Accepted Admissions Consulting Blog » Harvard Business School

Harvard Business School 2013 Essay Questions and Tips

Accepted.com — Wed, 23 May 2012 20:53:26 +0000

The 2013 Harvard MBA application questions are now online. And they are entirely new. A few of the more significant changes:

Just two required 400-word essay
An early round 1 deadline (September 24) and decision notification date (Dec. 12)
An entirely new component: A required “written reflection” on the interview for anyone invited to interview to be submitted within 24 hours of the interview. Poets and Quants says that this reflective piece also is a maximum 400 words, but I could not find that info on Harvard’s web site.

Harvard‘s instructions and question are in black below; my comments and tips are in blue. Let the 2012-2013 MBA application season begin!

All applicants must submit answers to two essay questions listed below.

Essays

1. Tell us about something you did well. (400 words)

First, read “Who Are We Looking For,” which clearly lays out Harvard’s selection criteria. They are:

Habit of Leadership
Analytical Aptitude and Appetite
Engaged Community Citizenship

Your transcript and test score will either show #2 or not. Allow your essays to reveal as much as possible about #1 and #3.

For essay #1, what do you really want them to know that shows you as a leader and contributor with impact? That’s what you want to write about. You do not want to write a treatise on leadership or community citizenship or even ethics and entrepreneurship. You don’t want to answer Why MBA or Why Harvard. You do want to tell a short story about something you are truly proud of, preferably something showing you in a leadership role contributing to your community or employer and having a profound impact.

Tell the challenge you faced, your response, and the result of your actions. Briefly reflect on what you learned and why you are so proud of this “something.” Be concrete, specific, and vivid.

2. Tell us about something you wish you had done better. (400 words)

“Oh no! Do I have to write about a…. a mistake?!?”

Yes. Harvard wants to admit people of strong character who are self-aware, willing to admit to and learn from mistakes, and able to bounce back from setbacks. In a word, Harvard wants people who are resilient. Your response to this question should reveal all those qualities. Again, say what happened, what went wrong, and what you should have done. If you can, discuss another similar situation where you were more successful because you learned your lessons the first time around.And if you just happened to be in a leadership role when you learned this particular lesson, all the better in establishing your habit of leadership.

As always, allow both these essays to show you in different arenas of your life. Perhaps the first can be in a professional setting and the second can show you engaged in community service, an extra-curricular activity, or a hobby.

Post Interview Reflection

Following the interview, candidates are required to submit a written reflection using our online application system. This must be submitted within 24 hours following the completion of the interview. Detailed instructions will be provided to those applicants who are invited to the interview process.

It is difficult to provide a tip on this one because your essay will be so dependent on the interview. You will want to think back on the interview and focus on one or two points that you really want to make sure came across and perhaps did not. Your essay or letter should not simply be how much you are dying to go to Harvard; it should supplement the conversation you had during the HBS interview. And, like your required MBA essays, it should be succinct.

Final thoughts

Dr. Nitin Nohria, Harvard Business School’s dean, is having a strong impact on the school. I recommend you watch this TED talk that he delivered last year. However, your essays should be about you — not this video.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

HBS Application Deadlines

Round Due Date Notification

Round 1 September 24, 2012 December 12, 2012

Round 2 January 7, 2013 March 27, 2013

Round 3 April 8, 2013 May 15, 2013

*Applications must be submitted online by 12 noon Boston time.

If you would like professional guidance with your Harvard MBA application, please consider Accepted’s MBA essay editing and MBA admissions consulting or our Harvard Business School MBA Packages, which include advising, editing, interview coaching, and a resume edit for the HBS MBA application.

By Linda Abraham, president and founder of Accepted.com and co-author of the new, definitive book on MBA admissions, MBA Admission for Smarties: The No-Nonsense Guide to Acceptance at Top Business Schools .

Harvard Business School will reject approximately 90% of all applicants. Be in the 10%. Apply with the help of an experienced Accepted.com admissions consultant. Engage us now to be ready by September 24. To save on our fees, click on the button below.

Tags: 2013 MBA Application, Harvard Business School, HBS, MBA Admissions, Uncategorized

US News 2013 MBA Rankings

Linda Abraham — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:03:34 +0000

And here are the top 10 per US News & World Report:

2013 Rank	School	2012 Rank
1	Harvard	2
1	Stanford	1
3	University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)	3
4	MIT (Sloan)	3
4	Northwestern (Kellogg)	5
4	Chicago Booth	5
7	UC Berkeley (Haas)	7
8	Columbia	9
9	Dartmouth (Tuck)	7
10	Yale	10

As you can see the changes are somewhere between slight and miniscule. Larger jumps and changes occurred outside the top 10, but the statistical significance of these changes becomes questionable due to fewer responses farther down the list.

And how “reliable” are these rankings? Wait a bit. We’ll be writing more on that.

Tags: Chicago Booth, Columbia Business School, Dartmouth Tuck, Harvard Business School, MBA Admissions, MIT Sloan, Northwestern Kellogg, Rankings, Stanford GSB, UC Berkeley Haas, US News, Wharton, Yale SOM

WSJ Interviews Dee Leopold: HBS Admitting More Engineers

Linda Abraham — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:29:28 +0000

Harvard Business School

Today’s Wall St. Journal provides an excellent interview with Dee Leopold, Director of Admission at Harvard Business School.

A few highlights:

WSJ: “Ms. Leopold personally reads applications for the 1,800 candidates invited to interview. About half of those are accepted.”
Dee Leopold: “Sometimes the challenge in the essays is to be honest and to be clear. It may be helpful for someone to say, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ De-jargonizing is helpful.”
Dee Leopold: “The best recommendations have a lot of verbs. They say, ‘She did this,’ versus adjectives that simply describe you.” (LA: Same is true of MBA essays and interview responses.)
Dee Leopold: “ We like to think that our arrogance detectors are pretty good. We’re looking for confidence, with humility.”
Dee Leopold: “I do see more people coming from entrepreneurial backgrounds, and we have more engineers. “

The last point was particularly timely because yesterday we uploaded our latest video, MBA Admissions Tips for Engineers, to Accepted’s YouTube channel, Eye on Admissions. If you are an engineer applying to HBS or other top MBA programs, the simple approach provided in this video will help you “de-jargonize” and focus on what’s important to your readers.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

By Linda Abraham, President and Founder of Accepted.com, co-author of MBA Admission for Smarties: The No-Nonsense Guide to Acceptance at Top Business Schools.

Tags: entrepreneurship, Harvard Business School, Harvard HBS, Letters of Recommendation, MBA Admissions, MBA essay, video

MBA Admissions News Roundup

Accepted.com — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:00:30 +0000

New Semester Begins with Good News- BusinessWeek reports that MBA candidates are coming back to campus for their final semester with interviews and internships in their back pockets. While there was concern that increased recruiting in 2011 meant that there might be a drop in 2012, the increase in on-campus recruiting and the fact that internship interviews are up 13% on some college campuses indicates that the job market will be strong for 2012 MBA graduates as well.
Get Ready for Round Two- Harvard Business School announced that its second round interviews will take place between February 15 and March 9. HBS will be interviewing on the HBS campus as well as in London, Paris, Shanghai, Mumbai, Dubai, San Francisco, Palo Alto, and New York. Invitations for round two interviews will be sent out on January 31, February 7, and February 14. Remember, what day you receive your interview invitation is not a reflection of the strength of your candidacy. If you are not chosen as a candidate you will be notified by February 14.
New MiM in Arizona- Poets and Quants announced that Arizona State University is starting a new nine-month Master’s in Management (MiM) program, which will cost $36,844 for non-residents and $22,750 for in-state residents. While the accelerated MiM is a very attractive degree because you save money and get your diploma in a short amount of time, graduates of these programs earn much less than MBA grads and miss out on the important opportunity of a summer internship. Regardless, MiMs are growing in number and had a 69% increase in applications last year. The Carey School has started accepting application for fall 2012.
Out With Banking And In With Manufacturing- The Economist looks at a survey carried out by Antal, a recruitment agency, that shows the best hiring prospects in the beginning of 2012 will be for professionals and managers in manufacturing. Yet a recent survey conducted by Universum shows that American MBAs still prefer financial services giants such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Blackstone Group and Morgan Stanley as their top career choices. Since these banks have cut down on hiring, schools are pushing graduates to consider jobs in the energy sector or “dirty” industries, such as metals, mining, engineering and tobacco.

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Tags: Harvard Business School, Harvard HBS, MBA Admissions

MBA Admissions News Roundup

Accepted.com — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:00:11 +0000

HBS Takes on the World- Poets and Quants reports that Harvard Business School is making a major change to its MBA curriculum—for the first time ever it has decided to send an entire class abroad. Starting this month HBS will send 900 MBA students to 10 foreign countries as part of a new weeklong “global immersion experience.” In groups of six, students will work with 140 organizations, creating new products in developing markets. P&Q is calling it “arguably the boldest experiment ever carried out in graduate business education.”
The New Business School Dean- The Chronicle of Education looks at a report published by the Korn/Ferry Institute, “The Business School Dean Redefined,” which shows how the business school dean model has recently changed. B-school deans are no longer individuals with one specific specialty in economics or finance; rather, they are better known for their management skills. Sally Blount, Dean of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and Nitin Nohria, Dean of Harvard Business School, are two examples of deans that have “CEO-style breadth and organizational expertise over more-narrow academic mastery.”
EMBAs Are The Big New Year’s Resolution- Advisor One looks at how EMBAs have become a must among midcareer financial execs looking for new ways to manage their businesses. Linda Abraham, founder of Accepted.com and co-author of the new book, MBA Admission for Smarties, explains, “these programs are looking for progress at work, responsibility at work, leadership at work,” so “your resume has to resonate.” To learn more about how to get accepted to the right programs, check out MBA Admission for Smarties!
B-School Deans Focus on Creativity in the New Year- Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports that business school deans are dedicated to students thinking “deeply, creatively, and boldly” about global issues and the greater good in 2012. Every year Bloomberg BusinessWeek asks b-school deans what their New Year’s resolutions are; this year their goals are about creating “more thoughtful and present leaders” for the future.
Using International Admissions to Your Advantage- A new analysis by Poets and Quants shows which schools have more students from different geographic areas. These stats can help you understand how you might fit into a school’s student body. However, realize that if you don’t know the percentage of different international students in the applicant pool at any given school, you really don’t know which schools favor which geographic areas.

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Tags: EMBA, Harvard Business School, MBA Admissions, Northwestern Kellogg

Poets and Quants Releases Their Own Rankings

Accepted.com — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:00:55 +0000

Poets and Quants decided to stop merely criticizing other business school rankings and created a ranking of its own (“The Top 100 U.S. MBA Programs of 2011”). For the second year in a row P&Q’s rankings are a composite of the five major MBA rankings: Bloomberg BusinessWeek, The Economist, The Financial Times, Forbes and US News & World Report. As a composite of other rankings, the P&Q rankings reflect surveys of corporate recruiters, MBA graduates, and deans, faculty publication records, median GPA and GMAT scores of entering students, as well as the salary and employment statistics of the latest graduating class.

For the second year in a row Harvard Business School was named the top MBA program in the US, with Stanford Graduate School of Business coming in second, University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business coming in third, University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School coming in fourth and Columbia Business School claiming the fifth spot.

John Byrne, editor-in-chief of Poets and Quants, explained that each of the rankings has a different level of impact on the P&Q rankings: “BusinessWeek, U.S. News and Forbes each have a weight of 25%. The FT is at 15% and The Economist is at 10%.” Basically, the P&Q ranking is a weighted average of all the rankings. Byrne believes that by combining these rankings in “a system that takes into account each of their strengths as well as their flaws,” P&Q can create the ideal ranking system void of the “anomalies” and “statistical distortions” of the other rankings.

Yet, developing a weighted average of a bunch of flawed stats does not compensate, much less eliminate, those flaws. In the end, P&Q rankings are guilty of the same mistakes as the rankings they criticize. Their one redeeming quality is that Poets and Quants publishes the index scores on which their composite rankings are based, giving readers the ability to decide how meaningful the differences in ranking are to them.

The data provided by P&Q (as well as the individual rankings that constitute P&Q’s) is far more valuable than the actual rankings. Averages frequently hide what’s important – like salaries in a particular region or field, or admissions stats for different test scores, qualifications and groups. But with the index scores applicants can prioritize what they are looking for in schools and then see how high specific schools scored in those categories.

Bottom line: You need to do your own ranking based on your own values, not a weighted average of others’ values.

Tags: Chicago Booth, Columbia Business School, Harvard Business School, MBA Admissions, Rankings, Stanford GSB, Wharton

Accepted’s Most in 2011

Accepted.com — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:00:51 +0000

What worked for you last year? At least what worked at Accepted.com for our readers? And that’s YOU!

Here are a few posts, articles, and resources that proved particularly popular:

Top Ten Most Visited Accepted Admissions Blog Posts of 2011

5 Most Downloaded Special Reports of 2011

5 Most Popular Articles

6 Most Viewed Webinars

5 Most Visited Chats Pages:

With the year drawing to a close, I have a request. We moved to a new blogging platform in September, and since then, you folks have really stopped asking us questions. On the old blog, we frequently received profile evaluation requests and “what are my chances?” questions on school tip posts. We welcome them! And miss them in our new abode. Don’t be shy. If you have a question or would like your profile evaluated, just ask.

And what’s the mostest of the mostest at Accepted? The absolute best? YOU! Our readers, followers, circlers, fans, friends, participants, and most of all, our clients. Thanks for a wonderful 2011.

By Linda Abraham, founder and president of Accepted.com, co-author of MBA Admission for Smarties: The No-Nonsense Guide to Acceptance at Top Business Schools.

Applicants, learn the 5 fatal flaws to avoid in your application essay, statement of purpose, personal statement, or secondary essay with our FREE special report, 5 Fatal Flaws.

Tags: Admissions, Chicago Booth, College Admissions, Columbia Business School, Grad School Admissions, Harvard Business School, INSEAD, Law School Admissions, London Business School, MBA Admissions, Medical School Admissions, Northwestern Kellogg, NYU Stern, Rankings, Stanford GSB

MBA Admissions News Roundup

Accepted.com — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:00:34 +0000

The New GMAT Is Coming!- The Wall Street Journal looks at the struggle future b-school applicants will face with the new “integrated reasoning” section of the GMAT. While the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) announced the new section a year and a half ago, with registration for the test opening this month the details about the changes have only come out recently. According to many test-prep experts applicants are rushing to take the GMAT before June to avoid the new section.
Industries Fighting Over Harvard Students- Poets and Quants reports that for only 708 MBA students, 1,549 recruiters came to Harvard Business School this year (more than two companies for every one student, if you do the math). Although Harvard rarely shares information about which recruiters come to campus, P&Q lists all 1,549 alphabetically. The 170 companies under the letter C alone beat out the number of companies that recruit at some other business schools. To learn more about who is recruiting Harvard students, check out the full list here.
Need A Conscience for an MBA- The New York Times reports the story of Jeremy Bedzow, a graduate of the IE University’s MBA program, who chose to be part of a social enterprise after completing business school. Bedzow is from Saudi Arabia where “there’s an incredible discrepancy between capabilities and opportunities.” So he began working for Microsoft, helping them build a model program that provides information technology training to young people for private sector jobs. While this may seem like an unusual path, Bedzow is one of many MBA graduates who are now putting social values at the forefront of their careers.
Ross Takes EMBA to the West Coast- Michigan Ross School of Business announced that it is offering its 20-month Executive MBA program in Los Angeles, starting in August 2012. The school has been getting a lot of applicants from the West Coast and decided that many executives may be too busy to travel for their education so it makes sense to set up a program in LA. The program will follow a once-a-month format with programming from Friday morning through Saturday afternoon. Ross will start accepting applications for the program in January.
Base Salaries on the Rise- Poets and Quants announced that a Columbia Business School grad was offered $300,000-a-year starting salary at a hedge fund with a guaranteed a bonus of $235,000. While this does not beat the Stanford MBA grad who was offered an annual compensation of $675,000, it’s not too bad either. However, more important than the exception is the norm: the average Columbia graduate working at a fund earns $125,000 a year, and the median base salary for Columbia’s graduating class is $110,000.

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Tags: Columbia Business School, GMAC, GMAT, Harvard Business School, MBA Admissions, Michigan Ross

MBA Admissions News Roundup

Accepted.com — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 17:00:43 +0000

EMBA Programs Are A’ Changin- BusinessWeek reports that EMBA programs are undergoing a shift, as fewer companies are paying for their employees to get EMBAs. More and more students are enrolling in EMBA programs as a means of making a career change, and they expect their school’s career services to help them. Yet EMBA career counseling still does not include actual recruiting, and programs will have to evolve to keep up with the changing nature of EMBAs.
Oxford Announces New Dual Degree Program- BusinessWeek looks at University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School’s new dual degree MBA. Oxford’s “1+1 MBA Program” will offer students the choice of staying one more year at school to specialize in an area connected to their future career and earn a master’s degree at the same time. Currently, the four departments that are part of the 1+1 program are: the School of Geography and the Environment, the Department of Education, the Oxford Internet Institute, and the Department of Computer Science.
Moral Humility Could Get You Into B-School- Forbes reports that although getting accepted to schools like Harvard and Stanford may be tough, the key to acceptance is not necessarily in your GMATs or recommendations. The way to get into top MBA programs is often through humility. If an applicant can show admissions committees that they are being themselves, and that they possess “confidence without the attitude,” that will impress top business schools. In fact, Nitin Nohria, Dean of Harvard Business School, speaks about the importance of “Practicing Moral Humility” at TEDx New England.
Foreign Students Face Rejection- Fortune reports that, according to a new study by Poets and Quants, foreign students from China and India are facing more rejection from US business schools then applicants from Europe, Latin America and the US. Due to the large number of applicants coming from China and India, these applicants are more than four to five times likely to be turned down than their foreign counterparts. B-schools explain that they have no choice, since 44% of MBA applicants come from China and India, and many of them are unaware of the hiring challenges that will face them once they graduate.
MBAs and Environmental Responsibility- BusinessWeek looks at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management’s Entrepreneurship Development course, which takes place in Chile’s 450,000-acre future Patagonia National Park. Pepperdine takes 20 MBA students to this remote area to teach them about sustainability and environmental responsibility in business. The goal of the rigorous five-day class is to give students the opportunity to see environmental issues first hand so that they can approach them differently in the business world.

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Tags: EMBA, Harvard Business School, international student, MBA Admissions, Oxford Said, Stanford GSB

Get Your MBA Admission Smarts ON!

Accepted.com — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 15:00:36 +0000

Are you looking for ways to boost your MBA admissions IQ? Interested in acquiring wisdom that will send you to the head of the class? Want advice that covers every aspect of the MBA admissions process that’s all wrapped up nicely in a single, coherent, and succinct BOOK?

Look no further – the MBA book of all books is here, MBA Admission for Smarties: The No-Nonsense Guide to Acceptance at Top Business Schools, written by Accepted.com founder, Linda Abraham, and editor Judy Gruen. And now, for a very limited time only (Monday, Dec. 5 – Tuesday, Dec. 6) you can purchase this must-have book for $10 OFF the cover price by using coupon code SMARTIES at checkout. That’s almost 2/3 off the list price!

In MBA Admission for Smarties you will learn how to:

Determine “fit” with a program.
Establish your post-MBA goals and present them in a compelling goals essay.
Write dazzling, memorable application essays.
Secure winning letters of recommendation.
Optimize your MBA application resume.

…and much, much more!

So what are you waiting for?

Be smart. Buy MBA Admission for Smarties now!

(Non-U.S. residents should buy MBA Admission for Smarties from Amazon.com where international shipping is available. Sorry – no coupon available to ship outside the U.S.)

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