 with that GPA.
Rejected without an interview last year.
750+ GMAT Honors graduate from Top LAC Varsity Athlete and Club President Would've come in after 2 years at MBB (I know it's young, but multiple classmates were accepted) Alumni recommendation (but realistically, most MBB folks will have this) Spent a lot of time on essays (hard to say whether they're objectively good) ...white dude.
That said, I know many people with similar backgrounds and stats who have gotten in after 2-3 years at MBB. Point is that nothing's a guarantee, but I know at least a few who "beat you" on most of the dimensions you listed and didn't get in.
I applied round 2 at HBS this year and got an interview.
Top 5 undergrad, econ major, 3.78 gpa, 780 gmat Ton of clubs in college 4 years of exotic derivatives trading at a BB in NYC got a rec from a managing director who is a HBS alum on the board of 2 major nonprofits very solid essays (although essays aren't that important for HBS)
Did you get in or you don't know yet? And, why essays are not important for HBS?
I just had my interview earlier this week.
HBS admissions is pretty straightforward actually. I think it's the least mysterious among the top programs; dean leopold knows what she wants, hence the greatly reduced essays and the relatively short amount of time before invites go out, especially given the high volume of applicants. You pretty much need to have a blue-chip resume or be exceptional in a non-conventional field (military special forces, startup, white house, treasury, nonprofit, fashion, etc.)
Pack your shit, you're going to Rutgers!
Sample resume for Harvard, Princeton, etc? (Originally Posted: 05/16/2014)
I'm a rising sophomore in college. What does the sample resume for someone who is accepted into Harvard Business School and schools of that caliber look like?
Princeton doesn't even have a business school...
They do have a "school of that caliber" though.
But if the OP is looking for business school purposes, they are not going to get quite the same impression going off of those Princeton ones. While they are certainly high quality in substance, they don't even appear to have a standard format among them. Frankly, some of them look pretty bush league in their formatting. Also, if the OP isn't in finance, they won't get much help gauging substance in comparison to themselves either.
If the purpose is applying to business school, do some searches on the gmatclub.com forums as well as google using the specific schools you have in mind. You'll find resume examples which will be useful both for gauging what it takes from a substance standpoint as well as what the norms are for formatting. Every school has their official format, but they are all pretty similar and you needn't adjust for every application. Just pick one of the ones you like from the top-10 and go with it.
We don't have enough evidence to suggest OP was limiting his search to MBA programs. He also explicitly mentioned Princeton, so if anything we have evidence to suggest he is very likely NOT limiting his search in this way.
princeton mfin does not compare well in caliber vis-a-vis most business schools (students are too technical and lack a balanced skill set)
Some people with strong stochal backgrounds go straight into roles on sellside exotics desks.
Other graduates are heading to an investment bank as either an analyst or associate (depending on whether they have prior experience), or heading to a hedge fund in some sort of research or PM capacity.
Some students are straight out of undergrad or other graduate programs without professional experience.
Either way, we had a 100% placement rate both last year and this year (in May) with most people going into front office roles, many into buyside roles that would be considered special even by the standards of the M7.
It's clearly debatable, but the admit rate, results, and placements make a good case for the program. It's not the best choice for everyone- don't come here if you're weak at math or if you don't want to work in finance- but otherwise it's a great program that costs half of an MBA and gets you the same kind of job upon graduation.
This is not an easy program, at least for an American. You need to learn the Girsanov Theorem to graduate. You need to learn how to fit ARCH and GARCH models, find the unconditional distribution of various time series models, figure out if a statistical model is regular or irregular (and Fisher information and the like.) The coursework is fundamentally different from an MBA, but the results and placements are similar.
Hence heavy use of the word "IF" in my response. OP was vague in their initial post, so I addressed one possibility. They very may well be trying to compare top MBAs and Princeton's Mfin. Who knows, they didn't say.
I have no argument against P's Mfin program being "of that caliber" and I've no doubt there is likely at least some overlap among applicants between them and M7. In general though, I'd say they're fundamentally different (both fantastic) degrees intended for mostly different clientele and goals, thus making them difficult to make a straight comparison between.
Not sure who threw the MS. But I fixed it for you.
To have a good (not perfect) shot at HBS, one route in is to have a few years of front office experience at a bank- but B-schools don't like traders, have excellent extracurriculars, and have fantastic references.
HBS is never a slam dunk. Neither is Princeton MFin.
http://www.princeton.edu/bcf/graduate/recruiting/Classof2015/index.xml
You can click on the "CV" link for each candidate.
go on LinkedIn and search the HBS students, and you'll get a pretty good idea.
Well say what you want- I never applied to the M7 so I dont know how things would have gone. I am happy with the results out of here. The vast majority of us are heading for front office roles, about half of which are PM track roles in systematic strategies at hedge funds.
A resume that demonstrates your ability to drink excessive amounts of alcohol, smoke refer and "run a train" on naive Sl*ts. That will "get you in" for sure...
sorry... typo there..."reefer"
I meant for an MBA. I'm simply curious as to what I can do personally to mirror the resumes of those who have gained acceptances to schools like Harvard Business and Wharton. Any help, with this in mind, would be appreciated.
1.) Front office job at a top tier BB. 2.) Amazing recs. 3.) Extracurriculars. Try to find stuff other people aren't doing but most accomplished people would be really curious about at a dinner party.
I don't know why we're staying on the Princeton obsession- this discussion does seem to be doing a lot to help the program and I'm glad for that- but of the two Princeton ugrads-> Princeton MFins, one got hired as a "PM" at the Singapore Wealth Fund and the other got hired as an Associate at GSAM with no prior work experience.
After hang gliding last night, we were having beers around the campfire with some of the other pilots, including one of the country's best cross-country pilots- Dave Hopkins. Dave called a 50 mile cross-country flight (one that would take several hours and require a lot of skill) a "sled run" (a flight where you take off from the mountain and land 3-4 minutes later). This caused several jaws to drop. Someone else commented that he'd give up various body parts to get a 50 mile "sled run".
My view is that most of the jobs people are landing out of Princeton are 50 mile soaring flights- stat arb roles on small teams running large funds. If you're a Dave Hopkins of the business world- if you're a CEO or if you run a large fund, you're allowed to call the jobs getting landed out of Princeton MFin "back office". You're also allowed to call the jobs getting landed out of M7 MBA programs back-office too. But for those of us who left the front office to come to school here, these are some pretty awesome "back office" jobs we're landing IMHO.
Ellenville looks soarable again today and I have a few more friends coming up. If I can get enough lift I can get some practice in on wingovers and maybe a few other aerobatics.
In any case, if you're a PM with nine or ten figures AUM, congrats on your status and thank you for helping to keep the discussion going about Princeton. We're a small, selective program with only 40 students vs ~1000 at HBS, so if we get 10% of the attention that HBS gets, we're doing pretty darned well.
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