HBS Application Down To Just One Essay

A post-interview reflection, first required by HBS last year, will remain, to be filed with admissions within 24 hours. Some applicants who had to travel long distances to the HBS campus for an interview have complained that the 24-hour turnaround was unfair because it meant they had to compose the reflection on an airplane. But Leopold believes the deadline also reflects “the real world.”

Leopold suggested that the latest modification was informed by some of last year’s changes. For the roughly 1,800 applicants who were invited to an admissions interview in this past admissions cycle, the school asked for a post-interview reflection to be emailed within 24 hours.

The HBS prompt was simple and direct: “You just had your HBS interview. Tell us about it. Did we get to know you?”

Leopold said “the interview model will stay the same, by invitation only and by members of the admissions board. It’s 30 minutes long. Many people choose to come to campus because we will have a full day of programming for them. So they will learn more about us. We will also go to other cities and offer interviews by Skype as well.” Leopold said HBS admissions officers plan to do in-person interviews on the West Coast and in New York as well as in Asia, Europe and South America.

HBS ESPECIALLY LIKED THE VARIATION OF THE POST-REFLECTION

Leopold said she especially liked “the variation of the post-reflection” which is one reason she made the single essay less specific and more open. “The anxiety candidates feel through this process is only natural. So helping candidates have the last word is good,” she said.

“Last year our big innovation was the post-interview reflection,” Leopold added. “There was no word limit on that and about 1,800 candidates who we interviewed had the last word. It was a gift for them and an opportunity for us to see how they experienced the process. We learned about ourselves.

“We think it was a win-win. There was great variance. Some people spoke exclusively about what they wished they had said in the interview. Some told us about their day on campus and others about their travel to the interview. It was our platform to examine how we could streamline the application to move candidates to the next stage. Our guiding principle is to be rigorous and very friendly.”

FEWER RECOMMENDERS WILL MAKE IT EASIER AND LESS RISKY TO APPLY

Leopold said she reduced the number of required recommenders to two from three to make applying easier and less risky for applicants who currently work for organizations that have not been traditional feeders into Harvard Business School. “I think we can do our job with two and I hope that this may remove at least one hurdle for prospective candidates who come from organizations where there is not a tried-and-true path for talented folks to leave for business school,” she said.

At many of Harvard’s top feeder companies, such as McKinsey, Bain, BCG and Booz, the expectation is that an employee will work for just a few years and then move on to graduate education. But at the vast majority of companies, employers may be less understanding of an employee’s desire to leave their organization for business school. So asking for a recommendation from that employer could put the MBA candidate at some risk.

“There are lots of organizations where the model is you are going to leave to go to business school in two to three years,” she told Poets&Quants. “The whole system is set up to make that easy for you. But that’s not the way the entire world works. So we don’t want candidates to have to take a risk by telling people they work for that they are applying to business school. We’re trying to balance out what we need to know with helping them manage that risk.”

ROUND ONE DEADLINE IS EIGHT DAYS EARLIER THAN LAST YEAR

The new round one deadline is eight days earlier than last year’s Sept. 24^th date, itself the earliest deadline ever set by Harvard Business School. Leopold said her decision to move up the deadline is largely a function of a changing admissions cycle over the years. Only two years ago, the round one deadline was Oct. 3. In contrast, the round one deadline at Wharton is Oct. 1 and at Stanford and INSEAD, Oct. 2.

“We’re always asking what are traditions and what are best practices for us?,” she said. “We used to do outreach (to potential applicants) in September. All the business schools would be on the road in September and then people would start to write their applications for November. You have to say that July is now the new September in terms of the cycle. We have outreach events next week in Europe and after that in Asia. So when Sept. 16^th rolls around, we will have completed our outreach cycle.”