Rejected By Harvard Business School? You’ve Got To Be Kidding!

WHY EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE ARE TURNED AWAY WITHOUT AN INTERVIEW BY HARVARD

That is why it is often difficult to predict with great confidence why a specific individual was turned down for admission. Dings often mean that a school just liked other candidates a bit more than the ones they turn down. Rejection, however, can still be nuanced or rather obvious. Typically, the most common reasons for getting dinged are varied–and often there is a combination of them. Bad timing. Poor execution on the application. A low GPA. Graduating with your bachelor’s from a less-than-stellar college. Working for an employer that is not known for sending candidates to Harvard or Stanford. A less-than-enthusiastic recommendation. No visible advancement in your job. Or a confusing or unlikely goal, given your previous work history.

As always, we turned to Kreisberg for his instant analysis. To an Indian-born Canadian whose was a CPA national medalist and earned a first class rank from the University of Waterloo in accounting and works for PwC, he had some bad news: “PwC PWC is often a hunting ground for under represented minorities and a tough place to come from otherwise. especially for Indian males. The number of Indian males admitted to HBS in the past 10 years with ONLY Big 3 experience like you, even if in the strategy part of a Big 3, could be a SHOCKINGLY low number, especially if you took that number and subtracted kids with connections.”

To an 33-year-old associate working in risk management and compliance for J.P. Morgan and who formerly worked as a mutual fund accounting at BNY Mellon, he offers some tough love. “Accounting and compliance are not HBS feeder jobs, and that sank the rest of your application,” he explained. “And if they had any trouble squeezing the ding trigger, 33 years old made it easier. Guys with your profile often get in at Duke, Darden, USC, etc. Reach is maybe Tuck, and you are their type. All that said, 33 is old any place.”

‘A LOT OF THE DINGS ARE MORE INTERESTING THAN MANY OF THE KIDS WHO GOT AN INTERIVEW’

Sandy Kreisberg, founder of HBSGuru.com

To several re-applicants who didn’t make the cut yet again, Kreisberg is wondering whether three is an adcom file called “never” which “contains interview kids from last time that were sooo annoying that the adcom just had to say, “NOT ONLY IS THAT KID NOT GETTING IN, THAT KID IS NEVER GETTING IN.” Hence, the NEVER file.” Yet, as he reminds many of those who applied earlier, the most important issue in applying again is to emphasize what is new in your application.

With profiles as strong as these, even Kreisberg is sometimes stumped. Indeed, perhaps the most frustrating response he may offer is this one: “Dunno, I like you, and obviously admissions didn’t like you enough.” For these round one dings, without interviews, Kreisberg says he is finding a lot of them “more interesting than many of the kids who have signed up for his R1 mock interview service. Although some of those kids (who did get interviews) are mild oddballs, so you just cannot say in some blanket way that Harvard’s adcom does not take chances.”

In fact, Kreisberg says, there is a lot of overlap between applicants gaining  an interview and candidates who have been dinged. “You’d be hard to say what the difference is, especially in finance, IB, and PE, where there are just a lot of high-stat and gold-plated firm kids, and you cannot take them all. There are kids who got interviewed R1 with GMATs below 710 but they are URM or in less represented fields or oddball nationalities.”

At the very least, his thoughts on these profiles and stats offer some insight to the disappointed.

If you’d like to get Sandy’s assessment on a round one ding, post it in this thread here.

‘Released’ by Harvard Business School Without an Interview in Round One