MBA

Well, I dealt with the aftermath of the transparency about interview invitation numbers in Round 1 today. Someone called and asked directly why we couldn't send out all the invitations on one day. Good question. Here's the answer:

We could..but it would be February 13, not January 31. Maybe that would be better...a later date, but just one date. The way we've structured it now - 3 waves - is to accommodate the reality of a (human) Admissions Board trying to give thoughtful attention to a lot of applications. And each application needs to be reviewed twice. So we have to have a little bit of flex in terms of the notification dates. The senior team in Dillon does (a lot of) other things besides reading applications. Board member X may be pulled into an IT crisis. Board member Y needs to pull together the budget for the next fiscal year. I went to NYC last week to do an admit event for Round 1 admits. All these things can throw off an application-reading timetable, so we build in those extra two weeks (two waves) to make sure we've got bandwidth to make careful decisions. We're not doing this by machine. It's just us.

As always, hope this helps.

I realized that I had promised some news about this on January 15 and didn't want you to have to wait over the long weekend to hear this (Note: We are closed on Monday, January 16 in observance of Martin Luther King Day).

Here's the story:

Round 2 interviews will be conducted between February 15 and March 9. We will be in London, Paris, Shanghai, Mumbai, Dubai, San Francisco, Palo Alto, and New York in addition to the HBS campus. Skype interviews may also be an option for candidates located outside the United States who are unable to travel. Full details will be available in the interview invitations.

This is our plan for timing:

We will send out email invitations on the following 3 Tuesdays - January 31, February 7, and February 14. On February 14, all candidates not invited to interview will be notified of their "release."

Now, please pay attention - this is a new level of transparency that I hope is helpful, but I need you to understand that I am talking about what happened in Round 1 vs. telling you exactly what will happen in Round 2 (which we obviously DON'T KNOW now).

The pattern of interview invitation volume in Round 1 was:

• Week 1 (first wave of invitations): 750 invitations sent
• Week 2 (second wave): 80 invitations sent
• Week 3 (third/final wave): 25 invitations sent

Round 2 won't be identical, but I think it will be directionally similar. Please hear me when I say that the timing of the interview invitation is NOT a signal of the strength of a candidate. The only thing that it maps to is the ability of our Admissions Board to move through their (large) reading allocations.

I hope this is clear and helpful - if it's not, call me at 617-496-6835 and tell me so.

Just a couple of bullet points:

• The deadline will be NOON, Boston time.
  • Truth is, we're not going to actually turn the system off at 12:01pm, so please don't panic if the servers are jammed and you're having trouble submitting. Obviously, you'll feel less stressed if you don't wait until the last minute, but I'm a realist.
• You really do need a test score at the time of submission in order to be considered in this round.
  • You can't leave it blank or enter 000s...one thing we just can't do is add score reports once we set the review process in motion. We're printing applications on January 10 and sending applications out to the Board for review right away.
  • This includes submitting a new (improved?) test score mid-round. Can't do it.
• We cut recommenders a little bit of slack.
  • We'll continue to accept recommendations for about a day or so after the deadline. Your application will have started through the review process whether or not all 3 recs have been received. It's your responsibility to make sure all of your recommendations are in - and you do that through the AY system, not by calling our office.

Expect to hear about Round 2 interview dates, locations, and notification plans around January 15.

Happy 2012.

As always, I have lots of New Year's resolutions and a couple of them have to do with this column. I think I'm going to refer to this endeavor as a "column" vs. a "blog." Maybe that's old-fashioned but "blog" seems to imply a level of frequency that just isn't going to happen. Which leads me to my point:

I'm only going to talk about admissions issues here. I could spend all day every day curating content about what goes on at HBS - both in and outside the classroom. It's wonderful. It's amazing. But what I want to do here is to give you as clear and clean a window into the application process and what happens here inside Dillon House (the home of the Admissions Board). I'll tell you about deadlines, procedures for how we communicate on deadline and notification days, talk about the timetable for interview invitations and try to capture and respond to the frequently-asked-questions coming in over email and by phone at any given moment in the cycle.

Please explore every nook and cranny of www.hbs.edu to learn about the School. There's lots to show and tell and I hope that you find this place as captivating as I do. But don't be worried or surprised if days or even weeks go by without anything in this column. As I say (over and over again - with apologies for being repetitive), my hope is to be helpful as you go through the application process and experience the natural curiosity about how we do things. This "curiosity" will sometimes be replaced by "anxiety" as you wait for decisions. We understand. We, the flight crew, will do everything we can to keep you informed of what's going on as we fly the plane.

So, that said, I'll do a Round 2 application deadline update on Friday.

It's a week away...so I thought some details might be in order.

This is our plan: On Monday, December 19 - hopefully at noon Boston time - all Round 1 interviewees will receive an email saying their decision is available online. We don't make any phone calls ahead of time...none. And that's a promise. Whatever the news is for you, we want to make sure you at least have control over the timing.

In addition to admit and deny notifcations, we will also be inviting about 120 or so candidates who have been interviewed to join our waitlist. All waitlisters will receive additional information from Dana Scalisi, who manages this process.

For candidates who are denied admission after an interview, there will also be information about call-in hours in January if anyone would like to have a conversation with me. I wouldn't call these "feedback" calls since they aren't very detailed...but sometimes it can be reassuring to hear that there were not specific weaknesses in an application, but rather just the reality of a highly selective process with the goal of maximizing the mix of voices and perspectives in the classroom.

For those of you in waiting mode, I send you all good wishes for distraction.

Just a note to say that I need to take a little break from our Real Students of HBS weekly feature. Time to go underground and start prepping for interviews. But I promise to be thinking about ways to give you an up-close and personal look at HBS. Maybe I'll make some unexpected visits to Spangler at lunchtime and listen in on student conversations and report out.

Just a note to say that I need to take a little break from our Real Students of HBS weekly feature. Time to go underground and start prepping for interviews. But I promise to be thinking about ways to give you an up-close and personal look at HBS. Maybe I'll make some unexpected visits to Spangler during lunchtime and listen in on student conversations and report out.

Jose, a first year (RC) student, was born in Brazil to Argentine parents and moved to Argentina at the age of six. He spent the following 12 years in Argentina until he moved to the US to attend Wharton/University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in Finance and Entrepreneurship. After graduating, Jose worked in investment banking in New York and within his first twelve months he was relocated to Mexico City where he spent a full year before joining a private equity firm, also in Mexico. During his four years in the real world, Jose has worked in an array of industries, ranging from more traditional sectors such as infrastructure, financial institutions and retail to airlines and even funeral homes. Jose spent the summer prior to HBS traveling around Latin America and Europe.

READING I recently started re-reading one of my favorite Gabriel Garcia Marquez novels. The story is about an old man that finds love at the end of his life in very peculiar circumstances. The story evolves in such a way that the reader becomes comfortable with a situation that is shocking at first. Full of cynicism and humor, the novel ends in a totally unexpected way and leaves us feeling that the world is not always as cruel as it seems.

EATING To be honest, since coming to HBS I have been eating a ridiculous amount of cereal and hot dogs at my apartment. There are so many things going on every day, coupled with class and case preparation, that most days I end up eating something quick so I can make time for everything else (social events, presentations, sports, etc). Most days I have lunch at Spangler, which is pretty good and has great variety. We even have our own sushi bar which I love! Every now and then, when I start getting home sick, I go to Gaucho, an Argentine steak house for an asado paired with a good malbec wine.

PLANNING Right now I'm planning my winter break trip to Argentina and I'm trying to figure out how to best connect it with my FIELD trip to Istanbul (mid-January) and the Private Equity Trek to Brazil towards the end of January. It will be a great winter break but with a lot of time spent on planes. Two days ago I finally booked my Thanksgiving trip to Puerto Rico with a large group of my classmates and we are starting to plan a 3-day trip to Iceland in February.

WEARING I would say that my typical outfit is jeans with a polo and all-stars. Nothing too fancy, unless I'm running out of clean clothes and I start tapping into my countless reserves of work shirts!

DREAMING After my two years at HBS I want to go back into Private Equity with a focus in Latin America. I thoroughly enjoyed my PE experience and I believe that Latin America is an exciting region to be in right now and one full of opportunities. I would like to work in Brazil post-graduation, so if things go well I'll be moving back after 23 years! In the medium to long term, I hope to return to Argentina and go into agribusiness. It is a sector to which I have been exposed to since a young age and even with no real professional experience I still find fascinating.

OK...this is the week we start sending interview invitations. Here's the plan:

We're going to send out invitations on the next 3 Wednesdays - October 26, November 2 and November 9. NOT on any day in between. Many will go out on October 26, some will go out on November 2 and 9. On November 9, everyone who applied in Round 1 will hear something - either an invitation to interview, an invitation to join the waitlist with the possibility of an interview in Round 2, or a "release."

We will be managing the availability of interview slots so that candidates invited on November 2 and 9 have location options. While our availability in hub cities is limited, we always have capacity in Boston and via Skype. There is no advantage to one location/type of interview over another.

I hope you understand that we really cannot give precise numbers of interview invitations going out on specific dates - we just don't know. I also hope that the above schedule alleviates the day-to-day anxiety - believe me, we are trying to be as helpful as we can during this process. If you would like to hear me read this message out loud to you, you're welcome to call me at 617-496-6835. Seriously, we're deeply appreciative that you want to come to HBS and know that waiting is difficult and the anxiety can be high.

Stefon is a second-year (EC) student who came to HBS after time at Monitor Clipper, a Boston PE firm and, before that, the Consumer Products and Retail group at Morgan Stanley. This past summer he was in the Washington, DC office of McKinsey. He did his undergrad work at the Wharton/University of Pennsylvania. Stefon describes himself as a military brat who grew up all over the US and Japan.

READING A play called A Man for All Seasons for "The Moral Leader", an unconventional course that I'm taking this term. In this pseudo-seminar, we read a single literary work (typically a book) every week as fodder for discussions exploring the issues inherent in defining morality and leadership. We've read Antigone in the Theban Plays by Sophocles, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, and Blessed Assurance in White People, by Alan Gurganus. The class discussions are like the Case Method 2.0 because they require more personal perspective than the typical HBS case where one would step into the shoes of a protagonist. I'm really looking forward to reading Machiavelli's The Prince and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's This Child Will Be Great by in the weeks to come.

WEARING An eclectic mix of urban and preppy style. Today, it's a pair of black and white houndstooth sneakers, straight leg jeans, red chambray button up, and black motorcycle styled rain jacket. I'm really interested in fashion and retailing, so I shop. A lot. It's academic investigation/ professional research/ investment in my knowledge of the industry (or at least that's what I tell myself). Anyways, I try to mix up my style. Some days I'm super conservative with the basic two button navy suit, white shirt, and monochromatic geometric patterned tie. Other days, I'm likely to try something that pushes the envelope a bit more.

EATING Chicken and rice soup, which was leftover from a dinner I made last night. To connect with my family's traditions and to get to know my classmates, I've been hosting dinner parties at my apartment in One Western Avenue, one of the apartment style residential complexes on campus. I like to try recipes and kitchen gadgets, so my guests are also guinea pigs. Most recently, I've been experimenting with comfort foods like red wine-marinated roast, apple pie made from scratch, and the "Ashley" salad, which I replicated after enjoying one at Ellie's Cafe during a weekend trip to New Hampshire. That said, I probably get the most requests for my New York-style lemon cheesecake.

PLANNING Two awesome trips. HBS is an incredible place to be, and, with so much to do on and around campus, you can lose touch with the "outside world." To stay in touch, I'm putting together a trip for my family. Finding the right combination of flights, hotel, and excursions for a cool but wallet-friendly trip has taken a lot of my "free" time, but the recuperative time with my family will be worth it. I am also preparing to go to China on an IXP (Immersion Experience Program) in the first two weeks of January. I'll be traveling with 25 classmates and a professor to gain some insight into how business is being done in the country's complex economic and cultural environment. To maximize the value of this around the world flight, I'm also going to spend New Year's Eve with a few other classmates in Singapore.

DREAMING Of bringing all of myself to work. I'm taking Authentic Leadership Development (ALD), a really popular course, and I've grown in ways that I didn't expect. For me, this course is a critical part of the HBS "transformational experience." In class and in small group meetings, we discuss the real life issues (e.g. gender, trust, community, race, self-confidence, sexuality, support, money, and status) that have shaped how we've developed up to this point in our careers; then, we use the experiences of case protagonists to explore how the aforementioned issues have impact leaders in the past. The learning's are quite powerful. My small group, the ultimate complement to the class discussion, has pushed, prodded, and pulled me. By talking about aspects of my life that I would never otherwise mention, I've been able to see myself in a different light. I recently met with the professor of the course, and, for a little under an hour, we discussed how I could digest some aspects of my life. With this new sense of things, I've been contemplating how I am going to approach my life after business school with better sense of how I can be my best self.

Elina, a second year at HBS, was born in Odessa, Ukraine when it was still part of the former USSR. In 1989, Elina and her family immigrated to the United States and settled in Cleveland, Ohio. Elina attended college at Harvard, where she majored in Chemistry & Physics. Upon realizing she was more interested in the chemistry of companies than that of atoms, Elina decided to pursue a career in business. After college, Elina went to work at McKinsey, a management consulting firm, in New York. However, instead of staying in Manhattan, Elina spent most of those two years flying everywhere from Geneva, Switzerland to Calgary, Canada to Raleigh, North Carolina. After McKinsey, Elina moved out West to work for Hellman & Friedman, a private equity firm, in San Francisco. However, after two years spent in 70 degree weather, Elina decided she missed being cold and decided to come back to Boston to enroll in HBS. This past summer Elina worked for Maverick Capital, a hedge fund, in New York.

READING I just finished reading Geoff Canada's Fist Stick Knife Gun; it's a harrowing account of violence in the inner city and a reminder how important it is to provide opportunities for all children. I'm also part way through Too Big To Fail; I've been meaning to read it for a while, and I'm glad I finally picked it up - Sorkin is a great story teller. Despite having several unread books left on my bookshelf, I just ordered Moneyball (after watching the movie, I just couldn't resist). And, being a bookaholic, while placing the order I had to pick up a few other books (Boomerang, Extraordinary Popular Delusions, and Sarah's Key).

HEARING I just met with my Energy & Geopolitics team at the Grille to discuss our paper on the potential for the US to become a natural gas exporter. We're going to look at how the costs of creating and shipping liquid natural gas from the US compare with gas prices abroad. After the meeting, I ran into another friend and we chatted about our investment ideas and how crazy the news on the European debt crisis has been. Here's hoping that French Toast is only served at the Grille and not in a Wall Street Journal headline.

EATING I just went to grab dinner in the Square to catch up with a section friend. Second year is great in that you get to run around and do what you're interested in, but I try very hard to schedule time to catch up with friends I no longer see in class every day. After dinner, we headed to the "Alphabet Soup" party, where everyone has to dress up as something that starts with the letter of their section. I am in EC Section A (the best section) so our options were limited to dressing up as an apple or an astronaut; we ultimately chose to go as a guy in the section named Andy.

PLANNING I love all the opportunities I have to travel at HBS (especially as several of the trips I've been on have been arranged by natives of the country). However, I'm really behind in planning my trips. We have several long weekends coming up as well as a long break in January, another week for spring break, and a couple weeks between the end of classes and graduation. I know I will not have this time again for several years so I'm planning to make the most of it! This year I want to travel to South America, Southeast Asia, China, India, and Australia...not to mention some quick trips to warmer climates during the winter! Now I'm just trying to figure out when it makes sense to go where.

DREAMING I really enjoy investing so I'm dreaming of finding an investment firm with great people to work with and learn from. Other than that, I'm dreaming of settling into a city — I've moved every two years for the past 6 years so I'm excited to settle into a new home and get involved with the community. Education has been such a huge part of my life that I'm hoping to be able to get involved with some non-profits and bring some of the opportunities I've had to other kids.

Maxeme is a second year student at HBS and pursuing a joint degree with the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She received a degree in political science from New College of Florida where the weather never went below 50 degrees. During and after college, Max worked at MTV networks, eventually working on five MTV VMAs, before becoming a high school teacher in Miami as a Teach For America corps member. She then worked in Mayor Bloomberg's bullpen before deciding to apply to the joint degree program at HBS. She spent the past summer in a Danaher engine brake factory learning lean manufacturing.

READING A fellow Teach For America alum gave me a copy of "A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League" when I interned at DC Public Schools two summers ago. I started reading the book last semester (I'm not a slow reader, just more of a read four books at a time type of girl) and picked it back up this semester since it keeps me grounded at a place like HBS, reminding me daily of why I'm here and about the populations I want to serve. Reading cases leads you to believe that the right answer is always to maximize profits but it's important to remember that, as Roger Porter has found, we need to work on creating shared value.

EATING I've been eating everything in sight. The Yom Kippur fast is coming up on Saturday and I want to be sure that I'm "stocked up" before I go without food for a day. On a more daily diet thread, I survive around here on a diet of coffee and red bull. You don't get a lot of time to sleep here!

PLANNING For the past couple of weekends I've been on my EC section retreat, the Latino Student Organization retreat and the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership retreat (I'm a joint degree with HKS and splitting my last year here between both schools). With all of this I've been relishing a weekend here in Boston and in true HBS form, I've been telling everyone that I'm staying in town to rest and relax, but my weekend is already booked catching up with friends, writing papers, and doing errands like renewing my passport (I've got a trip to Nigeria for J-Term coming up and I have no pages left in my passport- another residual of being an HBS student).

WEARING Well, as a Caribbean girl from Miami, the recent shift in weather (it's in the 40s!!) has me wearing about five layers of clothing. I'm currently in pants, boots, a tank top, shirt, cardigan, coat and scarf. I also ignore everyone that gives me funny looks for being so bundled. A couple of us on campus are from warm weather climates and we suffer together hiding out in the tunnels until May.

DREAMING I'm dreaming about "what I want to be when I grow up" but struggling with the reality that I need a "bridge job", one that will allow me to set myself up for my dream job. So, do I choose a job that checks off some boxes and helps me build an amazing skill set or do I go and do what I love? A lot of us are struggling with it right now. It doesn't help that Steve Jobs is telling me which way to go from the grave: "Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do, if you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on."

FOLLOWING I have a fascination with travelling to countries where I have to face the realities of the world I live in, whether they be realities that are beautiful or downright shocking. I also like following the news coming out of those countries to try and make sense of what's going on there currently and what the future may hold for the people that live there. I've recently been following the news from Saudi Arabia and North Korea, where the upcoming right to vote for women and the food shortage induced malnutrition of children respectively has me connected to the world outside of the HBS bubble.

I know that the feeling of triumph from submitting an application can be short-lived - and gives way to Phase 2, the "Anxiety of Waiting about an Interview." Please be assured that we are in full-scale reading mode as of this morning - all hands are on deck. Let me walk you through Round 1:

• October 3: Deadline for receiving applications has just passed.
• October 26 - November 9: Interview invitations will be issued via email. Please read this part carefully - We don't have some complicated and/or malevolent algorithm that determines which interview invitations go out first or last or even how many go out on any given day. If you'd like to suggest one, give me a call.
• November 9: All candidates not invited to interview will receive one of two communications - "We are unable to offer you a place in the Class of 2014" or an invitation to join our waitlist.
• November 7 - approximately November 29: Interview weeks, both on and off campus. Off campus locations in Round 1 include New York City, Palo Alto, London, Paris, Dubai, Sao Paulo, and Shanghai.
• December 19: Decision notification (admit, deny, or waitlist) for all interviewed candidates.

Now, I need to repeat language I used last year because I can't think of a better way to say it. While no one applies hoping for a "deny" decision, we have heard you say that the worst case is extended uncertainty. We think that getting news out on November 9 is helpful so that denied candidates can re-direct energy toward Round 2 applications to other schools. Yes, we have the resources to ensure a thorough review of all applications before rendering any decisions. All applications are reviewed at least twice. Our Admissions Board is fully staffed and able to make this work.

All those invited to join our waitlist are candidates whom we would like to "further consider." Our plan is for waitlisted candidates to receive further consideration in Round 2. Our intent is for all to receive a final decision by the time we make Round 2 notifications in late March. We completely understand if such a candidate might elect to withdraw his/her application.

I promise that all letters will clearly communicate a candidate's status.

Most of all, we thank all Round 1 applicants for all the hard work and high aspirations that go into these applications. We are humbled and committed to doing our very best to give all candidates full and careful consideration.

• We will continue to accept recommendations for 48 hours after the deadline. But please note that you are responsible for ensuring your application is complete. All applications will be reviewed as submitted.
• Looking at your application before submitting - yes, sometimes it looks strange. Submit it anyway. We'll contact you if any part has not transmitted properly.
• You may experience difficulties working on your application using Firefox 6 or 7; we recommend using Internet Explorer.

Viet grew up in a peaceful and picturesque village in central Vietnam (near Hoi An). He attended high school in Singapore, and studied economics and industrial engineering at Stanford. Before heading to HBS, Viet worked at Morgan Stanley in mergers & acquisitions (Los Angeles) and asset allocation (New York). Viet spent the past two summers in Vietnam working with local investment firms and business owners. Since 2005, Viet has served on the boards of two non-profits: VietAbroader and Southeast Asian Service Leadership Network.

READING I am re-reading "Cánh đ'ô'ng bất tận" (boundless rice field), an outstanding short story collection about the struggles of nomadic people living on boats in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. I try to vary my reading, mixing fiction and non-fiction in English with some Vietnamese literature.

EATING Seven fellow Stanford alumni had dinner at Basho, a modern Japanese brasserie in Fenway. Duck teriyaki, yellowtail sushi, and striped bass were excellent! The second-years shared perspectives and advice with those who have just enjoyed their first month of the HBS experience.

DISCOVERING I recently realized that I have an interest in real estate! The industry didn't excite me until this past summer when I learned about Ecopark, a green urban development project in Vietnam. Ecopark is a 20-minute drive from the crowded and inefficiently designed city center of Hanoi. Having no prior knowledge in real estate, this year I am excited to take "Real Property", "Sustainable Cities: Urbanization, Infrastructure, and Finance", and ""Real Estate Development, Design, and Construction". I'm currently assisting Ecopark's developer to engage prospective investors and partners with expertise in operating hospitals, schools, and commercial complexes.

DREAMING I'm dreaming of pursuing a career that allows me to create valuable impact by utilizing my experience and network in the US, Singapore, and Vietnam. I hope to eventually run successful businesses in Vietnam and create jobs for both the educated and underprivileged.

WEARING t-shirt, jeans, and a pair of flip flops. It started raining today after weeks of warm weather, so I may need to get my fall clothes ready!

PLANNING This weekend, I'll spend a day in New York before hopping on the Bolt bus to return to Boston, just in time to watch the UCLA-Stanford football game with a HBS friend from UCLA! An avid Cardinal fan, I already bought my flight and game ticket for the marquee matchup Oregon-Stanford in mid-November. I have also started planning trips to Singapore, Vietnam, and Brazil in December/January.

I know that many of you are trying to arrange visits to see HBS classes this fall. We wish we could open every single classroom every day to prospective candidates, but that just isn't possible. As I've said before, faculty like to let the first year students get comfortable with both the case method and each other before they welcome guests. There are also days on which first year students are doing small group projects in FIELD which would not be able to accommodate visitors.

We will open up the class visit sign-ups by the end of this week. We only open a two week period. Why? Because we need to minimize the possibility that someone will sign-up for a session way in advance, not be able to actually come, and therefore we'll have no-shows and empty seats.

I know this system isn't perfect. Many of you are traveling great distances in order to see us and we take that investment seriously. We hold information sessions (led by Admissions Board members) and campus tours (led by students) on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays during the fall semester. No advance sign-up is necessary for these - just come to Dillon House at 3pm for student-led tours and 4:15pm for the Admissions Board information sessions. Also, I really think our videos of first year classes are helpful. Whenever you are visiting our HBS campus, please check our Visit HBS page first to receive the most up-to-date listing of campus programming offered each day.

Amanda is a second-year student at HBS who hails from Atlanta. She came North to attend Wellesley College — and still enjoys the strong and supportive sisterhood which includes a sizable number of HBS students and alums. Throughout college she was a competitive swimmer while majoring in economics and Chinese studies. Between Wellesley and HBS she researched on a Fulbright Fellowship in China and worked at Morgan Stanley in Asia. She spent the summer at McKinsey in Dubai.

HEARING Today was office hours with my GEM (Globalization and Emerging Markets) professor. We started discussing an idea I had on sovereign wealth funds in island nations and the conversation completely took off. After forty minutes we had brainstormed several business ideas for China, completely in a different direction from where we had started. The inspirations from classes, classmates and even professors here is amazing — you never know where it will take you.

EATING Famished after a run along the river, I bumped into a friend on my way to Spangler to get dinner. I was really hoping for the made-to-order risotto but they had curry instead, still delicious. We sat outside and compared our summer experiences, I had the benefit of working this past summer at his past employer so it was good to hear his thoughts on returning. The conversation went on for another hour over potential entrepreneurial options to start post business school linking Europe to China. It is so much fun having the chance to throw around ideas with people who are just as excited about a topic as you. Realistically, most won't materialize but each brainstorming session gets you a little closer to an actionable idea.

WEARING I opted for black shorts and an orange shirt today. For some reason it's still hot mid-September, but I'm not complaining!

DREAMING I've been dreaming too much, the opportunities are endless out of HBS. I still believe that dream job is out there so I'm going full speed ahead on researching different companies and functions. I'd love to keep traveling. Any jobs out there that will let me move to a new country every three months?!

READING I am addicted to my Kindle now. The newest download is On China, by Henry Kissinger. Even though I was a Chinese Studies major, it's good to keep my knowledge up on China, especially since this book has some new insight on China's foreign policy and America's role with China.

WONDERING Spring Break is so far away but I'm already trying to organize a trip to the Galapagos. I'm wondering who wants to go and what activities they would want to do if I put the trip together. I guess it's time to start surveying my classmates! A survey is a common email you'll get here with so many people starting their own businesses and using the student body for research. Where else will you get 1,800 people to bounce ideas off of?

PLANNING Even though it's a long weekend I'm staying in town for my undergrad's alumnae swim meet. I'm looking forward to heading out to Wellesley to swim and catch up with friends. There is a cycling event Sunday where the city shuts down the main roads for cyclists. I convinced a few section mates to join this year and we're going for the 50 mile course.

Having approached this subject somewhat backwards by running through some application items NOT to stress about, it feels like it's only fair to point out some things that I hope you are extra careful about.

Time: The most frustrating - actually, maddening - applications are those in which we have to try to figure out where you were and what you were doing for periods of time after college. We'd much rather see "September 2008 - January 2009: Sat under a tree" (or, more likely, "looked for a job") than have to guess by going back and forth between your application and your resume and trying to map it all out. So, spell it out for us - please account for all time. We don't need a day-by-day diary, but a good rule of thumb is accounting for any gap longer than two months.

GMAT self-reporting: Please make sure you are getting those subscores right. We know you always get the overall score right but please pay attention to inputting the correct subscores.

Re-applicants: You should NOT assume we are referring to your old application. Even though you need to "check the box" that you are a re-applicant, that status is not visible to the Admissions Board unless and until you are invited to interview. At that point, your original application is coupled with your new one for the interviewer to review.

Sending in more than 3 recommendations: We're not kidding. If we wanted to see more than 3 we'd ask for them. Imagine if everyone thought that their applications would be strengthened by adding additional letters of recommendation. I'll describe it to you: chaos.

As promised, here's the first installment of what I hope will be a weekly feature—a look at what our students, both first- and second-year, are actually doing, thinking, dreaming, etc. (And here's a shout-out to the NY Times for this format—I can't think of a way to improve upon it).

First up is Michael Belkin. Michael is a Silicon Valley native who came East for college at Cornell. After college he worked in strategic planning for a real estate investment firm and then switched gears to IT R&D infrastructure for an Israeli high-tech startup in the entertainment space. This summer he was in NYC working on his own startup. Michael lives in an on-campus apartment. This fall he is taking courses in technology, entrepreneurship, and strategic marketing.

DOING I was cold called today in class, you always have to be on your feet here. After class I went home and worked on my startup (see DREAMING below). Then it was gym, dinner and more work on the company (I submitted a new build to Apple!). I just got back from a joint mixer with the LGBT groups across Harvard University. It was a really impressive turnout. I still have to read and prep my cases before bed, which I'm looking forward to. There's never a dull moment.

READING In addition to cases, I've been reading At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson before bed to disengage. He's such an incredible author—I'm entertained and informed by pretty much anything he writes. I'm also really into 13 Things That Don't Make Sense by Michael Brooks, an amazing book about modern scientific conondrums like dark matter, cold fusion, and the placebo effect.

WATCHING I cross-registered for Intro Computer Science at Harvard College. It's a notoriously demanding but rewarding course with a cult-like following. The professor has all the lectures recorded and streamed online, and though there's a dedicated room at HBS to view the feed with a TF present, I generally end up watching them at home on my laptop (I can pause/rewind that way). So any "Hulu" time I would have is generally consumed by that, but it's a fascinating course. Anyone who's interested can follow the course online at www.cs50.net.

FOLLOWING The proliferation of different mobile micropayment platforms. I'm moving in that direction with my startup and there have been a ton of developments recently. I think we'll be using smartphones instead of wallets sooner than you might think.

WEARING A polo shirt and jeans, like every other day (only the professors wear suits).

EATING I have to say, the salmon at the Grille in Spangler is ludicrously good. For $8.75 I got a drink, two sides (sweet potatoes and asparagus) and a cut of fish that was honestly better than the $25 salmon entrée I had in Harvard Square last night.

DREAMING I've been working on my startup (DISTINC.TT) since the summer before HBS. Last summer I got a fellowship from the Rock Center to work full time on the company. It was an incredibly challenging but rewarding experience. I know that after HBS I'm going to work on something entrepreneurial. I'm just wired that way.

HEARING I went to dinner last night with five sectionmates and our strategy professor from the RC year. One of the conversation topics was about the increased performance and sustainability of family businesses over traditional corporations. Management incentives, work ethic and social capital are completely different between the two and a shockingly higher percentage of family-run businesses are successful. I didn't know that. It's fascinating stuff—I see a case or book in the making.

PLANNING A good friend of mine is in town from NYC. He's interested in my startup so we're going to spend most of the weekend making a strategic roadmap for the next eight months. That, plus the gym, dinner/drinks on Saturday, and of course, case prep for Monday morning.

Maybe one good use of this space might be to hold some admissions tales up to the light and give you the straight scoop.

Here's one: "Apply early because you have a better chance of getting more financial aid."

It doesn't work that way. All of our financial aid is need-based (as opposed to merit-based) and is awarded AFTER admission. Your financial aid package is determined after processing your financial aid application, which we do only for admitted candidates. What is important to realize is that the very last person admitted is eligible for exactly the same aid as the very first person. Our alumni are very generous - and look back on their HBS experience as being pivotal in their professional and personal lives. Year after year they say that it is important to make the HBS experience accessible to strong leaders regardless of their economic circumstances. This year we awarded $24.4 million in need based HBS Fellowships; the average fellowship is $29,000 per year.

They're here!

Class of 2013 Profile

I know it sounds counter-intuitive to say that some things on our application are just not that mission critical, but it's true. It's not that we waste your time (and ours) by asking questions we don't want to know the answers to, but rather that we can figure out what we need just because we've done this for about a million years (cumulative time spent reading applications by our board). Here are a couple of things that fall into this category:

GPA: Yes, we ask you to calculate it year by year but we are looking at your transcripts, not just the GPA. And the people reading your application really do know about a LOT of different grading systems.

The hierarchy of your recommenders in your firm: Please. We just don't have the time (or interest) to spend figuring out who's more important than whom. We like recommenders who take the time to answer the questions we ask... and who use more verbs to tell us about what they've seen you do vs. adjectives to describe you in abstract ways.

What time you submit the application: Every season we overhear rumors about applicants trying to figure out when they will be invited to interview based on when they submitted their applications. We smile. I think we run a very tight ship but that kind of system is way beyond us. We don't read any applications until the deadline has passed so it's definitely not a first-come, first-served sort of process.

Maybe my next post will be "Things We Really Do Care About So Pay Attention." As always, hope this is helpful and sending you good wishes for application writing.

This is such a strange season at HBS. Everything in the natural world says it's still summer, including thunderstorms, gardens that really (really, really) need to be weeded, the Red Sox, etc... but the excitement of fall and school start-up is in the air too. Our Pre-MBA International Program is coming to a close tomorrow - this is a great program for admits to the MBA Program who are non-native English speakers. It's a way for them to acculturate to our classroom and get all the details of "life-in-a-new-country" set before classes really begin. I walked by the (huge) new Innovation Lab this morning - we've already had a hard-hat tour that left us all buzzing about how cool this new space will be. As I write this there are 2+2 interviewees downstairs in the reception area. Seeing people in suits here in August can be momentarily jarring - I bet a lot are ripping their ties off as they leave the building.

I know you don't read this to hear me muse about the weather so I guess I should think of something "bloggy" to tell you about the upcoming application season. I am paranoid about being repetitive but some things are worth repeating. So here are some old, some new...

Uploaded transcripts: new. We are requiring that all transcripts be uploaded this year. No more templates for you to fill in your grades. This makes verification after admission easier for us and safer for you. Yes, you can scan and upload.

Recommendations: old. This is just reassurance that we do not require or demand recs from your current supervisor. If it's possible, we strongly advise it. If it's not, just drop a brief explanation in the "additional information" section of the application. Although we don't ask for a peer rec, I acknowledge they can be very important if you are trying to tell us about a venture that you've started either in college or beyond. I've also gotten a couple of questions from folks who work for family businesses. You'll need to make your best call on this - it's rare that your mom or dad can be objective (although I've certainly seen a few VERY frank ones!) so you'll need to explore other options. We like the family business perspective in the classroom so please don't let this detail deter you.

Events: old and new. We've covered a lot of ground already but we're still out there doing information sessions with student/alumni panels, time for Q&A about admissions, etc. We have a couple of evening information sessions in Boston, Los Angeles, and several international cities still to come so please check out the Events section of the website.

Visiting Classes: old and new. I know it's hard to get a spot. Even though we've added second year classes, they do fill up fast. I wish it were easier. If you find yourself closed out of a class, it still may be worthwhile visiting. We'll have information sessions led by the Admissions Board, tours led by students and lots of places you can wander and strike up conversations with students. And really good food.

Something New on this So-Called Blog: I'm thinking that if I announce this here I will be obligated to actually DO IT, so here goes. I'm planning on doing a weekly interview with a current student, maybe alternating between first and second years. The kind of interview that's direct and meaningful, not platitudinous or institutional. So many applicants want to know WHAT IT'S REALLY LIKE to be an HBS student. So I'm going to be interviewing one person each week on Thursday at 10pm and asking about their day... and what's ahead between now and bedtime. Maybe about weekend plans. If all goes well, I'll be posting these on Fridays starting in mid-September. There. I've said it.

You may or may not be surprised to learn that there are only 60 days until October 3, our Round 1 deadline for the Class of 2014. We're definitely on "countdown" in Dillon House.

We know that many prospective candidates would like to be able to see an HBS class to assess whether they would like to apply. We agree. The case method is our signature pedagogy and it is definitely a different experience than a traditional academic classroom.

We have always focused our class visit program on the first-year classroom. The downside of this is that our faculty like to let the new students settle in a bit before welcoming visitors. That doesn't dovetail very nicely with our October 3 application deadline.

To address this challenge, we have decided to open up a small number of second-year classes to visitors in September. As you probably know, our entire second-year is an elective curriculum (vs. the "required" curriculum in the first year) so students are not in 90-person sections as they are in the first year. I think visitors will find this a great opportunity to see the case method in action - and get a glimpse of our second-year students.

First-year class visits will resume on October 3.

Detailed instructions on how to arrange a class visit will be posted on our website next week. We will also include the fall schedule for information sessions and campus tours.

Good morning from Boston!

Today, sometime around noon ET, we will be getting news out to all the Summer Round 2+2 applicants. Some will be invited to interview - and will receive detailed instructions about this process - some will be invited to join a waitlist - again, with an explanation of how this process works - and some will be released. I hope that those in this last group will read our letter carefully and understand that they will not be in any way at a disadvantage if they apply again after they graduate and are working full-time.

We saw a strong applicant pool this summer and gave careful consideration to all candidates. College seniors applying during the upcoming application rounds will receive the same careful attention and we commit to making offers throughout the season - the 2+2 Class of 2016 cohort is not "full" or "closed".

Yesterday was our deadline for the Summer Round 2+2 applications. Not sure how many times I should be mentioning this but WE'VE CHANGED THE 2+2 PROGRAM THIS YEAR TO MAKE IT POSSIBLE TO APPLY THROUGHOUT YOUR SENIOR YEAR OF COLLEGE. Sorry for the shouting... I just want to be mindful that this transition year will require lots (and lots) of reminders and explaining.

So, this is a message for those who submitted 2+2 applications yesterday. We will be sending out interview invitations on July 22. At that time we will also be releasing any candidates not being interviewed from consideration. All interviews will take place here on campus between August 17-23. Net result is that all Summer Round applicants will be getting some news on July 22.

Now that there are multiple application rounds for 2+2 candidates, we are no longer going to publish stats of applicants/admits from the summer application period. We'll wait until the end of the season to show a 2+2 Class of 2016 Profile. This is in keeping with how we manage the MBA Program stats and profiles.

Here's a look at "year of college graduation."

I've been spending some time over the past few weeks answering our main phone line and responding to the questions that come in to our general admissions mailbox. I know that many of you who read my updates here fall into the "connoisseur" category of b-school shoppers, therefore this post may be way too basic for you so please move on. These are the questions that truly are "frequently asked" and deserve BOLD PRINT:

1. Our MBA is 2 years, full-time in Boston. No part-time or online offerings.
2. We don't offer an Executive MBA (EMBA).
3. You must take the GMAT or GRE before you submit an application - no exceptions.
4. We don't accept any transfer credit for work done in other MBA programs.
5. We DO have a loan program for international students that does not require a US co-signer.
6. You are welcome to visit campus in the summer and we hold information sessions on Mondays and Fridays at 1 pm - BUT we do not have classes in session and we cannot arrange individual meetings with members of the Admissions Board.

So, if these questions are still "frequently asked," I'll know more about who is reading this!

Onward.

Here's a look at the Class of 2013 - this is still "preliminary" because we anticipate losing a few more people to other plans and possibly adding a few from the waitlist.

I know you've come to expect this "not-really-a-blog" to provide candid admissions updates, previews, etc. Not today. I'm going to try to sneak in something I think is both cool and important from our alumni bulletin. It's probably a well-known fact - even approaching "joke" level - that I always ask interviewees what they are currently reading. One year the "right" answer seemed to be Anna Karenina and I got into a few interesting discussions about minor characters with candidates who tried to trip me up. And yes, one candidate did actually get admitted after a 29-minute defense of Twilight. Anyway, this is an article about what our faculty plan to read for pleasure over the summer. I hope you enjoy it - and if it inspires any of you to read more, then it will all be for the good. (And I'm going off to find Nancy Koehn to chat about Dorothea...).

Seriously, Harvard University is a big tourist attraction and HBS is especially beautiful in the summer. The one thing you won't be able to see is students - we have no summer session and virtually all of our students are off-campus doing interesting things in all corners of the globe. That means that the lines in our Spangler Food Court (open to the public) are shorter and parking is easier. Our campus bookstore is open - maybe you'd like a T-shirt! Members of the Admissions Board will host information sessions on Mondays and Fridays during the summer. Consult the website to make sure of specific dates, times, and locations. No advance registration is necessary. We also have self-guided iPod tours of campus.

Please keep in mind that we cannot schedule meetings with Admissions Board members or faculty.

We welcome you to come and take a peek. We'll all be here getting ready to look for the Class of 2014!

And, speaking of 2014, we will be launching the application next week. This application is for both the Class of 2014 and those eligible for our 2+2 Program (i.e., those getting undergrad degrees between October 1, 2011 and September 30, 2012). See the application information page on our website for more details.

We'll be getting decisions to Round 3 candidates tomorrow. If all goes as planned, candidates will get an email saying that their "decision is available" around noon Boston time. A handful of waitlist invitations will be issued, as well.

Current waitlisters have already received some news from Eileen earlier this week and will continue to be updated on our process regularly. We will definitely be making some offers to waitlisters over the next couple of months, but the timing is not definite. I do know that it's our plan to finalize the class by the end of June.

Look for a message here on Friday about summer activities on campus and some news about the application for the Class of 2014.

And, as usual, I hope this is helpful.

I see that some of you are wondering why you can't access your Round 3 application via ApplyYourself right now.

No, this doesn't signify ANYTHING - really - other than that we are currently getting ready to go live with the Class of 2014 application and need to take down the Class of 2013 one so we can fiddle freely. No one's application has been lost or misplaced or anything remotely like that. We're hoping to get the Class of 2014 application up in mid-May - but are paying careful attention to everyone in Round 3.

Hope this helps,
Dee

Here we go.... We will begin to send out email invitations to interview on Friday, April 8. Detailed instructions will be included in the email. As I'm sure I don't have to tell you, this is a comparatively "short" round, i.e. not much time between submission and notification dates. For this reason, we are not going to do the "early release" process we do in Rounds 1 and 2. We'll send interview invitations out up until the notification date of May 5. Round 3 interviews will be conducted here on campus, on the West Coast, and via Skype for selected candidates. There may be a handful of Round 3 applicants asked to join the waitlist on May 5 - both with and without an interview.

That's all for now.

Greetings from Dillon House. Today is the day we check, double-check, and triple-check our lists to make sure all Round Two applicants will get a decision tomorrow. The plan is to send an email out - hopefully at noon our time - to let you know that your decision is available online. We also want to send a clear message that we will not be calling people to give them news of decisions - we'll call all admits later in the day to say congratulations. While we could do otherwise, we choose this way because I hate to think about the additional anxiety of waiting for the phone to ring. This way you're in control of the time and place you choose to get the news. So, hope this is helpful and looking forward to tomorrow!

As the Class of 2013 application season rounds the corner toward the finish line, you may be asking yourself whether it's worth your time and money to submit an application. Is it too much of a long shot?

You may be surprised to learn that we ask ourselves the same question every year. Should there even be a round 3? Why can't we just wrap the class up in two rounds? Answer: even though we could - we always conclude that we like Round 3 enough to keep it as an option. Although we have admitted about 90% of the class by this time, we always - ALWAYS - see enough interesting Round 3 applicants to want to do it again. I know you wish I could define "interesting" with pinpoint accuracy but I can't. Sometimes it's work experience, sometimes it's an undergraduate school we wish we had more students from, sometimes it's a compelling recommendation and sometimes it's just "something". I will say that it's always that we have absolutely no doubts about a candidate's leadership talent, character or academic capabilities - the same hurdle we have for the earlier rounds.

A group that is especially welcome in round 3 is college senior applicants. The positive outcome for this group is always "deferred admission" - a spot in a future class. Hence, making decisions about these applicants is not driven by seats available in September, 2011.

Maybe it would be helpful to turn the tables and give some advice on when it's NOT a good idea to apply in Round 3. So...

DON'T apply to HBS in Round 3 if:

• You are an international candidate and have serious concerns about the likelihood of getting a visa in a timely manner.
  (We've seen this happen and it may cause you serious stress and uncertainty about whether you will be able to get here in time for term start-up.)
• You are expecting an Admit Welcome Weekend to enable you to meet future classmates.
  (We don't have one.)
• You really want to come in September, 2012 and are hoping to be granted a postponement.
  (Won't happen.)
• You are counting on getting on-campus housing.
  (You'll have missed the lottery. On campus housing COULD work out for you, but you may need to find other options.)
• You are using this as a "trial" application and are hoping for feedback on this application to increase your chances of success next year.
  (Can't do it.)

As always, trying to make this process as easy for you to understand as we can.

We're going to be communicating today - some time between 3 and 5pm Boston time - with all Round 2 candidates who haven't been invited to interview yet. There will be a few more interview invitations, some waitlist invitations, and a release for all others.

Once more, I hope this is helpful.

And now for something NOT about Round 2 Interviews...

This is about a change in the mechanics of the 2+2 Program and isn't meant to be headline news. These are details of a "merge" of college senior applicants into the 2+2 Program application cycle. In other words, the mechanics of the 2+2 Program are changing to include ALL college seniors.

Here goes: beginning with the next application cycle—the 2+2 Class of 2016 Cohort—we're expanding the 2+2 Program umbrella to include all college senior applicants. What does this mean? It means that if you are expecting to graduate between October 1, 2011 and September 30, 2012, you can choose from one of four application rounds to apply to the 2+2 Program.

• Early Round: July 2011 application deadline; September 2011 notification
• Round 1: October 2011 application deadline; December 2011 notification
• Round 2: January 2012 application deadline; March, 2012 notification
• Round 3: March 2012 application deadline; May, 2012 notification

Rounds 1, 2 and 3 will be the same dates as the regular MBA Program application/notification dates; at this point they are TBD and will be announced later in the spring.

Are there any hidden messages about HBS strategy in this? No. It's a mechanical change to bring all college seniors under the same 2+2 umbrella which will enable us to have a cleaner outreach message to this group.

This should clarify our policy regarding college seniors without full-time post-college work experience. All will be considered for "deferred admission" - a place in a future class after two years of work experience. No college seniors without full-time post-college work experience will be admitted to HBS directly.

We are still looking for talented leaders with very strong academic credentials. We hope that roughly half of each cohort will be students coming from engineering and science backgrounds while the other half will represent a wide range of undergraduate studies. We anticipate that the 2+2 cohort size will stay in the 100-125 range, as it has historically been.

The 2+2 webpage is updated to reflect these changes.

We still have a significant number of interview invitations to send out - but we aren't sending any out today. Our plan is to send out some on Tuesday afternoon and more throughout the next week, up to February 16. Again, no hidden signals in the timing of when these go out. Really.

We will be sending interview invitations to Round 2 candidates beginning on February 4 and continuing through February 16. On February 16 we will be sending some invitations to join the waitlist with the possibility of an interview invitation later and denial letters to all other Round 2 candidates whom we do not plan to interview.

Detailed instructions about the sign-up process for interviews will be included in the email invitation.

There is no system - or hidden message - to the order in which interview invitations are issued, i.e. no connection whatsoever to the strength of your candidacy, time at which you submitted your application, geography, industry, etc.

Don't worry about whether the invitation will reach you - if we see that you haven't scheduled your interview, we will find you - haven't lost anyone yet!

Eileen Chang will continue to send periodic updates to candidates on the Round 1 waitlist.

Thank you for your patience - as I've said before, we know this can be an anxious period and we will do our very best to keep everyone up-to-date. We won't have any more specific information than this if you call on the phone. You're welcome to call me at 617-496-6835, but I will just be saying out loud what I've written here.

And, most of all, thank you for applying to HBS.

Happy New Year from Dillon House! We're back after a wonderful winter holiday break - with the added benefit of watching a major snowstorm from home vs. the office.

As the Round Two deadline approaches, here's a reminder: the deadline on January 11 is at NOON, EST. Sorry to shout, but that's NOON, not 5pm.

What happens after you submit your application? You'll get a confirmation that it has been received.

What if we don't have all your recommendations? We start reading applications if we have 2 recommendations. We'll contact you via email within a couple of weeks to let you know we need the 3rd. If we have only 1 or none, you will be moved into the next decision round.

When will interview invitations go out? We don't have an exact date, but probably in early February. Details will follow. I know you will get anxious about this, but try not to spend too much time worrying about how many will go out on what date and what percentage are still to come and all that. It's just not productive and it makes me worry about you. We're not being secretive - really - but we need some flexibility in how we move thousands of applications through an evaluation process.

Stay tuned...

Greetings from a mostly snow-less Boston, unless you count last night's dusting that snarled everyone's commute because it's the first of the season. Our first year students just finished exams today, so the campus is jumping as everyone says good-bye and heads off until next year. Thursday at noon we will turn off the lights in Dillon House - HBS and the Admissions Office will be closed from noon on December 23 until Monday morning, January 3, 2011. We've left a long (long, long) message on our website and voicemail for those of you working on Round 2 applications. We've also added a note about class visits and information sessions after the break.

It's the time to think about New Year's Resolutions. I actually ask this question in interviews sometimes. One of my resolutions is to be a more frequent - and more interesting - blogger in 2011. Same thing I resolved last year.

Be happy and stay safe.

It's November 2. Tomorrow afternoon we will be sending out three kinds of emails:

1. A few more invitations to interview
2. Roughly 100 offers to join the waitlist
3. "Release" decision

You've probably noticed that I tend to keep these updates short and to-the-point. I could go on and on about various things - the strength of the applicant pool, how the challenge here is not about "evaluation" (again, because of the strength of the pool), but more about "selection." The challenge is not to rank order candidates, but to comprise a balanced class. I could talk about how I wish we could give customized feedback to denied candidates - but even if we had the resources to do this, most of the conversations would be, "You're fine, but so are many, many others." I could describe our evaluation process - and reiterate that each candidate not invited to interview gets at least two reviews.

But I'll stop - and end this update hoping that this "early release" experiment is seen as a positive step.

Just so you know, I always wonder whether my comments here alleviate or create anxiety. This update may sound quite stern and rather chilly. That's not how I mean it, but I want to be very (very) clear.

We will begin to send out interview invitations by email tomorrow, October 15. The invitation will provide detailed instructions about the sign-up process.

Please note: We will continue to send out invitations until November 3. Really. And not just a few - we plan to interview about 800 people in Round 1, and we will send out interview invitations on a rolling basis as applications are reviewed. We will continue to add slots in many locations as we send out more interviews, and there is ALWAYS the option to come to campus.

If you call and ask us if we can expedite the consideration of your application so that you can make travel plans, the answer will be "Sorry, no."

Another important note: Please don't send in additional materials or have others do so on your behalf. Even if we thought that was fair, we can't be adding things to files at this point.

Warmly,

Dee

What can I say that might be helpful to Round One applicants as they prepare to hit the "submit" button? Not sure how long this list can get without provoking "duh...of course" reactions, but:

1. We're serious about the noon deadline. In order to start reviewing applications we need to have a very distinct "cutoff" to start the presses rolling. If you are late for Round One, you will become a Round Two applicant.
2. The email response you receive after you submit will tell you clearly if you are in Round One or Round Two. If you call or email us with that question, we won't know the answer - we will send you right back to check your email.
3. All Round One applicants are advised to read about the timing of decision notifications in the previous "From the Director" update (dated September 20, 2010).
4. Please make sure your recommenders are aware of the October 1 noon deadline. We make every attempt to add late-arriving recommendations to your file, but we make no guarantees.
5. GMAT scores are self-reported, and we do NOT need to have received your official score before the October 1 deadline - an unofficial score is fine. We verify scores for all accepted candidates later in the season.
6. All standardized tests - GMAT, GRE, TOEFL, IELTS, PTE - MUST be taken before you submit your application...NOT afterwards.

Every year we hear comments (OK, "complaints" would be more accurate) about the anxiety our invite-to-interview process causes. So, we're going to do it differently this year. Let me walk you through Round One:

• October 1 - deadline for receiving online applications
• October 15 - November 3 - interview invitations will be issued via email
• November 3 - all candidates not invited to interview will receive either a decision indicating that "we are unable to offer you a place in the Class of 2013" or an invitation to join our waitlist
• November 1 - 21 - interview weeks, both on and off campus
• December 14 - decision notification (admit, deny, or waitlist) for all interviewed candidates

While no one applies hoping for a "deny" decision, we have heard you say that the worst case is the uncertainty which can extend from October through mid-December. So we're trying this to see if it helps. Yes, it means that we will be making decisions faster. Yes, we have the resources to ensure a thorough review of all written applications before rendering any decisions. All applications will be reviewed at least twice before any decision is made. Our Admissions Board is fully staffed and able to implement this new model. We hope this new approach will allow denied candidates to re-direct energy toward Round Two applications to other schools.

All those invited to join our waitlist are candidates whom we would like to "further consider." Our plan is for waitlisted candidates to receive further consideration in Round Two. We expect all to receive a final decision with the Round Two notification date in late March. We completely understand if such a candidate would elect to withdraw his/her application.

I promise that all letters will clearly communicate a candidate's status!

If this new system works well, we will replicate it in Round Two.

Lots of questions on the road from prospective applicants about visiting schools.

Answer: We always welcome visitors to campus. It's beautiful here and we have lots to show you. Do you need to make a pilgrimage in order to send a signal to the Admissions Office? Absolutely not. Visiting campus has absolutely no impact on how your application is reviewed. It may have a gigantic impact on how enthusiastic you are about US - that's where the value-added comes into play.

Are we going to ask you to sign-in to an information session? Yes. Do we use that list in the evaluation process? No. So why do we ask you to do it? To track whether these sessions have any impact on whether an attendee chooses to apply to HBS or not, i.e. standard market research. If we found out that no one who attended an info session chose to apply to HBS, you'd better believe that we would make some changes!

When may I visit classes? This is the tough question. For those applying in Round One, it's not possible to visit a class before the October 1 deadline. Why? Our first year students begin classes in early September. Our first priority is for them to get settled into the classroom. We have limited seats designated for visitors in each class - and we could fill them every day of the year. The faculty likes for the first few weeks of the first semester to be "students only." We rely on the students in sections to be hosts for our visitors - and they really aren't ready to do that right away. Class visits will begin in mid-October; information about the sign-up process will be posted on our website.

Applying to business school(s) is expensive and stressful. The last thing you need is to make it a scavenger hunt in which you need have "visited campus" checked off the list.

So...the message is: We welcome you to visit HBS - but don't think of this as a "command performance."

Here's another look at the class entering this September...

HBS Class of 2012 by Undergraduate Degree Year

Here's a peek at the Class of 2012.

This is still officially "preliminary" until registration in September.

Admissions
Total MBA Enrollment	910
Applications	9,524
% Admitted	11%

  * Includes Investment Banking & Investment Management

For all of you 2+2 applicants waiting patiently for the "next step" in the process, here's an update:

On July 19, we'll be extending interview invitations to about 200 applicants. Detailed instructions will be communicated at that time.

Just a reminder that interviews will take place here on campus from August 18-24. There are no options for other dates or places.

All candidates not invited to interview will learn of their "release" on July 19.

Just to make sure you know that I can speak in full sentences, I thought of something else that might be helpful as you begin to think about Round 1.

Students who didn't use English as their primary language of instruction as an undergraduate need to take an English language test. In order to be considered for entry in September 2011, your TOEFL, IELTS or PTE (Pearson Test of English, www.pearsonpte.com) scores must be dated January 1, 2009 or more recently. The Admissions Board will not accept or review applications without scores from one of these tests. There are no exceptions to this policy. None. Absolutely none.

If you have previously submitted your official scores to HBS, they are on file with our office. All you need to do is self-report these on your application and you're all set.

Here we go! (How's that for a blog entry? I might as well just tweet.)

Greetings from Dillon House on a beautiful Monday afternoon. Here's a view from our front door:

Here are a few things that may be of interest:

• The application for the Class of 2013 is scheduled to go live during the week of June 21. We'll keep you posted as to the exact date.
• The 2+2 application deadline is June 15. This is to remind everyone that while you do need to have taken the GMAT or GRE by then, we do not need to receive your official score report in order to begin reading your application.
• Our Admissions outreach travel schedule is posted - specific dates will be added as they are scheduled.
• A question we are often asked: How many offers have you made to waitlisted candidates so far this year? Answer: 53

Have a wonderful week!

Below are the key dates for the upcoming application season:

Round 1
Application deadline - Friday, October 1, 2010 at 12:00 noon EST
Decision notification - Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Round 2
Application deadline - Tuesday, January 11, 2011 at 12:00 noon EST
Decision notification - Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Round 3
Application deadline - TBD
Decision notification - TBD

We are "TBD" on Round 3 - final dates will be determined in early July as we assess how much of an overlap we need with the 2+2 application timeline.

The application for the Class of 2013 will go live the week of June 21. To view the essay and recommender questions now, please visit the Written Application page on our website.

Greetings to all and here's the plan for our Round 3 decision notification tomorrow, May 13.

We plan to release decisions at noon. You'll receive an email from HBS MBA Admissions indicating that your decision is available.

Those of you on the waitlist have received emails from Eileen Chang as to our plans for making more offers and closing up the class.

This year we received over 9500 applications for the Class of 2012. That's the second highest in our history (high point is 10,382 for the Class of 2004). This number doesn't include applications to the 2+2 program. We'll be releasing the class profile in mid-August.

With a sincere thank you to all of you who have been part of the applicant world this year, we move on to thinking about the Class of 2013. We expect to post application deadline dates and essay and recommendation questions next week.

And so it goes.

We'll be here all summer welcoming visitors to campus and traveling to do outreach events. Watch our Events page for more details.

We'll be sending these out on Friday, April 16th via email. The email will come from MBA Admissions, and you'll be able to register for an interview slot beginning Monday, April 19th. Most interviews will take place from May 3-6th. We will be conducting round 3 interviews here on campus and in London and Palo Alto.

While I hesitate to post on April Fool's Day, next week is the Round 2 notification date. Here's how it works:

We expect to release all decisions around noon on April 6. You'll receive an email from HBS MBA Admissions saying that your decision is now available online.

There will be no phone calls with decision news beforehand. Absolutely none.

Decisions will include some invitations to join the waitlist. I am very confident that we will be making admissions offers in May to some Round 2 waitlisters. Eileen Chang of our office communicates regularly with the waitlisters, so I will not do that here.

If for some reason we are unable to release decisions at noon as planned, I will post an update here.

I know the waiting is hard...not much longer.

If you are a college senior who wants to go to HBS - but not right away - then applying in Round 3 could be a smart choice.

Why?

1. The positive outcome is going to be "deferred admission" - a guaranteed spot in the class of 2014 with the stipulation that you work for two years before matriculation.
2. No target or cap on the number of deferred admit spots we will offer. Last year 43 college seniors were offered deferred admission.
3. No downside: If you aren't admitted, apply again in a couple of years - lots of denied college seniors are successful in the future.
4. The application fee is only $100.
5. GMAT/GRE scores are good for 5 years - why not take the test in college while you are still in test-taking mode?

This is a special message to college students who have been waiting to see the essay questions for the upcoming 2+2 application season. Surprise: They are the same as last year's!! Before we get to being creative and tinkering with them, we decided to have three years of the same questions so we can do a little bit of longitudinal analysis about the responses. Please visit the 2+2 Program website so you can learn more details about the program and the application dates.

As planned, today we are sending out roughly 800 interview invitations to round 2 applicants and some round 1 waitlisters. Invitations will arrive by email from HBS MBA Admissions and will be sent out before 5:00pm EST today. We will make sure every invited candidate is contacted so don't worry about missing our email.

More interview invitations will follow, up to decision notification on April 6. How many? I don't know for sure at this point - perhaps 50 or so. The majority of invitations will indeed be sent today. We continue to review - and re-review - applications and are also making some preliminary round 2 waitlist decisions. Candidates who do not receive interview invitations in round 2 will be considered for spots on the waitlist. I expect there will be approximately 100 round 2 candidates who will be invited to join the waitlist.

In response to many helpful suggestions, we are changing what you see after you have submitted your application. Instead of just the message that the application has been submitted, you will see an additional note indicating that your application is "under review." Hopefully this will give more reassurance that we are indeed moving applications through the process - something we've been doing all along, but the messaging was confusing.

We plan to begin sending out interview invitations on Friday, February 12. The invitation will be an email from HBS MBA Admissions. Our office will be closed on Monday, February 15 for President's Day. On Tuesday, February 16, our online interview scheduler will go live. Detailed instructions will be in the invitation email.

We plan to interview around 800 candidates in Round 2, including some Round 1 candidates on the waitlist who have not yet been interviewed. Most, but not all, of these invitations will go out on February 12 so that all invitees have equal access to locations and dates. As always, we will continue to send some invitations up to and including April 6, the notification date for Round 2.

Please note that interviews are by invitation only. We do not accommodate requests for interviews from candidates who are visiting campus.

This is where we plan to interview in Round 2:

London
Paris
Mumbai
Dubai
Shanghai
Tokyo
Sao Paolo
Palo Alto
San Francisco
NYC
Chicago

Candidates are always able to schedule a campus interview. If you are coming to campus to interview, we have reserved space in our first year classrooms for interviewees to observe a class. We also offer a lunch program with current students.

The majority of interviews will take place during the weeks of March 1 - March 19.

There will also be a small number of interviews conducted by phone, in case you are unable to travel to any of the above locations.

I'll do a separate post next week about when and how we expect to release interview invitations.

Another question, this time about recommendations:

Do I have to wait for my recommenders to finish before I can submit my application?

That's an easy one to answer: no.

We hope that all recommendations will be received by 5:00pm on January 19. Of course, that rarely happens. Our advice: don't wait until you get the notice that your recommendations have all been submitted before you hit the "submit" button for your application. We will start to read your application as long as two of your recommendations have been submitted. "Late" recommendations received within a day or two after the deadline will be added to your file.

We receive many questions about the GMAT, GRE, and TOEFL... the one below is probably the most common.

Can I submit my application without an official GMAT or GRE score? What about the TOEFL?

The key word here is "official" -- you must have either a GMAT or a GRE score in order to submit your application, but your unofficial score (i.e., the score you receive the day you take the test) is perfectly acceptable. Please do have your official scores sent to HBS. We will verify scores of all admitted candidates later in the spring.

TOEFL scores are different. You can't wait until the last minute to take the TOEFL because you won't be getting a score on the test date. If you need to take the TOEFL and haven't yet done so, you will most likely need to wait until Round 3 to submit your application.

Here's another FAQ:

Is there any advantage to being "early" in a given deadline period?

No, not really. We don't begin to read applications until after the application deadline. On the night of January 19, we will begin to print and distribute applications to the Admissions Board. Contrary to lots of speculation, there is absolutely no correlation between when an application is submitted and when, or if, a candidate is invited to interview. Applications are not reviewed in the order in which they are received.

That said, I wouldn't advise waiting until 4:59 pm to upload your application. We anticipate that server traffic will be high and you will be frustrated and anxious with the time it will take to have a successful submission.

Though HBS will be closed on Monday, January 18 in observance of the Martin Luther King holiday, our office will be open from 8:00am to 5:00pm (Eastern time) to answer your questions. All technical questions about the online application should be addressed to ApplyYourself. You can reach ApplyYourself by clicking on the online support button in your application, or by phone at 1-800-526-3313. ApplyYourself's support hours on January 18 are 8:00am to 8:00pm (Eastern time).

As we head toward January 19, I'll try to field some FAQs. None of these are new to us, but we're mindful that applicants are dealing with all this for the first time, so we'll risk being repetitive in an effort to be helpful.

Question: How rigid is the word-limit restriction? What happens if I go over?

This is the language we used last time about this; it's still true, and I can't think of a better way of saying it:

"Your essays do not get cut off if you go over the word limit. That being said, after reading many, many essays, we have a good feel for whether an essay is going over the limit. I think it's fair to say that we expect a candidate to be able to edit effectively, but don't stress over a few extra words.

We're getting a lot of similar questions from recommenders wondering if their remarks are being cut short. They aren't. We have suggested word limits for recommenders that amount to roughly a page of text; we do this to give those not familiar with writing recommendations a sense of an appropriate length of response. If your recommenders have more to say, that's fine. Their file upload doesn't get cut off after a single page or after a certain number of words."

We're turning out the lights tomorrow and heading home for the holidays. For the first time in recent memory, our admissions calendar allowed for a Round One decision notification before the HBS holiday break. We liked it. It made for a rather frantic Thanksgiving, but we're looking forward to not being in Dillon House all by ourselves like characters out of Dickens.

Round Two is also slightly modified this year: The deadline isn't until January 19 and that means we'll be back on the job in plenty of time to answer last minute application questions. In prior years, the deadline was right after the New Year... which probably caused a fair amount of frustration and anxiety when we weren't around to answer phones or email every day.

Here's a preview of what you can expect as we come up to the Round Two January 19 application deadline. We don't start reading applications until after the deadline - so there's no advantage to rushing to hit the "submit" button. That said, server traffic can be heavy on the day of the deadline, so it's smart not to wait until the final few hours. Everything always works out, but there can be some very anxious moments. It's probably a good idea to make sure your recommenders are very mindful of the deadline. Right after January 19, we'll be able to give you a pretty good idea of when interview invitations will be released and when the actual interview period will be.

If you're thinking of visiting HBS, you're welcome to come during the month of January, but the campus is very quiet until the third week. Students are on break...and many are on Immersion Experiences (IXPs) or student-led trips and treks. However, we will have information sessions - and the lines for lunch in Spangler will be considerably shorter! Class visits will resume in February - watch the website for sign-up details.

We hope that the holiday period gives you a chance to be both celebratory and reflective. Here in Dillon we're making our New Year's resolutions. I know one: It's important for us to carve out time to do the exercise of putting ourselves in your shoes. I always think we should be listening more and talking less. This can only lead to improvements in how you experience both the application process and Harvard Business School. Speaking for myself, I will try to be more diligent about timely updates about interview invitations and decision notification. I've been trying not to over-communicate and just repeat things that are on the website - but I resolve to be more sensitive to those high-anxiety periods.

Sending you all good wishes for a safe and happy holiday season and looking forward to 2010!

Decisions are now available online...the email notification is a bit delayed due to ApplyYourself issues. However, you can view your decision by logging in to your application.

Next Tuesday, December 15, is the day we release decisions to all first round applicants. Here's what you can expect:

Some time on Tuesday - most likely close to noon Boston time - you will receive an email from HBS MBA Admissions indicating that your decision is available. When you log into your account, your decision letter will be there.

Important note: No need to wait around by the phone or jump every time it rings - we don't make any phone calls in advance of the online notification. Really. Admits will start to receive congratulatory calls later in the day.

Applicants invited to join the waitlist on December 15 will receive a follow-up email later in the day on Tuesday from Eileen Chang, waitlist manager. The waitlist will be comprised of a mix of candidates who have been interviewed already and those who haven't.

For those candidates who are not admitted: I'm sorry, but we just can't offer personal feedback about your application. Even if we had the staff capacity to do this during the application season, it probably wouldn't be as helpful as you wish. The vast majority of applicants are certainly academically qualified to be here and would bring something interesting to the classroom. The challenge of selection is different from the process of evaluation - in our effort to bring together a diverse and textured class, we make many very tough calls.

We appreciate your patience...not too much longer to wait!

Now that it's December, we're in countdown mode to the December 15 notification date, so here's what's happening:

I think there may be about a dozen more interview invitations going out before the 15th...this is just a matter of reviewing how the class is shaping up at this point and going back and re-reviewing before final decisions are made.

As I've said before, we are building a waitlist of round 1 candidates - both those who have been interviewed and those who haven't. A "waitlist" letter in round 1 is essentially a "further consideration" decision - we will try to resolve many of these cases after we review round 2 applications. Last year we ended up admitting 70 people from the waitlist.

The next update - probably early next week - will be about how decisions are released on December 15.

I know I promised an update about interviews. They are in full swing on campus and elsewhere. We are still sending out interview invitations - maybe 50 or so more may go out before December 15 - plus waitlist invitations to some of those who have not received an interview invitation. In terms of "where" these interviews might be held, we anticipate they would likely take place on campus in Boston during December or via telephone.

We also want to share with you the list we just compiled of the undergraduate schools represented in the last three classes at HBS.

Greetings!

We continue to send out interview invitations to Round 1 applicants. As I said before, I don't know how many are still to go, but it is a significant number. The timing of when you receive an interview invitation is no reflection on the "strength" of your candidacy.

We do not send out interview invitations on Saturday and Sunday!

A note about the waitlist - remember, this year we are making Round 1 decisions before we see Round 2 applications. On December 15, I expect there will be a significant number - maybe 100 or so - of invitations to join the waitlist to candidates who have NOT been interviewed. As we review Round 2 applications, we may be inviting some of these candidates to interview in the Round 2 interview timeline.

I'll do another update next week.

Greetings. We're already deep into round 1 applications. As the leaves begin to turn colors (shameless plug for our spectacular foliage in New England) our board members burrow into their offices or study carrels in the library and we're drinking lots of coffee in Spangler in order to keep us on schedule.

We expect to begin sending out interview invitations on October 16. This year we may not be trying to send as many out on one day as we did last year... maybe more like a not-scientifically-measured stream until December 15. We really (really, really, really) don't know how many will go out on any given day. If you call and ask, we will say exactly that.

Interviews will take place during the month of November in Boston and in other hub cities. Detailed instructions to candidates about how to sign up for interviews will be included in their email invitation from us.

Don't worry about whether our email will get lost and we'll give away your interview spot. We don't do that. We'll find you. We've been doing this for a long time and we haven't lost anyone yet!

I will post updates whenever I think it would be helpful and others in our office will keep you current through Twitter and Facebook.

And I'm hoping that I can devote one post each week to answering your questions.

1. Why do business schools ask so many essay questions?

Good question! And remember, as always, I can only speak for HBS. I haven't seen any studies that correlate essay writing to the ability to effectively lead complex organizations. I think that the emphasis on essays is somewhat of a vestigial remnant of a time when we didn't conduct interviews. All we had to get to know candidates was what they provided in a written application - and we wanted to get to know them well.

They are still a very valuable part of the application, but they are only one component. The fact that we only have four essays - and you have a choice about two of them - is a definite change from the days when there were EIGHT required essays!

2. Why is the career vision question optional? It's required for most schools.

I think it's a great question that may be extremely helpful for you to ask yourself before you embark on an expensive (in many ways) MBA Program. When it comes to being valuable in our selection process, we find that the vast majority of our students may have a general idea of what they might want to do post HBS, but are very open and curious to explore many different career paths. As a School, we make a big investment in encouraging that exploration and helping students through a rigorous self-assessment process. We try to avoid sending a signal in the application process that we think that process should be completed pre-business school. I think that having this time for exploration is a major advantage of a two year MBA program.

1. What happens if I'm over the word count limit in my essays? Does my work get cut off? What about my recommenders?

Your essays do not get cut off if you go over the word limit... that being said, after reading many, many essays, we have a good feel for whether an essay is going over the limit. I think it's fair to say that we expect a candidate to be able to edit effectively - but don't stress over a few extra words.

We're getting a lot of similar questions from recommenders wondering if their remarks are cut short - they aren't. We have suggested word limits for recommenders that amount to roughly a page of text; we do this to give those not familiar with writing recommendations a sense of the response we're looking for. If your recommenders have more to say, that's fine - their file upload doesn't get cut off after a single page or after a certain number of words.

2. Could you please explain the choice to waive or not to waive one's access to the recommendations? Is this of interest to the Admissions Board?

It plays no part in our evaluation of your application - it's something for you and your recommenders to decide.

1. Can I submit my application before my recommenders submit their recommendations, or should I wait for them to finish?

We've answered this question in an earlier blog posting, but it's worth repeating since we still get a lot of questions on this. There's no need to wait - hit the "submit" button when you have completed all of your application components. If any of your recommenders haven't finished, remind them that they also need to submit by 5pm on the deadline day, but don't wait! If they submit right at 5pm, and you wait to get confirmation from them that they're done, you'll end up getting bumped to the next admissions round. Your application and your recommendations are submitted to separate databases and matched later on in the process - the recommendations will "catch up" to your application, even after you submit.

2. I'm a reapplicant. Do you compare my previous application to my current one, or is the process entirely separate?

We reserve the right to review a reapplicant's previous application, but we don't always do so, which is why we generally suggest that reapplicants focus on new information — we really do like to give you a chance to start fresh! That being said, the stage in the process where we would be most likely to pull and review a previous application would be in the interview — so if you are a reapplicant who is interviewed, it's possible that your interviewer will have seen your previous application. Also, it's worth noting that if a reapplicant is invited to interview with us again, we try hard to make sure that s/he has a different interviewer than they did the first time around, so that each side gets a fresh perspective.

1. Are you reading applications now?

No. We don't begin until the night of October 1. That's when we print all applications and begin review. So our process is not "rolling" in a classic sense. That said, I would advise NOT waiting until the final moments before the deadline to submit because the server will probably be backed up and you will be very anxious.

2. When can I visit a class?

The online scheduler for class visits is available now. Class visits begin on Monday, October 19. Whether you have visited a class or not has no bearing on our consideration of your candidacy. However, here's (yet another) plug for our video filmed in the first year classroom.

1. Must applications for the MPP/MBA Program, or other joint degree programs, be submitted separately?

Yes. In order to participate in a Harvard joint program, you must be admitted to each school independently. HBS offers five joint degrees with four Harvard schools.

2. May I scan an unofficial transcript into the application?

Yes. After admission, we require the official transcript to be sent to us.

1. Do you expect applicants who are working in consulting to include actual client names in their resumes and essays?

No - even though applications are confidential and not reviewed outside the Admissions Board, please don't do anything that violates confidentiality policies of your organization. Use general language such as: "For a client in the energy industry, etc. etc. etc."

2. I know that you need GMAT/GRE results in order to submit an application and that AWA/Analytical Writing scores can be added later...but what about the TOEFL or IELTS?

If you are required to take the IBT TOEFL or IELTS, you must have results to report or else we will consider your application incomplete until scores are reported. If you do not submit an IBT TOEFL or IELTS score by the Round One deadline of October 1, your application will not be considered until the next round.

1. Do you accept the GMAT or GRE total score in the application without the AWA or Analytical Writing score?

You must have a GMAT or GRE score in order to submit an application. If you haven't yet received your AWA or Analytical Writing score, that's fine. We will add it to your file when it arrives.

2. Is it OK to write about accomplishments that are not recent?

Every year, many successful candidates write about things that happened quite a while ago. It's probably not a good idea to have everything you write about be from your childhood - we would wonder if you were moving forward or fixed in the past. As always, we encourage you to use your best judgment and remember that this is an application to business school.

1. What should I enter on the application for GPA if my university doesn't use a 4.0 grading system?

Don't enter anything. Don't convert your grades to a 4.0 system. We review all transcripts and are familiar with a wide variety of grading systems.

2. Are essays read in consecutive order?

Not always. Each Board member may have his/her own way of approaching the written application. Speaking for myself, I often skip around with no particular pattern. If I start with an essay that seems to be building on a theme in another essay, I just go back and catch up. Not a problem. I can reassure you that all essays are reviewed!

As the Round One deadline gets closer and closer, I want to be as helpful as possible here. Instead of me posting and answering imaginary questions, how about if you submit yours and I respond to two each day from now until October 1?

Submit your questions via email to admissions+hbs.edu and put "Questions for the director" in the subject line. At this point, I think questions should be about the application and application process vs. Big Picture "Why the case method?" or "How many students pursue careers in healthcare?". I also can't address the "What are my chances?" questions.

In addition to answering questions, I will always provide updates from our office as they become relevant.

Happy to introduce the newest 2+2 admits... here's the profile:

Admissions
Total Applicants	844
Admits	115
% Admitted	14%
Female	39%
International	27%
Countries Represented	17

What the stats don't show is how much fun we had meeting these folks. They all have leadership talent and they bring an infectious level of curiosity, initiative and energy. We are proud to welcome them to the HBS family.

I stand by our general advice on recommendations: the most important thing is to choose people who know you well enough to answer the questions we are asking. Many recommendations are well-written and enthusiastic in their praise but essentially full of adjectives and short on actual examples of how your wonderful qualities play out in real life. What we are hoping for are brief recounts of specific situations and how you performed.

We ask for three — and we are fine with several different combinations. It's fine to have all three recommendations come from your current firm/organization. It's fine to have one from a former employer. It's also fine to have one come from someone who has supervised or observed you in a non-work situation — community service or campus leadership, for example. Note that we are not looking for a peer recommendation — we find it most helpful if there is some developmental distance between you and the recommender. The exception to this might be when you have worked on an entrepreneurial venture or project and the only person able to help us understand your involvement is a partner or colleague.

Please realize that we are considering these recommendations in the context of your entire application — we are not creating a detailed map of the titles and resumes of your recommenders and setting up an elaborate hierarchy.

Please don't ask current HBS students to write to us on your behalf outside of the formal recommendation process. Candidates are not advantaged in the application process by either professional or personal associations with our students.

If you are worried about how we will interpret your choice or recommenders, simply write a (brief) explanation in the "additional information" section of the application.

Especially in these unusual times, please don't jeopardize your employment in order to secure a recommendation from a current employer. While we might wish that all bosses were enthusiastic and encouraging about business school for their emerging leaders, this is not a universal sentiment. Make your best judgment call about whom to ask, make sure they understand what we're asking, explain your choices to us if you think you should... and that's it!

I've been picking up the general phone line today in order to hear what kinds of questions we are receiving...here's a few:

1. Is there any advantage to submitting my Round 1 application now?
   Not really. We don't begin to read applications until the day after the deadline. However, it's always nerve-wracking for candidates who wait until the absolute last minute and then the server is backed up. ...so somewhere between very early and just-in-time is probably smart.

2. I can't attend an HBS information session. What am I missing?
   Here's what happens at information sessions outside of Boston (please view our Event Calendar for dates and locations):

   An Admissions Board member presents an overview with general information about HBS and some detail about the MBA Program and the admissions process. We have a new video which captures some student perspectives and shows off our campus. We then present a panel of relatively recent alumni from the local area who share their reflections on their experience at HBS. We close with a question-and-answer session.

   And here's an on-campus session (please see our Visit HBS page for more information):

   An Admissions Board member conducts an informal session in an HBS classroom. A typical session will have anywhere from 10 to 30 attendees. There is plenty of time for questions. Although there are no MBA classes in session during the summer, the Spangler Student Center is open for breakfast and lunch. We offer an iPod tour of the campus which is fun and takes about 30 minutes.

   In addition to afternoon sessions, this fall we will be hosting on-campus information sessions on the following evenings:
   September 3, 9, 17 and 23
   These will be similar in format to our on-campus afternoon sessions.

3. When will class visits begin?
   Early October...although the exact date hasn't been set yet. In September we will post the date and there will be a link to an on-line scheduler. Lunches with students and campus tours will get underway then, too.

The class profile is now posted on our website. Please note that this is PRELIMINARY as of today, July 1. Any changes will be reflected in the FINAL profile, which we will post when classes begin in September.

Apologies for being such an infrequent blogger or "updater" or whatever I am trying to do here. I offer only three excuses. The first is that most of our efforts these days have been directed towards nailing down the entering class and figuring out who's coming, who's not, etc. I really do hope to be able to post a profile in the next couple of weeks. The second is that we're already in "outreach" mode for the Class of 2012. I was in Shanghai in mid-June hosting a reception for prospective candidates and connecting with the new admits who will be joining us this September. The third is that last week we welcomed the first cohort of 2+2 admits to their summer program on campus and I wanted to spend every possible moment getting to know them individually and watching them interact in the HBS classroom sessions. Enough excuses.

When are we going to launch the application for the Class of 2012? Answer: July 10. The actual application will go live on that day but the essay questions are posted on our website already.

Look for another message soon about our outreach calendar, telling you what you can expect at an HBS event and what to do if you are unable to attend one.

Here we go... the essay questions and application calendar for next year's season are up on the website.

Please note that the Round One application deadline is October 1 — a bit earlier than last year — and notification is in mid-December. We've also pushed the Round Two application deadline back to January 19 while keeping the notification date in early April. Both of these moves are attempts to shorten the wait time for candidates... we really do understand how hard it is to wait.

More about outreach events and summer activities on campus later.

Beginning with the Class of 2012, HBS will accept only the Internet Based Test (IBT) version of the TOEFL or the IELTS as tests of English as a foreign language. The TOEFL or IELTS is required of applicants who did not use English as the language of instruction in their undergraduate education. In our discussion-based, case method classroom, we have found that speaking ability (along with strong listening, reading and writing skills) is critical to success. Therefore, we need to see speaking scores in order to evaluate applicants appropriately; both the IELTS and the TOEFL IBT have speaking components. The IBT version of the TOEFL is available in all testing centers.

Beginning with the class of 2012, HBS will accept both GMAT and GRE results. We think that both tests will provide adequate metrics of what a standardized test can tell us about a candidate. It will take a while for us to do a complete update of every reference to these tests on our website — in the meantime, please accept this as official notification of this change.

Apologies for the long time between updates, but the past couple months are the time of year where we are spending all our time speaking with admits, reviewing and discussing round 3 candidates and the waitlisters, and talking (a lot) about next year's application and our outreach travel plans. Here's what you can expect in the next few weeks:

• Today, Wednesday, May 13 - round 3 notification. Mostly likely around noon. Decisions may include a few offers to join the waitlist.
• May 13-20 - some admits from the waitlist, some releases from the waitlist, and some invitations to remain on the waitlist for another month or so.
• Week of May 18 - essay questions and application deadline dates for the Class of 2012 application will be posted on the MBA website and also here on the "notes from the Director" page. Also, some information about what goes on at HBS when the students are gone in the summer (i.e., the campus information session schedule).
• Mid June - tentative travel schedule for MBA Information Sessions.
• Early August - a profile of the Class of 2011.

I'm sure there will be other updates, but these are the ones I am thinking of right now.

Applications for the 2+2 Program are due on July 1, 2009 and invitations to interview will be sent around July 15. Updates will be posted both here and on the website.

Harvard University today announced a new loan program for international students. Here's a link to the press release.

Harvard University Secures New Source of Funding for International Graduate and Professional Students

...in no particular order:

• Our Round 1 deadline for the next application season will be earlier in October, BEFORE fall class visits are open. We encourage those of you who are thinking of applying in Round 1 to consider a class visit this spring - class visits are available until May 8. Visiting an HBS class has absolutely no impact on the application process - we just want everyone to know that you are welcome.
• We will be making more offers from the waitlist this year, and we hope to make the majority of these decisions as soon as we can - definitely before the end of May.
• International students will have access to loans without needing a U.S. co-signer. We will release details/terms on specific programs as they are finalized.

I'll make this short and sweet - today we sent out about 100 interview invitations to Round 3 candidates. There will be some more, but I don't know when, to whom, or exactly how many.

This is the time of year when we have all three rounds in play, so here is some news for everyone:

Round One Waitlist - We will be extending offers of admission to about 40 round one waitlisters shortly after April 2. We will continue to maintain a waitlist and Eileen Chang will send out an update in early April.

Round Two Notification - April 2 is the notification date. All decisions will be released online - you will receive an email instructing you to check your status. We won't be making any congratulatory phone calls in advance of April 2!

Round Three Interview Invitations - Many, but not all, will go out on April 3.

Big day here at Dillon House. Lots of speculation about what the final number of applications will be to the Class of 2011. Some of what I say here will be repetitive, but the questions keep coming:

• After you hit the "submit" button, your application status will not change. You will never see "under review" or anything like that.
• You must have a GMAT score to report - your unofficial score is fine - before you can submit the application.
• Since it's the final round, we'll continue to accept recommendations online until Monday, March 16.
• Written applications must be submitted online today, March 11. We'll keep the system open beyond 5pm to accommodate the heavy activity in the system that always occurs right around our deadline. If you find that you're having trouble submitting, keep trying!

As soon as we wrap up Round 3 tomorrow, we'll be getting out some information here about the application for the Class of 2012!!

The March 11 deadline is coming up soon and we've been getting inquiries from candidates trying hard to get applications ready for submission in this final round. In trying to balance fairness with flexibility, here's where we come out:

• No extensions on the GMAT - you need to be able to submit your score in order to submit the application. We don't need to receive the official score report by March 11. If you re-take the GMAT after the March 11 deadline, we cannot consider the new score.
• Written applications - must be submitted online by March 11 - maybe not 5pm Boston time on the dot, but certainly on that date.
• Recommendations - a little more flexibility here. We'll accept online recommendations through Monday, March 16.

I know I've said this before, but here I go again: we understand and appreciate the uncertainty in the world right now. We are trying to be responsive while making sure we have time to carefully consider all applications and get decisions out on time.

You don't need me to tell you that these are unusual times. As you are thinking about your future, it may be interesting to hear news about how our Class of 2009 is faring in the job search process.

We've heard from 88% of the Class of 2009 - there are always students in the class who are going on to other degrees, returning to sponsoring companies, etc. As of today, 77% of those seeking employment have received offers. I don't have any more details to offer at this point, but we are proud of both our students and our Career Services team who have helped many of our students discover and pursue their dreams and find new opportunities in the midst of great uncertainty in the market. It is still months from graduation and companies and organizations continue to be a big presence on campus - spring will be lively here at HBS. We will provide updates as the season progresses.

Here's a question I've been asked a few (hundred) times in the past few days:

Why doesn't HBS send out denials at the same time we issue interview invitations?

We don't send out final decisions until the notification date because we need to see the results of the interview process before we extend offers to join the waitlist. After we've finished interviewing, we want to make sure we are still considering enough candidates from certain profiles - which include nationality, gender, industry background, leadership styles...and other dimensions - to compose the overall portfolio of next year's class. This is why it is important for us to keep EVERY round 2 applicant under consideration until notification day. I know this process isn't perfect, but I am absolutely certain that it's thoughtful and thorough.

Today we are sending emails to about 750 applicants inviting them to interview. Detailed information will be included in the email. I think there will be between 50 and 100 additional invitations sent between now and April 2. These will be sent out as files are reviewed - not on a designated day or days.

As I've said before, I know that the business school application experience is anxiety-producing. We are trying hard to minimize anxiety and stress while preserving a time-intensive selection process in which the applications you invested so much in are carefully reviewed by multiple members of the Admissions Board.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Greetings...

Here's the plan:

On February 9 we will send out invitations to interview. The invitation will come in an email from HBS MBA Admissions and will contain detailed instuctions about how to sign up for interviews both on campus and in hub cities. Please be assured that if we see you haven't signed up for an intervew by the end of the week, we will contact you by phone...thus there's no reason to be anxious about lost emails, etc.

Shortly afterward, I'll update you here as to how many invitations have been issued and how many we expect will go out between February 10 and the April 2 notification date.

If you're looking for a nice distraction from waiting for business school decisions, CNBC is re-airing "The Money Chase" on Sunday, January 18th at 9:00pm EST. "The Money Chase" is a documentary about HBS which provides a good way to learn more about current students and also hear some reflections from alumni.

Dee

Next Wednesday, January 21, is the day we release decisions to all first round applicants. Here's what you can expect:

Some time on Wednesday - most likely before noon - you will receive an email from HBS MBA Admissions indicating that your decision is available. You then log in to your account and there it is.

We don't make phone calls in advance of this. Really. None. Admits will start to receive congratulatory calls later in the day, but notification is always online. So if you're waiting to hear from Harvard, no need to jump when the phone rings or worry when it doesn't.

Applicants invited to join the waitlist on January 21 will receive a follow-up email later in the day on Wednesday from Eileen Chang, waitlist manager. The waitlist will be comprised of a mix of candidates who have been interviewed already and those who haven't.

For those candidates who are not admitted, we are unable to offer personal feedback about your application. Even if we had the staff capacity to do this during the application season, it probably wouldn't be as helpful as you wish. The vast majority of applicants are certainly academically qualified to be here and would bring something interesting to the classroom. The challenge of selection is different from the process of evaluation - in our effort to bring together a diverse and textured class, we make many very tough calls.

I know how difficult it is to wait... but it's not too much longer.

Dee

I'm happy to announce that the essay questions for this year's 2+2 applicants are up on the website.

This year we will be accepting results from both the GMAT and GRE for 2+2 applicants. More detailed information about this will be on the website soon.

If you're a current college underclassman, please explore the 2+2 Program and consider whether it may be a good idea for you. All of us who read applications and interviewed candidates last summer believe that this was an eye-opening experience for us - the energy and talent had us all truly impressed. Last year's admits will be gathering here on campus in late June . . . we'll be doing some interviews and podcasts that I think you'll find interesting.

Back to the Round 2 applications . . . .

Dee

Today is the application deadline for Round Two. It will hardly be a news flash to tell you that it's probably the busiest day of the year in Dillon House.

There may be heavy server traffic - especially late in the afternoon - so please don't panic if it takes a while to submit your application. Be patient...or, better yet, be early! The deadline is at 5pm, but I predict that we will not have a strict cut-off - we will do everything reasonably possible to make sure your application is considered in Round Two.

We'll all be answering the phones - and I know it's reassuring to hear a human voice - but please realize that we have no way of checking on the details of your individual application. And remember, your online status WILL NOT CHANGE to "under review" or "received" after you hit the submit button.

And, most important, congratulations to all of you who completed the application. We hope that the process of self-reflection has been valuable...and memorable.

As promised, here are some answers to questions that we've been hearing over the past few days.

Shouldn't my status change to "under review" or something similar when I submit my application?
No...it will remain as "submitted" until notification day, April 2.

What if I am taking the GMAT in the next few days? Will you get my scores in time?
You need to report a GMAT score when you submit the application. You don't need to worry about whether the official report from GMAC will reach us by January 6.

What if I am taking the TOEFL in the next few days?
Too late. You need to have taken the TOEFL and have an official score to report before you can submit the application. Once again, here's who is required to take the TOEFL: Candidates whose undergraduate university instruction was NOT in English.

Do I need to wait until my recommendations have been sent before I submit my application?
No. The requirement for submitting is that you input the names/information about your recommenders. Recommendations can be submitted any time up until the January 6 deadline at 5pm EST. There is no need to wait until then to submit the application.

Hope this is helpful...as we continue to field questions, we'll update this page accordingly.

Greetings from snowy Boston...

Just a few things before the office officially closes for the holiday break from December 24 through January 4.

This week - and up until the notification day on January 21 - we are reviewing candidates post-interview and also building the Round One waitlist. I expect that around 100 Round One candidates not yet invited to interview will be asked to join the waitlist on notification day. As we get a closer look at Round Two candidates, we will be inviting some of the waitlisters to interview in the Round Two cycle. Thus, you could say that a Round One waitlist decision is essentially a "further consideration" message. Everyone asked to join the waitlist will receive detailed information about the process and will have a contact person in Dillon House. We have every intention of admitting some candidates from the waitlist.

For those of you working on Round Two applications, expect a message here early next week.

Wishing you all happy, safe and peaceful holidays.

Today we sent out about 750 invitations to interview. I think we will ultimately send around 850 by the notification date, January 21.

I can't predict when this additional 100 invitations will go out nor to whom. It is possible that candidates invited in the next few weeks will not have extensive options to interview in hub cities; we will make every effort to work with them to schedule an interview which is convenient.

The Admissions Board continues to review written applications and discuss cases until the January notification date.

I also anticipate that around 100 Round One candidates who have not been interviewed will be invited to accept a place on the wait list in January. As their cases are further considered, they may be invited to interview.

We are trying to be as transparent as possible about this anxiety-producing process. I hope I am clear in my continued message that this is a "selection" process designed to bring a talented and diverse mix of students into the classroom. There are no hard and fast rules and there are many more qualified candidates than we have capacity to admit.

It's a really nice day here and I wanted to share something. I was just walking across campus and a first year student waved me over and said: "just got out of class where the case was about leadership at GE and Jack Welch was in the skydeck. Definitely an HBS moment."

There's been great uncertainty out there about international student loans so we are extremely pleased to be able to make this announcement:

International students at HBS will continue to have access to need-based loans without needing to find a US co-signer.

While at this time we do not have further details about specific loan programs with private lenders, we are able to make this important - and reassuring - statement about continued accessibility.

All students - both international and US citizens - will continue to be eligible for Harvard Business School fellowships - the money you don't pay back. This year HBS will award $22 million in need-based fellowships; the average MBA fellowship is $25k per year.

I'm sure you've noticed by now that I use this platform almost exclusively to talk about admissions issues. Every so often I will direct you to new programs and activities here at HBS but I also assume that you are already fully comfortable with exploring hbs.edu and, hopefully, harvard.edu to learn about the "other side of the river." Just want you to know that you can expect to hear about the wonderful world of HBS Admissions here and hope you're getting answers to questions about the MBA Program and life on campus elsewhere.

I often hear questions come in on the phone and I'm always listening for those that seem to be accompanied by confusion or anxiety. Here's one:

"What if my recommender can't meet the application deadline? Will my application be held over into the next decision round?"

Here's what we do:

If an application has two submitted recommendations, we send it out for review by the Admissions Board in the round in which the application arrived. If the third recommendation comes in, we make every attempt to add it to the file. Since the file can be in any number of places and we can't stop the reading flow, we can't promise that the recommendation will be added before review is complete.

Applications with only one submitted recommendation are held up for the next round.

We'll post this again closer to the Round 2 deadline.

Here are some quick but not very eloquent notes to Round One applicants:

Now that the round one application deadline has passed, we anticipate your questions about interview invitations. Our plan is to begin inviting candidates to interview on November 12. All the interview invitations will not be extended in a single day. A significant majority of invitations will be issued by the week of November 17. In past years, invitations have been extended up to and including the date of notification; we expect this practice to continue.

The timing of the interview decision is determined by when a particular application is reviewed in our process; there is no relationship between timing and "strength" of application. Interview invitations are not released in alphabetical order, by geographic location, or according to the date it was received. Interview invitations are sent via email and contain complete instructions for logistics. Please remember - we are unable to consider any additional materials received after the application deadline.

Just trying to get the facts out there... in the meantime, hope you all are exploring our website. Check out the section on entrepreneurship - lots of new material there for you.

Here's a breakdown of when the Class of 2010 graduated from college/university by class year. Remember, all directly admitted college seniors have the option to postpone matriculation in order to gain work experience.

Given the current climate of uncertainty in the financial services community, we are getting some new questions:

Q: Is HBS going to increase the size of next year's entering class in response to a potential increase in number of applications?
A: No. The Class of 2011 will be roughly 900.

Q: If there is an increase in the number of applicants from financial services, will the number of admits from this group be greater than in prior years?
A: Not necessarily. Our goal is to compose a class which represents many different kinds of diversity, of which professional experience is only one element. We don't have fixed industry or geographical targets so the year-to-year class profile may change.

Q: Are candidates who are not currently employed at a disadvantage?
A: No. We realize that these are unusual times and that many strong contributors may find themselves in this situation.

Q: Can I apply in Round One (October 15 deadline) and submit my GMAT score later?
A: No. It is impossible to submit the application without an actual GMAT score.

Q: Do I have a better chance of being admitted if I submit my application in Round One?
A: Not if you are compromising the quality of your application in order to rush to meet the October 15 deadline. It takes a significant amount of time to complete the written application, not to mention allowing your recommenders enough time to be thoughtful and thorough in their assessment.

As usual, I hope this is helpful.

Greetings from Dillon House — or, more accurately, The Road. This is a travel month for us and we have met many of you at presentations. Your enthusiasm about Harvard is much appreciated and it's important for us to hear what's on your minds. We'll try to capture the most frequently asked questions and post responses here. For example, a while ago I wrote a blog entry on Recommendations — it may be helpful to review it and I'll be repeating it here at a later date.

Judging from the volume of phone calls and email we are getting, many prospective applicants are eager to visit campus before the October 15 Round One deadline. This is great and we hope that our online scheduler gives candidates flexibility in planning a class visit. We begin to send visitors to class during the week of October 6 — thus we anticipate that we will not be able to honor all requests to see a class before the round 1 deadline. Although we think it's wonderful to be able to see the case method in action, please be reassured that if this isn't possible, you are in no way disadvantaged in the application process. The Admissions Board does not keep track of who has or has not seen a class.

There are other ways to get to know us. Starting on October 6, we will offer information sessions, campus tours, and lunch with student hosts most days. Unlike class visits, these do not need to be scheduled in advance — just come to Dillon House and we will direct you. For a complete list of prospective student offerings, check out our campus activities calendar.

This is a reminder that it is not possible to schedule individual meetings with members of the Admissions Board. Instead, we invite you to come to one of our daily information sessions which are conducted by members of the board. Each session leaves time for questions.

The only interviews we conduct are done at the invitation of the Admissions Board as all Round One applications are read and reviewed. We anticipate that Round One interview invitations will begin to be extended in mid-November and the majority of interviews will be conducted in December. We will update this information periodically.

If you're thinking about applying to Harvard Business School this year, you may be wondering — and worrying — about whether you "should" be making a pilgrimage to campus this summer.

Well, we're always up for company and we think we're a nice place to spend a sunny afternoon. Our campus is stunning — that's the only way to describe it and I'm not trying to boast. When your only exposure to schools is via websites, they can seem more physically similar than they really are. Most people are surprised at how extensive our campus is — more like a residential college than they expected. More buildings. More little nooks and crannies for students to gather. More green space. More bunnies and squirrels. And then there's Harvard Square right across the bridge and Boston — the best city in the US — only a short subway ride away. Outdoor cafes and concerts, great shopping, a vast variety of restaurants... lots to do — and a great summer getaway.

What we don't have in the summer is the heart of who we are and what we do: students and faculty in classrooms. You can walk around the campus on an iPod tour and attend an information session with members of the admissions board, but it will be pretty quiet. If you stay for lunch, you will probably not have to stand in line for sushi.

We always encourage candidates to explore our distinctive learning model — the case method — and experience the energy in our classroom. Class visits begin in October and can be arranged through the Admissions Office website. Current students are available to lunch with prospective applicants and they give tours in the afternoon. Information sessions led by board members are held throughout the year. If a real-time visit isn't practical, I strongly urge you to watch the video, Inside the Case Method. I think it offers a great peek inside a real case method discussion and lets you hear how our faculty thinks about this very special kind of teaching and learning.

Whether you visit or not will have absolutely no impact on how your application is considered. Applying to business school(s) is expensive enough — the application fees, GMAT fee, cost to travel to an interview, etc. We have no desire to add to the expense. If you do visit, we ask for your name only to track trends over time and make sure we are adequately staffed to entertain our guests.

So, consider yourself invited , but know that this is a cordial welcome, not a summons to a command performance!

Well, so much for frequent blogging during the "down season". When I wrote that, I obviously forgot that this was going to be a new kind of summer: it's the season of the 2+2 Program!

We've been reading applications and spending a lot of time thinking and discussing both individual files and building a summer program for this group for next year. The applications are simply great - everything we hoped for and plenty of them.

This is probably an opportune time to address another frequently asked question: "Is Harvard Business School looking for a younger class?"

Here's how the incoming class looks: we have 912 people expected to matriculate in September. 371 of these are what we call "within three years of college graduation" which means that they have graduated in 2008, 2007, 2006 and 2005. We keep track this way, not by age. About a dozen are coming right from undergraduate school - and another dozen were admitted directly from college but elected to delay matriculation in order to get some - or additional - full-time work experience. Many of the directly admitted college seniors have worked full-time already - all have had significant roles on campus or entrepreneurial experience. All directly admitted seniors are welcome to postpone their date of matriculation.

Back to the class profile and the original question. Do the numbers and I think you'll find that 541 members of the class of 2010 have been out of college for more than 3 years. That's more than the total enrollment in many business schools.

Are these numbers "quotas" or "targets"? No. We'll still do our evaluation and selection the old-fashioned way: one folder at a time. Lots of attention to the written application and mandatory interviews by invitation only. We ask the same questions about every candidate we consider: Is this person a leader? Does he/she give evidence of ability to engage enthusiastically in serious intellectual and analytical work? Will this person invest as much in the educational experience of others as in his/her own?

So the answer would be that we think you can come to Harvard Business School and thrive earlier in your career than you might have heard via the grapevine. That doesn't mean that those with more experience should be discouraged: apply when it's optimal for you. When you can look at the questions we pose and feel eager to respond, that's a good indication of readiness.

Back to the 2+2 files... enjoy summer and watch our website for our information session dates and locations. As always, I hope this is helpful.

The Application for Class of 2011 goes live today...

That's really all I need to say but here's a quick note:

Please keep in mind that while it's wonderful to finally hit that "submit" button, we only begin to review applications after the October 15 Round One deadline. The Admissions Board has no knowledge of whether you submitted your application today or in October. To put it another way, we consider applications in three distinct decision rounds; within rounds, it is not a "rolling" admissions process.

Hands down, this is the most commonly asked question during our outreach presentations both at home and on the road... so I'd like to tackle it here to reach the broadest possible audience.

Something will be lost without the visuals - in person, I do a combination of a wince and a sympathetic shrug because the answer is: "gee, I don't know - but I understand how anxious this issue makes you and I will try to help". Let me back into the question and tell you how we review the recommendations. All written applications are read by the Admissions Board. All the materials you submit are compiled into folders and circulated to Board members for their comments. Your three recommendations, of course, are included.

The first thing I do when I read a recommendation is to ascertain how the recommender knows the candidate. Have they worked closely? When? In what context? Then I move to the actual responses to the questions we pose. Has the recommender taken the time and care to answer the actual questions? The Board puts a great deal of thought into these questions and we value a direct response. This is different from asking for a standard format "letter of reference" which, in most cases, would be 100% praise.

We don't expect the ratings grid to be all at the extreme positive end of the scale. It's hard to imagine the value of a Harvard education for someone who is "perfect". We prefer our candidates to be "normal" with opportunities for growth and development.

We are very pleased with the wording of the question: "what constructive feedback have you given the applicant?" We are finding this yields responses that are more productive than language around "weaknesses" or "areas for improvement" which can be manipulated to look like strengths, i.e. "Sally simply doesn't know how to stop working at 100%". Actually, that would be a real weakness, but you can imagine that it is meant to have a positive spin.

When it comes to "who should I select as my recommender?", there is no right answer or prescription. Candidates simply must use common sense and trust that we on the Admissions Board are reasonable and understanding. There are many successful candidates who are unable to provide recommenders from current supervisors. Also there are many candidates who are new to companies or roles and the current supervisor would not be able to be very helpful. We get it. Make your best judgment call and stop worrying. If we are struggling with understanding why a strong candidate made a curious choice of recommenders, we'll ask you - either we'll pick up the phone or we'll ask you during the interview. It is also not uncommon for us to pick up the phone and call a recommender for clarification. A simple test might be that if a recommender doesn't know you well enough to answer the questions we pose, he/she is not a good choice.

College seniors: don't be hesitant to ask for recommendations from college professors with whom you have worked closely. We do not expect you to have the same relationships in the professional world as those who are applying from the work force.

Now that I've tried to reassure you that choosing recommenders shouldn't be stressful, here are a couple of categories that I'd have to call "not a good idea". I have rarely seen a helpful recommendation from a fifth grade piano teacher. Likewise, family members simply cannot be viewed as objective enough for this task. We are very eager to see candidates from family businesses, but you should find recommenders who can substantiate your role and contributions who are not your relatives. This year we will be, for the first time, openly discouraging of informal input from current HBS students which are submitted outside of the three required recommendations. Of course we value their opinions and are deeply appreciative of their efforts to find wonderful new admits to the MBA Program. However, it is not comfortable to send any signal that those who are not fortunate enough to count HBS students as friends or former colleagues are in any way disadvantaged in the admissions process.

As usual, I hope this level of candor is helpful.

Well, I suppose this is the official launch of the Class of 2011 application season! The new essay questions are now posted along with the application calendar. Our application will be available online in mid-June.

Watch the website for news of our outreach events. I'll be in NYC on May 27 and more events will be added as they are scheduled. Expect most of these to be in August and September. College visits will be in late September, October and November.

You are welcome to visit campus this summer. Members of the Admissions Board will be hosting information sessions. Class visits will resume in early October. I encourage you all to view the video, Inside the Case Method on the website. I think it gives a very clear picture of what happens in the MBA classroom and offers both student and faculty perspectives.

I hope to be a more active blogger now that the Class of 2010 is set. I am going to be re-writing the FAQ section of our website and will surely find some that I'd like to add more context and color to via the blog. Wishing you a wonderful summer...

I know, I know... we haven't even wrapped up the Class of 2010. There's still the Round 3 notification on May 14 and we have a wait list to manage. On that subject, the response deadline for Round 2 admits is May 8; this is a critical date since we then have a better idea of where we stand in wrapping up the class entering in September. Please don't take this too literally — we won't have perfect clarity on May 9 — but I want to share with you how the timeline works.

So, about the Class of 2011. We hope to have our new essay questions posted by mid-May and we'll certainly alert you through the blog about the actual date. We are also planning on doing an outreach event in NYC in May to start the season. Again, stay tuned for actual date and venue.

For those of you hoping to visit HBS classes — our last day of class visits this year is May 9. We will hold information sessions throughout the summer but class visits in the Fall of 2008 don't begin until early October. Detailed information about visiting campus is available on our website.

Here's some more advice. As you explore websites, chatrooms, books and information sessions held by MBA consulting services, be mindful of claims of "inside information" from former members of admissions boards. I've been on the HBS Board for a (very!) long time and I can't begin to tell you how much has changed . Applicants are certainly smart to explore the admissions processes at different schools but, speaking for HBS, be careful about very specific advice that may not reflect current practices. This includes application advice from our own loyal and well-meaning alumni/ae!

To all of our Round 3 applicants, we know it seems like quite a while since you hit the "submit" button.

We plan to send out most of the Round 3 interview invitations during business hours today, April 9. There may be a few additional invitations going out until the May 14 notification date - not sure of the exact number, but probably around a dozen. Some Round 3 candidates who are not invited to interview now may be offered a place on the wait list on notification day, May 14.

As always, we hope this is helpful.

Apologies for not being a more active blogger. This is our biggest application round and everyone in Dillon is overwhelmed with the challenge of reading, interviewing, and getting decisions all set to go.

Here's what will happen on Wednesday (notification day). We will release decisions some time during business hours. I hope it will be in the morning (EST) but we need to make sure all the operational pieces are set. Applicants will receive an email directing them to their ApplyYourself account.

We don't make phone calls prior to this release of decisions so there's no need to wait by the phone. Admissions Board members will make congratulatory calls (and emails if phone is impossible) following the online notification. Admitted candidates will have immediate access to the Prematriculation Website which will have detailed information about Admitted Students' Weekend, financial aid, housing, etc.

Hope this is helpful.

And we do know how hard it is to wait!

Should I apply in Round 3?

This is the most frequently asked question these days.Of course we're not able to give a prescriptive response but let me try to be helpful.

There are always spaces available for Round 3 applicants. There are clearly not as many as in the early rounds but every year we see some great candidates and we make sure that we can make offers.

International candidates may apply but should be especially mindful of the visa application process. If admitted, international candidates should plan on accepting our offer very quickly in order to ensure that the visa process can get underway.

Round 3 applicants should not plan on the availability of on-campus housing, either the apartments or the dormitories. While there may be space available, Round 3 notification is later than the housing lottery.

As is the case for all candidates,Round 3 applicants must be able to include their GMAT and, if applicable, TOEFL scores in order to submit a completed application.

Financial aid is available to all admitted candidates regardless of timing of admission. The very last candidate to be admitted has access to the same amount of funding as the very first admit.

We are about 4 weeks from Round Two notification date on March 26. Members of the Admissions Board are getting ready to travel to Europe, Asia, and the West Coast to conduct interviews.

While interview invitations will continue to be issued up until notification date, it is fair to say that the vast majority have been sent. I hope that this measure of transparency is helpful.

Some Round Two applicants — both those who have been interviewed and those who haven't — will be invited to join the wait list on March 26.

Round One applicants on the wait list will continue to receive periodic updates from the Admissions Office.

Round 2 Interviews:

Round 1 decisions have been released, and though it's hard to believe, it's almost time for us to begin interviewing for Round 2. We expect to send out our first interview invitations on Friday, January 25th. While we will continue to invite applicants to interview until the Round 2 deadline, the majority of invitations will be out by mid-February.

Note: Just for the record we did indeed send more than one interview invitation out on Round 1 notification date, January 16!

Our first day of interviews is Tuesday, February 5, and we expect the bulk of our interviews will be completed by mid-March.

In Round 2, members of the MBA Admissions Board will be visiting Los Angeles, Seattle, Dallas, Chicago, and the Bay Area (both San Francisco and Palo Alto) to conduct interviews. Internationally, we will be visiting London, Paris, Tokyo, Seoul, mainland China (either Beijing or Shanghai), and Hong Kong. It may be helpful to take a moment to think about where you might like to interview should you be invited! Phone and alumni interviews are also available to applicants living abroad in areas that we don't have the opportunity to visit.

I know that there are multiple audiences out there: Round One candidates waiting for decisions, Round Two candidates waiting to hear about interview invitations and The Rest of the World who is curious about HBS admissions! We'll try to keep up .. .

Message to All Round One Candidates:

How do we notify candidates of admissions decisions? Everybody will find out in the same way at the same time — on line on January 16. We try to do this around noon . . . but we're sure it will be some time during business hours.

Phone calls? No one will be notified via a phone call from the Admissions Office — either before or on January 16. That's a promise. If anyone gets a call like this, I'd like to hear about it!!

Admitted candidates will begin to receive congratulatory phone calls from several HBS sources beginning in the afternoon or evening of January 16.

We are unable to provide individual feedback for candidates who are denied admission. There are basically two reasons for this — one is that we don't have the staff resources to devote to this and the second is that we're not sure that this would really be helpful to a candidate. The majority of applicants to HBS are certainly "qualified" — but the nature of a selection process is to assess a candidate relative to the rest of the pool on a variety of dimensions. Trying to capture this in a conversation about an individual application can be misleading. We do consider ourselves to be a "re-applicant friendly" process — all applications in a given season are read without regard to the disposition of a case in prior years.

So, what are we doing now?

Reading and discussing all the interview reports and trying to make final decisions.

We are just about finished with sending out Round One interview invitations. There may be a handful still to come — up until the last minute we are sorting and sifting and looking again and again.

A group of candidates — maybe fifty or so — will be invited to join the wait list without yet having been interviewed. They may or may not be invited to interview, depending on how things develop in Rounds Two and Three. We'll do a separate blog on wait list mechanics later.

The MBA Admissions Office will be closed from Friday, December 21 at 5 pm until Wednesday, January 2 at 9 am.

You may be anxious about your recommenders having questions — we'll have auto reply messages on both voice and email directing them to ApplyYourself if they have questions. You and your recommenders can email AY tech support directly through the "Tech Support" button at the top of every page once logged into an application or recommendation. ApplyYourself will be staffed throughout the holiday period with the exception of December 25 and January 1.

We thank all Round One applicants for their patience and understanding as we move toward the January 16 notification — we pledge to you our careful consideration of the applications you have worked so hard to submit. To everyone working hard on applications for Round Two, we are glad you have chosen to apply to Harvard Business School.

Peace on Earth.

Greetings from Dillon House.

Just checking in to let you know that we are continuing to review Round One applications. As we have said, we will send out interview invitations until January 16. Candidates will be invited without regard to when hub interviews are scheduled; if an invitee has difficulty finding a convenient location we will work out logistics with that individual. If we extend an invitation and do not receive a response from you within a few days, we will contact you by phone.

I know it's getting closer to the notification deadline so I need to remind you that we simply cannot accept any additional materials or updates — other than new contact information. This includes supplemental letters of recommendation.

For those of you thinking of visiting HBS in December, we'll be holding information sessions Monday through Friday at 3:00 pm from December 11 - 20. Final exams begin in early December so the Class Visit Program, Student Lunch Program and Campus Tours will end on December 7th and resume again on January 22.

Looking ahead to Round Two, here's a reminder to candidates required to take the TOEFL or IELTS — you should plan to take it in December so that scores are available by the January 3 application deadline.

It looks as if we are roughly halfway through the invitation process. We will continue to issue invitations up to and including the notification date, which is January 16, 2008.

Why do the interview invitations slow down from this point on?

In the beginning of each round, all of our resources are deployed to reading applications. Once we begin the actual interviewing (interviews began on November 5) we cannot read at the same pace — hence the slowing down of the invitation rate.

To be clear, there is no order or pattern to which applications are read first.

We hope that bulletins like this are helpful and we sincerely appreciate your patience in this process.

Here are few questions that you have asked:

1. Can my interview invitation be lost in the mail?

Of course we can't absolutely guarantee that you'll receive our email. If we don't hear from you after a few days we will call the contact phone number you provided in your application. We won't cancel your invitation if you don't get our email!

2. If I've had an interview, when do I learn of my admission decision?

Nearly all decisions are released on the notification date. In some cases, your interview may take place very close to the notification date, and in those situations, there may be a short delay in getting your decision. If you are in doubt about your decision date ask your interviewer.

3. What happens if I go over the word limits?

We're not counting words but after lots of experience reading applications, we have a good feel for whether an essay is going over the limit. I think it's fair to say that we expect a candidate to be able to edit effectively.

4. Is every application given a thorough reading, regardless of GMAT, grades, undergrad. school, etc?

This one's easy: yes.

5. Can I submit a GMAT score of "000" if I haven't taken the test yet?

No... our system only accepts entries within the GMAT scoring range. You must have GMAT results in order to submit.

As promised, here's the latest news about our invitation-to-interview process — today we sent out our first batch of invitations. There is not a regular schedule for sending these out — several days may go by before we send another group. It's also worth repeating that there is no plan or pattern to the sequence of invitations. We continue to review applications and send out invitations in random order.

We will let you know when we are roughly at the halfway mark of the invitation process.

We do appreciate your patience and remind you that we have no further information to offer about the timeline or individual cases.

In the last entry, I listed the cities we plan to visit for Round 1 interviews. Here are a couple of changes:

• In India we are going to Bangalore and Mumbai.
• In the US, we will not be going to Dallas or Austin, just Houston.

More about the interview process:

We anticipate conducting about 850 interviews in Round 1; we have the flexibility to increase that number based on our assessment of written applications. Historically, between 50-60% of interviewees have been admitted. In addition, there will be some offers to accept a place on the wait list. Most, but not all, of the wait list offers will go to candidates who have already been interviewed.

And, in the miscellaneous category:

Please continue to raise questions and issues you'd like me to address via this blog but I need to remind you that I can't respond to individuals. Even if I had the bandwidth, the functionality doesn't allow it. Questions of a general nature can always be posed via our Ask Questions page. Next week I'll put together about five questions and offer some responses.

Before I dive into the tactical issues here, let me re-cap how the interview fits into our overall selection process. Every candidate who is ultimately offered admission to HBS is required to have an interview — the vast majority of these will be conducted by members of the Admissions Board in person. We conduct interviews on campus and will also be traveling to London, Paris, Mumbai, Delhi, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston and possibly Austin and Seattle this year in Round One. In addition to our Admissions Board, a small group of alumni conduct admissions interviews in key cities to expand our reach. In situations where a face-to-face interview is impossible to schedule, the Admissions Board conducts phone interviews.

We will be interviewing from November 5 up until notification day, January 16 (and beyond if we need to).

I think we will begin sending interview invitations during the week of October 22. These are sent via email and contain complete directions and information about the process. In order to minimize inconvenience and cost and maximize choice of location, interviewees will be using an online self-scheduler.

There is absolutely no discernible pattern to how/when interview invitations are issued. I promise you that it has nothing to do with citizenship, residence, employment, first letter of your last name or anything else. It is a result of where your application folder happens to land at any particular moment. There is also no special time of day at which invitations go out but most will be during Boston's business hours.

I will let you know via this blog when we begin and periodically throughout the round. There will not be a point before the notification date at which we announce we're finished because we won't be: to repeat, there will always be a number of interview invitations issued up to and including January 16.

I hope that this gesture toward transparency is helpful. Believe me, we all understand the anxiety of a selection process but the waiting is just something to endure. Please understand that we cannot be checking on individual cases and that if you call, Sally will say the same thing that I've written here.

Well, I promised a blog entry today but I don't have much to say. Thank goodness we don't have any news of mechanical failures, power outages or anything else. The deadline came and went without any problems and, as I write this, printers are drowning out all conversation in Dillon House today. They will keep running until everyone becomes a bright pink folder and is sent out to the Admissions Board for review.

I will give you a rough outline of how the invite-to-interview process will work sometime next week.

Today is the Round One Deadline Day so here are two last-minute pieces of information:

• You don't need to wait for your recommenders before you submit your application. Hit the "submit" button when you have completed all of your components. If any of your recommenders haven't finished, remind them that they also need to submit by 5pm, but don't wait! If they submit right at 5pm, and you wait to get confirmation from them that they're done, you'll end up in Round 2. The recommendations will "catch up" to your application, even after you submit.
• The acknowledgment you receive online when you submit the application is all you need to feel confident that we have received your application. While it may be tempting to pick up the phone and ask a human being to check, we simply cannot do this.

Tomorrow I'll describe what "the day after" is like in our office!

I'm writing this from London and this is my last stop on this week's outreach trip to Amsterdam, Madrid, Paris and London. Meanwhile, my colleagues are in Asia and various parts of the United States and gearing up for two separate trips back to Europe next week. For those of you unable to attend an HBS presentation, here's what happens.

In the US, we do a case about 4 fictional, prospective HBS applicants named Alex, Carol, Elmas and Raphael that we've talked about here before. This is really going well and audiences are reporting that it's a very interesting and entertaining way to learn about the case method and the HBS admissions process.

We haven't used the case internationally — we were not sure the issues in the case were ones most important to our international applicants. Now that this pilot has worked so well, I think you can count on an international version next year.

When we're in other countries, we do a powerpoint presentation called "Think About It" which gives some standard information about HBS and then focuses on what we believe are our differentiators from other MBA Programs.

Embedded in the presentation is the video about the case method. Even when audience members have already seen it online, it's been fun to show it in a group setting — it elicits though-provoking questions and comments about the case method and the faculty.

The heart of our roadshow presentations are panels of local alumni. They share a little bit of their background and then we quickly open up for questions and answers from the audience. I field the questions about the admissions process and the alums talk about their student experience, the career search and life as a Harvard MBA.

At the end of the evening, we can usually address the concerns of individuals although there's never as much time to do this as we'd like. One very important note is that we do not keep track of individuals whom we meet — our outreach is in no way a "pre-interview" process. We do truly appreciate and understand both the anxieties of wanting to make sure you understand our process and the Big Picture questions you have about whether an MBA makes sense for you. We'll continue to try to find vehicles to be as connected and helpful to you as we can.

A while ago I promised a few short blog entries addressing tactical issues in the weeks leading up to our Round One deadline on October 2.

Well, instead here's a VERY LONG entry -- just trying to be helpful and this one takes some detail to explain. Sorry for the length -- I promise the next one will be shorter!

We've been getting many questions recently regarding transcripts. These questions generally fall into two categories: understanding official transcript requirements, and how to upload scanned transcripts.

Official Transcripts

Don't worry about official transcripts at all yet. In fact, you never need to send us official transcripts, and if you send them to us now, we guarantee that we won't keep them. We only need official transcripts after you are admitted, and only directly from your school (never from you). After admission, we will give you a form to submit to your school and the school will send us the documentation we need. For evaluation, we trust that the electronic transcripts you submit through the application are accurate, though we will verify them if you are admitted to the program.

Uploading Scanned Transcripts

We're hearing from folks that scanned transcripts are often ending up larger than the maximum file size that the application can accept. The most reliable and fail-safe way to get around this is to fill out and upload the Self-Reported Transcript Form instead. It may take a bit more time than scanning, but if you can't get a scanned file that's small enough, then you'll have to fill out the form anyway to submit your application.

If your scanned transcript is too large, there are a few things that could be adding unnecessary electronic "baggage" to your file. Scanning at too high of a resolution (dpi, or dots per inch) than is necessary for legibility is the most frequent culprit. Try scanning at the lowest dpi that your scanner allows (usually 72 dpi) at 100%. Then view your file, making sure that you're viewing it at 100% as well, to see if you can read it. It doesn't need to be crystal clear, just legible. If you can't read it, try the next setting up until you have an image that can be read.

The next potentially troublesome step is getting the file into a file type that the application accepts. Moving the image from program to program can often add unwanted data, so the sooner you can get your transcript into a file type that the application accepts, the better. The only image file that the application system allows is .pdf. If possible, capture the image as a .pdf file directly from your scanner in the first place, or have your scanner software convert the captured image to .pdf. If your scanner won't create .pdf files for you, then you'll need to embed the image file in a document file (the detailed instructions for this are in the application in the Self-Reported Transcript section) and upload that, but the file size will often increase quite a bit when you do this, so you may not be able to upload the file.

If you've scanned at the lowest resolution that is legible, and you've saved the file as efficiently as possible (straight to .pdf from the scanner, or following the embedding instructions in the application) and your file is still too large to upload, you'll need to fill out the Self-Reported Transcript Form to submit your transcript to us.

I hope you have all seen the article in today's Wall Street Journal announcing the HBS 2+2 Program. We hope you will explore the special website.

One thing the WSJ article doesn't make crystal clear is that this is NOT a program limited to Harvard College undergrads. We'll be out there encouraging applications from a large group of schools, primarily those who are not seen as "feeders" to HBS. We see this as a NEW message to a NEW audience with a NEW timeline.

Another important point to call out is that is NOT a program designed for liberal arts majors exclusively. We will be out visiting lots of engineering and science schools and are eager to speak with college students who see themselves as "young Thomas Edisons" — they love to tinker and build things and should explore the business/science synergy.

More on this later . . . .

I'd like to introduce Pam Ralston, our Assistant Director of Admissions and operations guru. Pam takes on the challenge of how to get your applications submitted smoothly online and then move them through our evaluation process. Here's her response to two frequently asked questions:

"Do my recommenders have to adhere to the word limit?"

We ask you to provide three recommendations as part of our application process. Over time, we've read a lot of recommendations written on behalf of candidates. We've found that the best recommendations — in other words, the ones that have the most impact on us — tend to be succinct and specific. Because of this experience, we've shortened our recommendation form this year to three questions from five, and we've suggested a word limit (approximately 250 words) for each of these questions.

"Will your technology automatically cut off my recommender's response once he or she reaches the word limit?"

No. And we certainly understand if your recommender needs to go slightly beyond the suggested limit to make his or her case for your application. But, we strongly encourage you and your recommender to use good judgment — the word limits are there, after all, for a reason — to keep their comments as straightforward and concise as possible. We're confident that our suggested word limits will allow your recommenders to present you in the best light possible.

A big apology from me for saying that the Round One deadline is October 3 in my previous posting regarding the TOEFL (it has been corrected now in that posting).

Let me say it loud and clear: the Round One deadline is Tuesday, October 2, at 5 pm EST.

Dee

Hello from Boston.

Between now and the Round One deadline on October 2, I'd like to get as many short and sweet entries out as possible to try to be helpful with all the tactical concerns you have as you prepare your applications. So, don't expect any "deep thoughts" for a while...

Quick note to those of you who need to take the TOEFL. We are hearing from ETS that it takes 15 business days to have the online TOEFL scored. This needs to be factored into your application planning.

If you are required to take the TOEFL your application will not be reviewed by the Admissions Board until a score is submitted. So, even if you think you are meeting the Round One deadline, without a TOEFL score by the application deadline, you will be "incomplete" and will not be considered until after the score arrives. This means that if your score arrives after October 2, you will be in Round Two, not in Round One.

Just for review — who is required to take the TOEFL? Candidates who have not received a degree from a university where English is the language of instruction.

If your undergraduate university degree is not in English but your graduate degree is in English, you are strongly encouraged to submit a TOEFL score.

Greetings from San Francisco! This week I am hosting our outreach events both here and in Silicon Valley. Our San Francisco session was a big one — we divided the group in two and Hilary Somorjai, an HBS alum and member of the Admissions Board, and I each did a session. We taught — and I use that term loosely — the Roadshow Case. The discussion was lively. During the session, someone pointed out something about one of the protagonists that I hadn't noticed — and completely changed how I think about things. Something similar happened in NYC. This will inform how I do the case the next time and is a perfect illustration of how the case method is organic vs. static.

I like to use this blog to answer questions that aren't on the website. Please know that I can't respond to your questions individually but will try to address as many as I can in this format.

"Is there an advantage to applying early in a given decision round?"

Only from the standpoint of peace of mind knowing that you're not getting crunched with heavy server traffic in the hours before an application deadline. We wait until the deadline has passed to print applications and there's no way the Admissions Board knows whether you were the first or the last person to apply in that round.

More next week from Boston — we'll be welcoming the class of 2009 on September 4!

Dee

We're back from NYC and still talking about our roadshow that features the case method. Our hope was to give the audience a sense of what the case method feels like beyond just hearing us talk about it. Alison McCarty, Eileen Chang and I each did a session and here's our major learning: it's a lot easier to give a PowerPoint presentation! We have renewed admiration and respect for the HBS faculty who do this every day with consummate skill and grace. We found it lots of fun and look forward to improving our delivery over time. It's hard to fathom that the faculty can do this AND actually remember each student's contribution — we didn't even try to remember names!

The case that we used was written to present four very different prospective applicants to HBS and spark a discussion of how each might approach the decision to apply to business school. I am getting to feel very well-acquainted with Alex-Carol-Elmas and Rafael (the protagonists in the case) — audience members have pointed out nuances and aspects of their background and perspectives that I didn't notice.

We'll be doing this in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, etc . . . hope you will be able to be there! For more information on our upcoming events click here.

Greetings from NYC...

We are overwhelmed with the response to our three outreach events in NYC — all three are now closed because we have reached the seating capacity of the venues.

I am so sorry that many of you will be disappointed by being unable to attend. We're considering adding another NYC event but we wouldn't be able to schedule it until October at the earliest. So, in the meantime, I suggest that you watch the video on our website that highlights the case method. This shows real footage of an HBS case method discussion and takes you behind the scenes as well. Of course you are always welcome to come to visit campus — and, yes, I do recognize the Catch-22 of not being able to visit classes before the Round 1 deadline in early October. We need to give the first year students time to settle into the classroom routine before we send visitors to classes.

More to come from NYC...

Dee

Mid-summer greetings to all. I'm writing this from the road — we're actually on our first swing of fall presentations. The blog seems to be generating a fair number of questions — both tactical and more Big Picture — so I thought it might be helpful to simply select a question or two and provide a response each time I write.

In my last entry, I spoke about leadership styles as an element of diversity in the classroom and beyond. This provoked an interesting question from a reader:

"What happens to silent leaders? How many people get to talk in an 80 minute class?"

You heard me salute the "quiet" leader — the counterpart to the Teddy Roosevelt "I'm going over the hill and everybody had better be behind me" model. I see "quiet" as being in a very healthy point on the continuum, but "silent" is too far in the other direction. There's no room in a case method classroom for a bystander — someone who is there to "take vs. give." Given that the HBS classroom is meant to be a dress rehearsal for Real Life, I'm also having trouble conjuring up an effective "silent" leader. I think it's fine — and this does explode some stereotypes about who should and should not come to HBS — to be "shy" in the sense that you are never going to be the loudest voice in the room or the person who feels most comfortable being out there front and center. But in order to succeed at HBS you need to be brave enough to put yourself out there in a discussion. Believe me, it's no one's "comfort zone" but it's an incredible opportunity to practice what you'll need to do as a leader in your career: listen to others, develop a point of view and then articulate it.

There's a huge variation in how many students get to talk from class to class. Sometimes you're giving a comprehensive "opening" or "closing" of a case and sometimes you're making quick, short comments in response to a classmate's point.

"How can I tell you about all my extracurricular activities if there's only space for three?"

Use this space for the three that you consider most significant. Note: there's nothing magic about the number three. . . . we need to make an arbitrary decision about the online application set-up. Some successful candidates will have one. If there are others that you want to mention, use the "additional information" section or include it in your resume.

More next week.

Dee

Last week we kicked off our Class of 2010 travel season with something new for us: an evening information session in Washington DC with three panelists: Toby Stock, Dean of Admissions at Harvard Law School, Alexandra Martinez, Director of Admissions at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and me. Usually we either do stand-alone HBS events or participate with other business schools on panels at various events. The catalyst for the all-Harvard session was the announcement of two new joint programs, the MBA/MPP and the MBA/MPA-ID.

We wanted to see if we could all get the acronyms right (after saying them over and over again!) and also to explain the different elements of the programs, including shared curriculum, timing, funding and summer internships. We had a full house of about 150 and the question-and-answer session was still going strong after an hour and a half. In addition to the new programs between HBS and KSG, we also talked about the existing programs, the JD/MBA and the JD/MPP.

You can find details about all the joint programs we offer —including the MD/MBA —on our website. We're experiencing an increase of interest in joint programs in general —both from prospective candidates and also among the leaders of the different Harvard graduate schools. Why? In a global economy, the opportunities for synergy across traditional boundaries are growing. Leaders of tomorrow will need to be "multi-lingual" —they will need to speak both the traditional language of business but also add the context of the public and not-for-profit sectors. Many aspiring entrepreneurs are attracted to being able to speak from deep knowledge of the law and how it impacts operating and strategic decisions. As the challenges of healthcare and issues of public health increase, the need for physician/leaders is expected to grow.

What I noted about our Washington panel was that each Harvard school articulated the same critical quality in a successful candidate: leadership. Sometimes it feels like MBA programs have appropriated leadership as "ours" and it was a good jolt for me to realize that this just isn't the case. Both Toby and Alexandra were compelling in how leadership is essential for success in their programs too. This gave me the opportunity to refine or play with the word "leadership" a bit further.

Any of you who have heard me speak know that I worry that "leadership" can be misunderstood. Sometimes the very word conjures up a powerful figure who charges over the hill yelling "follow me!!" - someone both larger-than-life and louder-than-life! This panel gave me another opportunity to talk about leadership styles being another measure of diversity in the HBS classroom.

We are serious about finding out how individuals lead and what happens when leaders listen to each other. Imagine a case with a protagonist grappling with a challenging management team or board of directors. What if he finds him/herself suddenly in the top position at a firm with a culture that rewards a leadership approach very different from his/her natural style? We want to bring together entrepreneurial leaders, those that gravitate to positional authority in complex organizations, thought leaders and hands-on leaders who thrive with small teams. Some of the most dramatic moments in a case discussion come when a student proposes a course of action that he/she finds eminently logical and obvious —and someone else in the room finds it completely wild —even preposterous! This kind of diversity of perspectives is what makes a case method discussion so exciting and unpredictable.

Before I close, let me try to answer a couple of the questions that have been submitted. I need to remind everyone that "here are my stats, what are my chances?" type of questions are not what I have in mind! That's not the way we look at applications and I could surely do more harm than good were I to try to reduce our process to "stats". I hope you all understand that this is not a way of saying that everyone should apply to HBS —a strong academic record really matters as does a track record of leadership. I just can't speculate on how a person's stats translate into a complete application.

Here are two questions I've received recently through the Talk2Dee function:

"What are the most important criteria in assessing international applications?"

We're looking for the same qualities in both international and domestic candidates. We think we have a good grasp of international educational systems and the opportunity sets for university graduates across a spectrum of countries. We understand the different nuances in both the concept of "leadership" and the role that extra-curricular activities play in university and community life. We don't know everything (!!) so it's up to you to present clear and complete responses to our application questions.

"What is the difference between applying in round one and round two?"

Not much. We'll make roughly the same number of admissions offers in each round. While we have a smaller number of applications in round one, I will generalize and say that they historically tend to be a very organized and eager group who want to know where they stand as soon as possible. Round two offers the opportunity to polish the application again over the winter holiday break. Sometimes candidates will wait until round two in order to report on a recent promotion —that's understandable. Our advice is to submit your application when you have had a chance to devote serious and sustained effort to making it the best case for admission.

That's all for now. Maybe next time I'll talk about the case method video that's up on the website...
anyone have any questions or comments about it?

Dee

I'm writing this on graduation day for the Class of 2007. As you might imagine, this is a very big day here on campus—legions of staff involved in organizing the ceremonies, lunch under tents, kids, parents, grandparents. The weather is absolutely perfect—a welcome contrast to last year. Graduates of all the Harvard schools march into Harvard Yard in the morning for the traditional ceremony and speech—Bill Gates is this year's speaker—and then go to ceremonies at their individual schools where diplomas are actually awarded.

Dean Light spoke at the afternoon ceremony here—my favorite part is when he asks the graduates to turn around and acknowledge all the people in the crowd who have provided love and support along the way.

So, as the campus quiets down after today, we officially move into summer mode. We don't have to dress up to come to work. The lines at the Spangler food court are dramatically shorter. Boston is a "school" city and so even the traffic is noticeably lighter and our commutes are much easier. Everyone I meet in my Real Life always asks, "so, things must be slowing down now, right? End of the season. What do you do now, anyway?" I've been in the HBS Admissions office for a long time and I think this concept of an "off season" really was the case in years past, but certainly not circa 2007.

I like to make the analogy of getting ready for a long sea voyage. The voyage is, of course, the application season. When we're out at sea, we are focused on staying afloat, keeping the ship on course, etc. etc. Now is the time that we re-design the boat, select the crew, and make sure the vessel is seaworthy. Note: I have never actually been on a sea voyage, but I am very quick to make analogies. I like this one.

On tomorrow's calendar I see seven meetings—a few with alumni, one interview with a potential new Board member, a good-bye to a first year student off to Singapore for the summer and another round of looking at the design work for next year's print publications. Later this week we are off to the annual GMAC (Graduate Management Admissions Council) conference in Philadelphia—a great time for us to connect with our peers and learn about what's going on in the world of business school admissions.

I'm sure you know that another word for "graduation" is "commencement" and that's what this feels like in MBA Admissions. Today marks the official beginning of the 2007—08 application season. I'll be writing here in the weeks to come about what that entails, sharing our travel plans—both where we're going and what we'll be saying. I'll be commenting on our application questions and tell you how we come up with them.

But before we move on to the next season, I'll give you a brief recap of where we stand with getting the Class of 2009 lined up for Aldrich Hall in September. I think we are just about wrapped up. We ended up making about 25 offers to candidates on the waitlist. Some of these offers were made just before Round 2 decisions went out at the end of March and some just before Round 3 decisions went out in May. Over the past couple of weeks we've been able to extend a handful of additional offers. We really don't like to keep people in limbo past June so I think we'll be sitting tight from here on, with only a very small group of waitlisted candidates who have agreed to stay on hold until the end of July.

I'd like this blog to be a way for me to learn about what's on your mind— while I can't answer every question submitted, I'd like to try tackling a few every week. Just click on the Talk2Dee link, submit your questions and comments and I'll select a few to respond to each week. I promise to take on the tough ones, not ones that you can easily find answers to on our website. Let's see how it goes . . .

More from me in a week or so . . . Dee