Dinged By Harvard Business School?

At high noon today (EST), roughly 2,000 round one applicants to Harvard Business School will be dinged, or to use the euphemism by HBS, “released.” The vast majority of those candidates will have great stats, amazing work experiences, and come from some of the world’s best undergraduate colleges.

Why were they rejected? The simplest reason is that the applicant pool at Harvard is so good–and this is true of all the elite business schools–that it’s not possible for HBS to accept them even though they are qualified to attend the school’s MBA program and do well in it.

As Dee Leopold, HBS managing director of admissions and financial aid,, puts it: “October 15 is also the date on which we will ‘release’ candidates who are not moving forward in our process. We hope that by doing this early, we are enabling this group to pursue other options sooner vs. later.”

Sandy Kreisberg, founder of HBSGuru.com

But before you pursue those other options, you’ll no doubt want to know what got you tossed out of the pile?

We asked Sandy Kreisberg, founder of HBSGuru.com who more typically does our MBA handicapping column, to take a look at the profiles and raw stats of rejected candidates and tell them why they failed to get in.

It’s no small hurdle to get into either Harvard or any of the other top business schools. The average GMAT score for latest class enrolled at HBS is 726. The undergraduate grade point averages are in nose bleed territory as well: 3.7 at Harvard. Less than 12% of HBS applicants are accepted each year.

If you also were rejected by Harvard would like an assessment from Sandy, provide your profile and stats in the comment section and he’ll get right back with his feedback.

Until then, you might want to check out:

THE 2013 DING REPORT AT HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL