Our Prematriculation Web site, developed exclusively for incoming MBA students, takes full advantage of technology to build community. The site also enhances service delivery by transforming how students prepare for the MBA Program. On this site, they can now complete online courses and other requirements, tracking their progress with personalized checklists. As diverse professionals from all over the world, many of whom travel often, our incoming students rely on instant, global access to a range of information in order to customize their planning, find what they need quickly, and meet crucial deadlines. In addition to easing their transition, the site helps students grow comfortable with accessing all of the information they need online and begin to understand technology's vital role in the MBA Program - long before they arrive on campus.
Prematriculation students must pass four online courses, each covering an important area: Quantitative Analysis, Finance, Accounting, and IT Concepts. As our students come from very different backgrounds, this pre-arrival preparation helps to increase the basic knowledge in these areas for some students so that we can start from a more common foundation.
Immediately after being accepted, students are encouraged to fill out a personal biography on our electronic "classcards." These classcards are then open to other prematriculants to search by location, experience, and interests. This is one of the ways HBS fosters a community for the students even before their arrival on campus.
Prematric Bulletin Boards
Students use online bulletin boards and "classcards" to find classmates with similar backgrounds and interests, connect with those who live nearby, and share advice on everything from buying a computer to finding childcare. Students start forming lifelong relationships before they even enroll. Categories on the bulletin boards include travel plans, partners, children and pets, academics, and housing. There is even a bulletin board for asking questions of the HBS administration, as well as one asking questions of current students.
Students can be overwhelmed by the amount of tasks that need to be completed before even coming to campus, from Online Cousework (see Online Courses above) and purchasing a laptop to completing health forms and arranging visas. Each student has an online customized checklist to track progress on all of these tasks. Some of the items are cleared by the students themselves, such as daycare or school arrangements, some are cleared by administrators, such as receipt of an official academic transcript, and some are automatically cleared, such as when a student records the pronunciation of his/her name.
The prematriculation site also has links to relocation tools, including our online housing application for those who wish to live on campus, and links to Boston-area resources, and advice from current students on our bulletin boards.
The HBS prematriculation site is designed to centralize all of the administrative and informational resources necessary to prepare students for beginning their HBS experience. Students can access financial aid forms, technology purchasing guidelines, and visa information for international students, as well as their web-based E-mail client, HBS webmail. In addition to all of the specialized tools listed above, there are also links to student-run sites for campus news and club information. The prematriculation site is just the beginning of students' immersion in technology. Students learn quickly that at HBS, technology is intertwined with everything they do.
