Tag Archives : Harvard Business School

Today we feature a guest post from Veritas Prep MBA admissions consultant Tiffany Singleton. Tiffany currently serves as the Senior Director of National Campaign at Year up, a nonprofit organization. She has served as an alumni interviewer for Management Leadership for Tomorrow, and has recruited undergraduates and MBA candidates for JP Morgan. Tiffany has also represented HBS at various admissions events. Before receiving her MBA from Harvard Business School, she went to Dillard University and received a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Finance.

The experience as a prospective student – in addition to the interview! (see more below) — most memorable to me was the HBS Immersion Program (aka IXP), specifically the New Orleans trek. I had the incredible opportunity to attend a seminar held in early December 2006 because of my collaboration with the Dillard team and Tim Butler, Director of Career Development Programs.

Time flies… The last applicants of the 2011-2012 admissions season are still finding out their fates, and Harvard Business School has already released its admissions essays and deadlines for the 2012-2013 application season. Big news here: Consistent with what we predicted earlier this month, this year’s HBS application includes fewer essays… Just two required ones this year! (Back pats all around here at Veritas Prep headquarters!)

Here are the new Harvard essays and deadlines, taken from Harvard’s site. As usual, our comments follow in italics:

An article that appeared in yesterday’s edition of The Harvard Crimson described an interesting phenomenon that is happening in the first cohort of students who were admitted to the HBS 2+2 Program back in 2008. Rather than entering Harvard Business School as first-year students last fall, a surprising number decided to keep working and delay their matriculation for another year.

According to the article (which mentions some former Veritas Prep students!), of the 106 students who were accepted in the HBS 2+2 Program’s first year, 65 entered HBS this past fall, 40 postponed matriculation, and one dropped out. And the trend is growing: For the group that is supposed to start at HBS this coming fall, more than half have decided to postpone matriculation.

Dean Nitin Nohria has only been at the top spot at Harvard Business School for about a year, but the effects of his projects and initiatives are already starting to be seen. He has declared that his priorities are around five core themes: Innovation. Intellectual Ambition, Internationalization, Inclusion, and Integration. What does this all mean specifically for you as an HBS applicant?

The visible changes at Harvard that are at least in part due to Dean Nohria’s influence include:

A move beyond the case method
What was sacrosanct at Harvard for generations was that 100% of courses were taught using the case study method. As Veritas Prep predicted when Dean Nohria arrived in Summer 2010, the curriculum is undergoing change. Starting with the class matriculating in Fall 2011, students will now have “field method” experiences as a counterpart to the case-based teaching. The first change to the curriculum is a year-long first-year course called FIELD, for Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development. FIELD features small-group opportunities for students to put what they learn into practice. The Class of 2012 will also see a reduction in the number of case-based courses and the introduction of new labs, similar to what schools like MIT have offered for some time.

Late last week Harvard Business School broke ground on Tata Hall, the new facility that will house HBS’s executive education program. Tata Hall is named in honor of Ratan Tata, whose cluster of companies and nonprofit organizations (all of which bear his name) donated $50 million toward construction of the new building.

In some respects, Ratan Tata is uniquely qualified to help steer the construction of the new building, since he is a 1975 graduate of Harvard’s Advanced Management Program for senior executives. As one of India’s (and the world’s) most successful businessmen, he no doubt was eager to leave a lasting legacy at Harvard.

We always tell applicants to visit their target business schools before applying. After all, how can you claim to really know an MBA program well — and be certain that you want to go there — when you’ve never even visited the school? This is especially true for the most competitive programs, where being an informed applicant may make the difference between an acceptance letter and heartbreak.

Harvard Business School has always presented a bit of a problem for applicants, particularly over the past few years, when its Round 1 application deadlines has crept up to the beginning of October. Harvard’s famous case-study method makes for a unique classroom experience, and the school does open some first-year classes to applicant visitors, but Harvard doesn’t do this until after its Round 1 deadline has already passed. Unless they visit the HBS the previous academic year, Round 1 applicants have to submit their applications before they ever set foot in a classroom and see the case-study method for themselves.

Harvard Business School, home to some of the brightest business minds in academia. What could all of those brains possibly do during the summer, when they don’t have to worry about teaching courses and can instead focus on pure intellectual pursuits (and perhaps consulting gigs)? An article in the June, 2011, edition of the HBS Alumni Bulletin asked just that question, and the answers make for an interesting read… and just might inspire your own summer reading list.

We most enjoyed reading what authors, books, and magazines made it onto each professor’s “guilty pleasure” reading list:

It must be spring, because Harvard Business School has just released its application essays and deadlines for the 2011-2012 admissions season. Note that these are for Harvard’s traditional MBA program; we covered the HBS 2+2 Program application a couple of weeks ago, although the two applications have become very similar to one another.

Here are the new essays and deadlines, taken from Harvard’s site. Our comments follow in italics:

The Harvard Business School admissions committee has just released its admissions essays for the HBS 2+2 Program for the coming year. Today we’ll dig into the program’s application deadlines and those essays.

Regarding deadlines, note that the big change since last year is that there are now four deadlines, vs. one single summer deadline for the program. Even though the window in which you can apply is now more wide open, note that the program is still designed with current college juniors in mind. (HBS phrases it as anyone who will “be graduating from your college or university between October 1, 2011 and September 30, 2012,” which mostly applies to those who are just wrapping up their junior year in college.)

Harvard Business School doesn’t need to do much to market itself to applicants. Outside of the extensive work the HBS admissions team has done in recent years to spread the word about its relatively new HBS 2+2 Program, Harvard is more concerned with identifying which applicants fit the school best than with encouraging applicants to apply.

Here at Veritas Prep, we have no shortage of inquiries from clients who are certain they want to go to HBS. Once we dig a little deeper to get at their reasons, though, many of them realize they still have a lot more homework to do. Without a doubt, it doesn’t get more prestigious than HBS. But, before you apply, you really need to understand a few important things about the HBS experience.

With Harvard Business School releasing its Round 1 admissions decisions yesterday, we thought it would be fun to post the following question: How much would you pay for a seat in the HBS Class of 2013?

Of course, Harvard doesn’t sell seats in its class (unless you get a building named after you; we’d have to think that wouldn’t hurt your admissions chances). But what if you could write a check to guarantee yourself a spot in next year’s entering class? $100? $1,000? $1,000,000?

If you were wondering whether the 2010-2011 MBA admissions season could really upon us already after Wharton released its application deadlines last week, then wonder no more. Yesterday Harvard Business School announced its application deadlines and admissions essays for the 2010-2011 season. Here they are, taken from Harvard’s site. Our comments are in italics:

Yesterday Harvard Business School announced that Nitin Nohria, the Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration at HBS, will become the School’s 10th dean, replacing current Dean Jay Light on July 1, 2010.

If you’ve been reading our blog for a while, you no doubt have picked up on the fact that Harvard Business School has been the most vocal among top business schools about trying to attract younger applicants. By “younger” we mean that, while the mean number of years of work experience for students entering top business schools is still around 5 (note that’s the number of years of full-time work experience at matriculation, not when they submit their applications), Harvard has made a point of encouraging applicants to apply with fewer than three years of experience. In fact, nearly half of the Class of 2011‘s 937 students has no more than three years of full-time work experience.

Yesterday Jay Light, who has served as Dean of Harvard Business School for the past five years, announced that he will retire next June. The announcement comes nearly 40 years to the day after Light first joined the HBS faculty.

Harvard Business School’s Round 2 deadline is still almost two months away, but we know that thousands of applicants are already gearing up for their Round 2 HBS applications. We thought this would be a good time to share some snippets from Veritas Prep’s Annual Reports, our in-depth insider’s guides to 15 of the world’s top business schools. Our Annual reports are absolutely free — all you have to do is register to access all of them — but we thought we’d share some snippets here to help get you started in your HBS research.

On Friday Harvard Business School’s Dee Leopold posted a brief update on the HBS admissions blog regarding the admissions office’s plans for Round 1 interview invitations. The key takeaway is that Harvard is not yet done sending out invitations, although the number of remaining invitations is certainly dwindling:

On Monday The Harbus ran an interview with HBS Dean Jay Light, covering a variety of important topics ranging from the school’s push abroad to Harvard’s reaction to the recent financial crisis. Most interesting for business school applicants, though, was Light’s answer to a question about whether or not HBS plans to increase its class size any time soon.

The August issue of Vanity Fair is flying off of newsstand shelves due to high profile articles on Heath Ledger’s last days and Sarah Palin’s political turmoil; however, arguably the most interesting article in the magazine is a feature on Harvard’s current financial troubles.

Harvard Business School has released its application deadlines and admissions essays for the 2008-2009 season. Here they are, taken from Harvard’s site. Our comments are in italics:

Due to the current state of affairs with the economy, many people have been questioning business school programs. Can we blame them for our economic woes? Should they have done more (or less?) to help us avoid the situation? Do they need to be changed/fixed? Is that even possible? Are they even relevant any more?

In light of such questioning, the Harvard Business Review has begun an online discussion with many experts weighing in. The disucssion is already underway, with two articles (and one audio opinion) having been posted.

Last week Harvard Business School’s Dee Leopold posted an update on HBS second-year students’ job prospects for this year. This update is especially interesting to anyone who is preparing to leave a steady job this year to enter a full-time MBA program.

Recently the Harvard Business School admissions office posted a podcast interview with Dee Leopold, Managing Director of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid.

The interview started off with the question that Leopold hears most often: “What are you looking for in an applicant?” Leopold broke it down into “qualities” and “experiences,” and explained that they look for common qualities but diverse experiences in the incoming class.

In another sign of economic stress, Harvard has announced that its $36.9 billion endowment may face “unprecedented” losses in the coming year.

While a Harvard spokeperson declined to comment specifically on how the anticipated losses would affect university operations, the university has confirmed that it will continue to offer free tuition to students whose families earn less than $60,000 a year, and offer reduced tuition to families with annual incomes of as much as $180,000.

There is a great feature on Harvard Law School from Sunday’s Boston Globe that puts a whole new spin on the “is Stanford catching Yale?” question asked on this blog just a few weeks ago.

According to some of our own clients, last Wednesday Harvard Business School sent interview invitations to select HBS 2+2 Program applicants. (Congrats, folks!)

HBS also sent rejection letters to applicants on the same day, and in the letter the school explained that there were over 600 applicants to the program. Given the estimated number of applicants Harvard will accept, this would put the projected acceptance rate of the HBS 2+2 Program in line with the general school’s acceptance rate (in the low- to mid-teens).

If you’re a college junior with a liberal arts bent, the HBS 2+2 Program could be right for you. This marks the first year of admissions for Harvard Business School’s new program targeting college undergrads. According to our MBA admission consulting team — which offers specialized consulting for students applying to the HBS 2+2 Program – the new program has created quite a buzz on campus.

If anything marks the official beginning of the 2008-2009 application season, this is it: Harvard Business School just released its deadlines and application essays for the Class of 2011.

Obviously, one of the primary factors that govern a graduate school applicant’s enrollment decision is The Almighty Dollar. As in: how much will this cost, what kind of aid can I get, and what sort of earning potential am I looking at once I finish? Analyzing educational cost is a complicated task because students must first identify actual numbers (sticker price – available scholarship and grant money) and then put those numbers in the proper context by understanding loan repayment and properly estimating future salary figures.

In the interest of being environmentally aware, both Harvard and Yale have announced new plans for LEED-certified buildings. Harvard has been working with a German company to develop a new science center that will be gold-certified and twice as clean in regards to greenhouse gases as other similar research facilities. Yale has been working with a London-based company, developing a new building for their School of Management, which will triple the size of their business school.

We wanted to bring your attention to the new deferred-admission program launched at Harvard, called the HBS 2+2 Program. The program is designed to reach out to high achieving college juniors, who can get guaranteed admission to Harvard Business School, after graduating college and accruing two years of approved work experience. It seems like a great idea, and will most likely be beneficial to both the targeted students and to HBS.

Harvard is consistently one of, if not THE top ranked business programs in the world. So it is to be expected that not everybody who applies will get in. If you’re in that group, however, don’t be disappointed. You are definitely not alone. In fact, here’s an entire list of successful people who were also denied admission to Harvard.

In three years, Harvard amassed $600 million in alumni donations, which will go toward financial aid, global outreach endeavors, and educational technology, amongst other things. The allocation to financial aid, a whopping $114 million, will directly benefit eighty percent of their students. Such aids allow students to graduate with less debt, allowing them more freedom to pursue non-profit endeavors, should they so choose. Securing this large sum in the form of donations took three years worth of personal one-on-one visits to alumni, to explain the goal of the campaign. However, they managed it, the amazing thing is that they did.

That was the name of the Harvard Business School’s first ever fully online course. The class was created and offered in the hopes of facilitating better integration of advancing technology with education. The course utilized a message board for discussion of ideas, and the professor was also active in these discussions (as well as being contactable via e-mail). HBS plans to offer the course again next fall, though they are looking at ways to improve on the experience.