Dinged By HBS? Let Sandy Tell You Why

Harvard Business School broke a lot of hearts yesterday (Feb. 2) when it rejected for admission thousands of round two applicants. As one dinged candidate put it on a social media post: “Time to go walk into this client meeting while holding myself together by fine threads…🙃”

Dings were plentiful yesterday. “We must be starting a boxing match soon cause all I’m seeing is ding! ding! ding!,” moaned an applicant who didn’t make the grade as reports of disappointment overflowed on Reddit.

Rejection is painful for many, particularly given the stats and profiles of some candidates. An MBB consultant, with a 4.0 undergraduate GPA and a 335 GRE score, reported being turned down. A while female with a Fulbright, no less, had four years of work experience on her CV.

DINGED: AN IVY LEAGUER IN TECH WHO GRADUATED SUMMA CUM LAUDE

An Ivy League grad, who graduated summa cum laude with a 3.63 GPA and brought a 325 GRE score to the game, also got a ding yesterday. The Asian male works in the tech business and founded a LGBTQ non-profit focused on helping underserved queer bodies move. “I hope my $250 donation goes to something useful,” he wrote, referring to the application fee HBS charges candidates.

As we have in the past, we’ve asked Sandy Kreisberg, founder of HBSGuru.com, a leading MBA admissions consultant and an astute reader of all HBS tea leaves, to take a look at the profiles of “released” applicants and explain why they didn’t make the cut.

If you would like Sandy to explain your HBS ding, just post your profile, your GPA, GMAT, company information, and any other facts you think made your application different. The more detail you provide, including what you wrote in your essay to HBS, the easier it will be for Sandy to determine why HBS turned you down.

To give you an idea of how this plays out, here is his round one ding report from a previous version: Rejected By Harvard Business School: Here’s Why