WSJ has a good interview with one of the people who review applications for interview selection. Thought this may be of interest to those of you thinking of B-school.
WSJ: How long do you spend on each application?Ms. Leopold: Ten minutes minimum, and if you aggregate all the times I go back, probably 30 minutes or so. I sweep over, look at everything, and then go back.
Everybody goes in different piles—things that I need to spend more time on, things that I trust my quick judgment on. I kind of go into hibernation after interviews. By the end of that period, I need a chiropractor.
See below for links
Enjoy!
It's correct that HBS actually doesn't care that much about the essays. I would say they probably care the least among the top b-schools. If everything else is stellar, HBS will cut you a lot of slack in terms of how strong the essays are. They do care a lot however about undergrad gpa. Anything below a 3.6 is a death knell.
3.6? Several years ago, I saw where people made it into HBS I believe with less than that. Are you sure because couldn't your GMAT make up for the difference?
Why are you asking him? He's not an admissions counselor. Hell, he's not in HBS, let alone business school.
Brady, you should be an admissions consultant.
I was going to post the same exact thing, but I think you need to finish b-school before you can consult for it, right?
Seems a little arrogant to talk about your institution's arrogance detecting abilities.
If you look at the class of students that ACTUALLY ATTEND HBS, it's all guys who come from brand-name firms (McKinsey, Goldman, Google, PE firms) and then some crazy-smart guys from brand-name non-profits or government, and your African princes and shit (powerful foreigners), and then veterans from Iraq, and some affirmative action kids.
Dunno why the admissions officers aren't more honest about it. They should have just been straight-up and told the interviewer, "It doesn't matter if you got a 4.0 at your state school and did a great job at your 100 person accounting firm. We want people who, we can reasonably assume, will be running F500s, departments of major nations, or have more money than God." Why do they give these stupid interviews where it makes it sound like some housewife with perfect grades, GMAT, and a cute essay can attend the world's most prestigious business school?
Exactly. HBS doesn't throw darts. I know two guys who are currently enrolled and one girl who is graduating this spring. They are exactly the "type" of people you would expect there.
Channel the anger about the elitism constructively. Prove the bozos wrong.
1.) Because if they get 12,000 apps next year, they can get down to an 8% acceptance rate. 2.) Because sometimes candidates who don't think they're qualified for admission make it in. Disagree a little bit on this. I know some bright folks at HBS and some mediocre folks.Here's the thing. My issue is with the arrogance/competence ratio. You're allowed to be arrogant if you're competent. The problem is that so many b-schoolers aren't interested in becoming competent.
What I think HBS needs to do to fix its problems with being a douche-magnet is accept a couple of Larry the Cable Guys and a couple of Rodney Dangerfields every year along with the thousand or so other typical applicants it accepts.
Some guy is bragging about his Armani sunglasses
Larry the cable guy walks up wearing a shirt that says HARVURD UNIVERSTRY
Larry: "Hey, that's really neat there fellah! I seen one of those. My aunt uses it to cover up her mole. Twentyfive bucks at WalMart, aint it?"
Some douchey HBSer is at a bar, trying to pick up a Boston College kids girlfriend Douche: "So, I'm really stoked about the class that Robert Merton is teaching. He won a nobel prize."
Larry: "Hey! I remember YOOUU! You're in our portfolio thingamabobber class. I thought you already had a girlfriend. Step away there chief, I wanna talk to blondie here!"
Rodney Dangerfield walks into a fancy networking event. Everyone is talking quietly.
Dangerfield: "What is this place, a FUNERAL PARLOR? (looks at a thirty year old bschooler) Hey grandpa- the graveyard's THAT way! GO HOME!"
Invite a couple of third wheels in every year, and the douches go home while the kids who want to learn and make friends stay.
Man, I love your posts. You keep improving with age.
In all seriousness though, HBS guys KILL it with the college girls in boston. So your above scenario is extremely unlikely.
Confidence kills it, my good friend here in Chicago is my height (a small 5'8"), is a Cisco salesman and absolutely kills it with girls. If you are relying on a school to get pussy than you've already lost the game. PS Brady, email me and lets start thinking of getting this shit back up for the summer.
Brady, I don't think the average person differentiates between Harvard Business School, Harvard College or Harvard Divinity School. All they hear is "Harvard", and assume you're a genius.
I went to visit Harvard Law School, and can attest to that very fact. You're right though, dropping the "I go to Harvard" line is precious.
Why doesn't McKinsey take the guy with a 2.1 GPA from Noname University? Same reason why HBS only selects "elite" candidates. It's the way of life.
To the person who suggested mailing a copy of Stanford check to HBS after you make it big: will you still let HBS define you AFTER you are successful? When someone does what you suggested, it shows that HBS/other elite school STILL has power over him. HBS will think "oh look at Mr Big Shot. He is still pissed at us for not letting him in. Ha. We are awesome and our crap doesn't stink". But when Stanford fawns over you and publishes that you gave them a fancy gift, it will be a slap enough on the face of HBS.
Think of this in terms of dating. After a chick dumps you, the best revenge you could have is living well. Both business schools and chicks have one trait in common: they fear missing "the great catch". Give substance to their fears. Let them wither in agony for not letting you in to their school/pussy.
Full disclosure: I applied to HBS. Rejected sight-unseen. But I am not mad at them. Why? Their essays are really helpful and I used several of their essays for other school's apps from where I did get interviews. HBS essay really teaches you to get to the point. It's a skill that I believe is useful. I used to ramble on and on and on, HBS essays rectified that. Plus I got my "story" down thanks to HBS's 3rd essay. My interviewer in a job/b-school interview asked me about "my greatest accomplishment". And the answer was my 2nd accomplishment from HBS's 1st essay.
hahaa epic shit
Haha! isn't Merton at MIT?
Going to HBS is a branding exercise... It makes sense for them to use branding to source their candidates... also, most HBS types are careerists who will want to enter large corporations (including banks & the larger non-profits), so it makes sense for HBS to recruit from those pools anyway.
A friend of mine went to HBS, he saw it as a couple of years to take a break and have some time to work on some business ideas. He now runs a small advisory firm. He said the HBS name opened some doors and was good to demonstrate credibility. It hasn't defined him as a person and while he did play the admissions game, he never let entrance to HBS become a criteria for life/career decisions.
Define yourself and set your own goals, don't be defined by other peoples agendas.
i think an acceptance letter to any of medical school in U.S. >>> admission to HBS.
Doctor >> consultant/ banker.
Hmmmm. Dee Leopold: http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/MK-BS583_HARVAR_G_20120229163825.jpg
The character Nina Sharp on TV's Fringe: http://cdn.fringebloggers.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/1074519155.jpg
[quote=Angus Macgyver]Hmmmm. Dee Leopold: http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/MK-BS583_HARVAR_G_20120229163825.jpg
The character Nina Sharp on TV's Fringe: http://cdn.fringebloggers.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/1074519155.jpg…] Fringe is an awesome TV show.
Not sure why our resident b-school "expert" thinks that anything below a 3.6 GPA is an automatic ding. Adcomms consider quality of undergrad institution and major (when comparing GPAs) and anyone who has studied the crazy admissions game for long enough knows that a strong / well-balanced GMAT score can offset a sub 3.6 GPA.
Let me clarify my statement. For a white/asian male from a traditional field like finance or consulting, it will be VERY difficult to get into HBS with a sub-3.6 gpa. Part of this is self-selection since people who usually land top MBB, BB, PE, or HF jobs tend to have high gpa's from top colleges. HBS cares a lot more about ug gpa than gmat. Sandy kreisberg has said so himself; hbs will take someone with say a 690 or 680 gmat if that person has very strong gpa, pedigree at top firms, and strong leadership.
"In all seriousness though, HBS guys KILL it with the college girls in boston. So your above scenario is extremely unlikely."
Yeah, that's why that story is unlikely. Good god Brady . . .
^^^
Dude Brady, just go to Budapest or Prague for 3 years and save yourself 120K and get the same experience by dropping the American and USD combo bomb. My friend who went there loved it and getting with girls two levels above what he would normally get. They were hot and fun.
Your determination to get into top B-school is admirable and Harvard brand is worth a lot. But this fixation with putting HBS students on a pedestal and extolling HBS's escapades in Boston is disturbing to say the least.
I think you are pretty mistaken, Brady.
The guys you are talking to have an incentive to talk it up -- two chicks at the same time every night, whatever.
As much as people want to down play it, the fact is that HBS is competitive and people work hard. I'm not saying there is no socializing. But all the people I know who went to HBS said they put in serious study time. Maybe if you are a finance guy with a strong background, it would be easier. But for a student with no prior background in business (such as engineers, non-profit folks, arguably marketing, military, etc.), you're going to be busting ass. Besides reaching the obvious conclusion that finance guys are better than everyone else (you can't hate if it's true), you would be hard pressed not to reach the conclusion that HBS is not two straight years of models and bottles. Sorry, it's just not.
Also, and I'll probably get flamed out for this, a lot of people that graduate from HBS are enormous tools and don't necessarily have successful careers. Fact.
I was talking with the partner on my case, who is an HBS alum, about where I wanted to apply to business school. He mentioned that some people from his class make 10x what he does (and you figure a relatively junior MBB partner makes just over $1M/year), but some were broke and a couple were in jail.
The post-MBAs from my office who have left early (a few on their own accord, but many not) were primarily HBS.
Fact: Had a Harvard MBA teaching a graduate class I was in last year. The guy probably said "when I was at Harvard" 20 times per class. This grated on everybody in the class.
Yep, some people think that grads coming out of HBS are all going to be private equity titans, hedge fund masters of the universe, or at least Fortune 500 CEOs. While a few will make it to those levels (and probably would have made it regardless of HBS), many do nothing or get stuck in good but not OMGWTFBBQ jobs that they could have gotten without going to HBS or possibly without an MBA altogether.
As someone who looks at a lot of microcap stocks, I can tell you that there are "unsuccessful" HBS CEOs in their 40s, 50s, 60s who are managing companies with 20 - 50 million in revenue and not going anywhere. That's still a far better job than most (partly because they are able to bilk their shareholders in some cases), but it's definitely not godly enough to meet the HBS hype. And I know plenty of regular finance guys with dead end careers in their 40s HBS. So yeah, it's a nice to have, but let's not get carried away.
Interesting anecdote. So my best friend who's a first-year at a M7 was in boston this weekend for a MBB sell-weekend. He also went to an Africa conference at HBS on saturday. He met a bunch of HBS and harvard undergrads. Surprisingly he said that the harvard undergrads were far smarter, more interesting, and impressive overall. One harvard senior he met develops rocket fuel for NASA in his spare time and runs his own solar energy startup based on research papers he published.
Hey uh... I haven't been here all that long, but every time I see you post it seems to be something about HBS. I think you're conferring just a leeeeeetle too much status on the school. HBS is a great school and all, and I'd sure as hell like to go there, but I don't think about it too much because I know that my chances there are slim, at best. It'd be crushing if I thought that it was the one place that I wanted to be, and I got dinged.
Look on the bright side - even Buffett got dinged at HBS!
This is what Brady does. Talk of HBS turns him into Quagmire on Family Guy around a college sorority.
Heh. You, on the other hand, seem to hate target schools with a passion. Why all the hate? I think going to a target certainly makes life a hell of a lot easier, and that kids (and even graduate students) going to targets are ON AVERAGE more capable than the average non-target student. Not always, and maybe not by very much, depending on the school, but on average? Sure.
I'm hoping to go to a target someday. Need to get rid of my non-target past.
On average, sure. I don't hate target schools with a passion; I hate the fact that the school you go to means anything in the real world. So one kid is from Disney World. Another is from Universal Studios. I'm from Coney Island. Big deal, now we have to work. Also, I've been accepted at a target school for my grad work. Brady probably spit out his coffee when he found out I had gotten into this school.
I think it makes you see target school students in a different light. Oh, we have a lot more in common now. But I don't think it changes your worldview the way undergrad does. When you get shunted out of the place you've lived for the past 18 years by your family, you're still pretty darned impressionable at 18. When you hit 22, or especially if you've worked for a couple years, that is much less true.
My ideal for the world is to get all of HBS's professors, research, and nobel prizes at Berkeley. Charge $1500/semester. Have Berkeley take everyone who can get a 600 on the SAT Quant section and got a B+ in Precalc. Then fail out 1/2 the students freshman year and 1/3 sophomore year. THAT is meritocracy right there.
You're going to HBS? From a nontarget background? Exactly how nontarget are we talking about, here? I'm curious because I'm still wondering about my own shot at the big leagues. Gotta work out where to apply to, y'know?
I'd be all for that plan, but I think that it might make people focus a little too much on exams. Unless the pass criteria include portions which are not strictly academic.
I suppose you're right about UG being more of an influence on character. Longer duration, at a younger age. Still, it seems to me like either way, a target education is going to open doors which few other things can.
^^^ HBS or something comparable.
Nontarget meaning a state school engineering degree. That said, Illinois is supposedly pretty darned good at computer science and engineering in general. Still, the experience at state school is you make your friends where you can, and they throw a book at you, hand you a nine digit number, tell you to study, and mention "oh by the way, if you fail, we don't care" as they slam the door to your cinder block dorm room.
So at Illinois, one of your friends is from Decatur studying to become a Chemistry teacher- and probably head back downstate. Another grew up on a farm outside Peoria. Another is scraping out a 2.5 in engineering and hates resume-builders and prestige whores. You learn to drop all pretense and just be a middle-class kid struggling for middle-class whitecollardom. Sure, you'll gladly take more if you can get it, but it is not worth killing over.
When you get into a grad school like HYPSWM, it doesn't change who you are or your outlook on life.
Engineering's kinda a plus for MBA apps, though, right? Care to give GPA and GMAT ranges...?
I wonder if the stamp of a non-target undergraduate experience is almost indelible, though. Even if you go to a target MBA program... I figure you're still going to have fewer contacts in high places than someone who went to H/Y/P/S UG and then to HBS for an MBA. You'll certainly have only half the alumni network, assuming you went to different UG and graduate schools.
It never hurts to have a network. It also never hurts to be competent. But given the choice between the two, competence is what creates genuine value, and it's what I cast my lot on.
Warren Buffett has a huge network of clients/investors from working on wall street and working for his daddy's firm.... Bill Gates had the good fortune of growing up next to a super computer (or whatever they're called).... Outliers aren't the best way to make a point about the importance of a good fundamental education or the precariousness of how important a particular social network is.
Competence matters, networks give you a distribution channel and access to sell/hire-out that competence to. Horses for courses.
As Relinquis notes... I think a good network and technical competency go hand in hand. I feel that by the time I matriculate, my technical competency won't be as much of an issue as my network (or lack thereof). Therefore the need for a top MBA.
Illini: From what I have seen over the course of my research on MBA admissions, it appears that UG GPA is still fairly significant when it comes to one's chances. I, too, was hoping that UG would not matter, and was slightly dismayed to see that it apparently does.
If you did not go to an elite ug, a top MBA becomes that much more important. Network and pedigree are VERY important in the business world.
Regarding gpa, of course schools care, but there's a lot of leeway at every school except HBS and Stanford. HBS especially really wants high ug gpa; their median is already at around 3.7. Basically if you're a white/asian guy in finance or consulting, I think anything below a 3.6 will be a very big negative for HBS. On the other hand, i know plenty of people at wharton/booth/columbia/kellogg who got in with sub 3.4 gpa due to high gmat, good work experience, and impressive extracurriculars.
Pedigree is very important to get in, i completely agree. However, once you are working till 11 on a Sunday night I could give a shit where they guy went to school as long as he knows his stuff and is pulling his own weight.
To throw some add'l stats in the mix:
I got into Booth with a 3.6 / 750, and pretty good work experience. The only other program I applied to was Ross, and was accepted there as well. I'm a white guy, consulting background, average Midwestern temperament. Went to Michigan UG, and there are differing opinions around here as to whether that's a target, semi-target, or non-target. Big 10 doesn't get a lot of love from the east coasters on this board. I assume I would have been summarily dinged at HBS / GSB.
IP, you got into some MSFE program? Better to clarify the grad program.
Maybe, maybe not. Best not to publicize which program right now.
Brady, you need to transcend this and start working on your personal brand. That's the genuine driver of the network and pedigree.
You want people to say, "Wow, that BradyMVP guy ABC recommended to us is interesting, he's done XYZ and also happens to have attended HBS" not "This BradyMVP guy should be ok, I mean, he went to HBS. Add him to the list."
Oh yes, I remember now. Bankers. :D
I'm not a banker
:'(
On a side note - I think degrees from top schools are particularly important in Asia. Y'know how there's a stereotype that every Asian parent wants their children to go to Harvard? Well. That's not just with parents and children. It also holds true for people looking for business partners. Asian people have gigantic hard-ons (weird, eh) for degrees from top schools.
In Asia, if you went to HBS you're a freaking demi-god. I mean even in chicago, which is not that prestige obsessed, a HBS degree is a big fucking deal. You definitely stand out in the sea of big 10 alums.
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