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

Mr. Bank Coder

• 780 GMAT
• 3.75 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in mathematical economics at a non-target university
• Work experience includes two years at a top bank performing a mix of coding/finance (automation) but not in the front office.
• Recommendations very strong but silver for sure
• Extracurricular involvement as head of junior board for my city’s branch of a top nationwide charity; have raised over $30k for charity in the past year and volunteered over 200 hours; do economic research and work on the board of another charity
• Goal: To leverage technical skills at junior level and sales/fundraising skills at the higher level in order to become a leading investment banking dealmaker and in the long run (20+ yrs) start an investment banking boutique
• Trilingual, professional-quality guitarist
• “Essay talked about how I am grateful for growing up in such a diverse set of environments, from a low-income neighborhood to a wealthy prep school on a scholarship to the financial sector. Talked a bit about my work in automation and how automation is a major part of the future of all sectors of our economy”
• Half-Spanish but non-URM male

Sandy’s Analysis: Something of a surprise, but it could be your function. After all, coding and automation is not a favored one at Harvard Business School. You would have done better implementing software like SAP at consulting shops as a first job, and then transitioned into more of a strategy gig.

In your next life, play the Spanish card more, and use Mom’s name as your middle name. Middle names can come and go, just don’t make up an Hispanic middle name. The real suggestion is to start using your mother’s Hispanic name as middle name as early as possible, and also cement connections to the Hispanic community, well before you apply.

BTW, background checks by business schools are not teams of agents digging up records about you. They are more typically some kid in India confirming that your recommendation writer 1 and 2 actually wrote those recs and that you are actually employed at the place you say, etc.

Also not sure those goals did you any good. Becoming a leading dealmaker is not something they relate to. Stated that way vs. ‘impactful investor, blah, blah . . .and if tone was wrong, especially in essay, that could be another issue in additon to your screwy job. This would be especially true if you came off as a guy pissed about being stuck in the wrong part of the bank and just really eager to join the money-making, deal-making dickheads with the 1000 dollar shoes.

I am on your side, but having a job which is either hard to describe or one you created especially with the word spreadsheet and application floating in the mix, is not a winning start to an HBS app. I’m sure it is more complicated, and it sounds like you have done notable work, but HBS does not fully know how to process one-off successes like yours. So that could have been ONE problem. Defining what cohort you are in could have been another. Anything that requires more thinking on their part is potentially dangerous.