You Won’t Believe Who Harvard Business School Rejected This Month

Mr. Boutique Strategist

• 720 GMAT (48Q, 41V)
• 3.5 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in business from a non-HYP Ivy
• Work experience includes two years at a non-sexy Fortune 100 company in corporate strategy, two years at a boutique strategy consulting (no-name firm); promoted once at each; Fortune group had sent people to all of the M7, except Harvard
• Extracurricular involvement as the co-founder of an education-focused nonprofit
• Goal: To use the MBA to pivot into a CPG-related industry that “I’m passionate about, and have shown through various extra-curriculars; not a typical tech/finance/consulting”
• Very strong recommendations
• “HBS essay about personal struggles being a first-gen (and parents who escaped persecution) which led me to create non-profit; read by multiple HBS students who told me it was very strong
• Also dinged without interview by Columbia Business School
• 26-year-old Hispanic underrepresented minority (father’s last name) first generation American

Sandy’s Analysis: I’m a bit surprised that you didn’t get an HBS invite. One element of this could be which Fortune 100 firm you worked for because not all F-100s are created equal. A fun game is to go down the Fortune 100 list and see how long it takes to stumble across a company you never heard of. It happens fast. Check it out.

Another issue is even with companies you heard of, Harvard Business School prefers X to Y. Soooooo, if you moved from a “no-name” Fortune 100 (e.g., Amerisource-Bergin which is 16th on 100 list would to it, to a “no-name” consulting firm, that could be an issue.

It seems like your essay was done according to the better “personal victim/tear-jerker/inspirational” model and you had the right idea. They may not have thought you were Hispanic enough, or you did not stress that correctly, or you just got lost in the very competitive consulting cohort. Not sure your pivoting and odd-ish goals made a difference one way or the other, unless you appeared to be naive or super-scripted. Consumer Packaged Goods, if that is what you mean by CPG, is a serviceable goal at HBS, although it might take some ‘splainin” to kick up some passion.

Columbia ED ding on these facts is surprising as well. Only thing I can think of is that you were not convincing about your desire to attend, despite the $6k penalty. Also, how you connected dots from your Fortune-100 gig to your consulting job and ultimately to your career goals is more important at Columbia, as is the BS as to why you want to go.

Lots of kids empty the tank doing the HBS application and the Columbia app appears exhausted and slipshod in both form and content.