MBA Handicapping: How Does Harvard Business School & Stanford GSB View HR?

When it comes to MBA programs, Stanford, Harvard, Columbia and Yale are all world-class players at or near the top of pecking order in offering the best MBA experiences. They are the schools on Joan’s target list.

With a 328 GRE score and a 3.64 GPA from a leading liberal arts college in New England, the psych major boasts two of the most admired employers on her resume. First, she worked for a FANG company in Silicon Valley for two years in an HR recruiting function. Joan (a pseudonym) since moved to a leading design consultancy as a recruiter. All told, she’ll have more than four years of full-time work experience before matriculating in the fall of 2021.

With an MBA, she’s hoping to transition into a consulting or managerial role in organizational design and change. How do elite business schools feel about HR types? Prospective students who come out of human resource roles and still want to play a role in human capital are few and far between in top MBA programs. So what does that mean for Joan?

In this episode of Friday’s With Sandy, HBSGuru.com founder Sandy Kreisberg and P&Q Editor-in-Chief John A. Byrne assess her chances of an admit at those four highly ranked business schools and offer some important advice on how she can swing the odds in her favor.

If you would like to participate in a future Fridays With Sandy webinar, you can contact Sandy and P&Q Founder John A Byrne here.

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