Class Profile: Harvard Enrolls Smallest MBA Class In Decades

Let’s Keep Harvard Healthy is the new messaging

LARGEST GROUP OF STUDENTS–27%–HAIL FROM FINANCE INDUSTRY WITH !6% FROM PE & VC FIELDS

The pre-MBA industry backgrounds of this year’s students also saw small year-over-year changes. The most notable change? A drop in students from non-profit backgrounds, including the government and education. They fell to just 6% of this year’s entering class, a two-point drop from 8% last year.

The largest industry represented in the class remains finance, with 27% of the students, down a tick from 28% last year. Some 16% of the class had jobs in venture capital and private equity, the exact same percentage as a year earlier, and 11% from financial services, down from 12%.

Students from consulting represent 15% of the new class, the same as last year, while those from the tech industry account for 13% of the class, up a single percentage point.

Healthcare and biotech students represent 7% of the class, the same as last year; 9% come from the consumer products and e-commerce industry, while 11% had been in the energy and manufacturing industries. MBA students from the military account for 5% of this year’s entering class, a single percentage point increase from last year.

MORE DETAILED REPORTING ON THE RACIAL AND ETHNIC BACKGROUNDS OF MBA STUDENTS

For the first time, HBS broke out more detailed, if somewhat confusing, breakdowns of the ethnicity and racial backgrounds of the class. The school is reporting race and ethnicity in two ways: according to federal reporting guidelines—which allows each student to be represented in only one racial / ethnic group—and what HBS is calling “multi-dimensional reporting”—to more inclusively share students’ multiple racial / ethnic identities.

So while Asian Americans compose 19%, or 95 students, by federal standards, HBS is reporting that this group represents 24%, or 116 students, by including MBA candidates who are multi-racial. By including multi-racial students in the latter “multi-dimensional” accounting, the numbers of Black and African-American students rises to 13% of the class from 11% based on federal guidelines.

HBS said “white” students make up 53% of this year’s entering cohort, or 53% of the Class of 2022. The more inclusive accounting pushes up the percentage of whites to 66%, or 323 students. Hispanics compose 9% of the class, or 45 students, on both metrics.

DON’T MISS: WHO GETS INTO HARVARD & STANFORD MBA PROGRAMS MIGHT SURPRISE YOU or HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOl’s NEXT MBA CLASS WILL BE MORE THAN 200 STUDENTS SHORT

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