The First-Year Experience
The First-Year Experience
An inside look at student life as it unfolds for RCs.
An inside look at student life as it unfolds for RCs.
START
With a mix of academic and social activities, START gets RCs (first-year students) oriented over two jam-packed days.
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Video 25 AUG 2014Welcome Class of 2018: You Are HBS -
Video 25 AUG 2014Section Reveal -
Video 28 AUG 2014First Day of Class
MBA Student Club Fair
From rugby and hospitality, to aerospace and negotiation, there's a club for that. Hundreds of RCs explore all that student clubs have to offer.
FIELD Foundations: Communications, Feedback, and Coaching
Through a series of interactive workshops, first-year students explore and practice interpersonal skills essential to effective leadership.
MBA Fall Family Fling
Balloons! Cookies! Jungle gyms! What more could a kid (or adult) want? The Fall Family Fling has it all for student families.
FIELD Global Immersion Locations Revealed
As the capstone to their Required Curriculum (RC), more than 900 first-year MBA students will travel to emerging markets to develop a new product or service for global partner organizations. Find out where in the world they’re headed!
First-year students
Global partners
Countries
Customer Interaction Days
First-year students reflect on their experiences during Customer Interaction Days as part of FIELD Global Immersion. In preparation for their overseas assignment, students participate in a challenging, local team-based exercise. By practicing Design Thinking, a structured approach to meeting unmet customer needs, students develop a product or service for the US market similar to what their Global Partner will require come May.
Flag Ceremony
An annual tradition, first-year students hang flags that represent their home country in Aldrich classrooms. With classmates from all around the world, you never know who you'll be sitting next to!
First-year students
Countries
LET IT SNOW!
Winter can transform our campus into a snow-lovers' paradise, recently with a record-breaking 110 inches, and RCs soaked up every moment of it!
Short Intensive Programs (SIPs)
SIPS are no-fee, no-credit elective courses for RCs and ECs that offer the opportunity to think about career choices, gain practical skills, and explore topics you might otherwise never get to study. Startup Bootcamp, launched originally for RCs, is still one of the most popular SIPs.
NEW VENTURE COMPETITION
The student New Venture Competition is a year-long entrepreneurial journey to launch new business and social impact ventures while at HBS. The program culminates with a capstone event in which all participants, including teams comprised of first- and second-year students, present live to top investors and entrepreneurs!
Cash plus in-kind prizes
The Boardroom: A First-Year Capstone
Members of the Class of 2018 and over 400 Harvard Business School alumni participated in the inaugural HBS Boardroom, an RC experience that includes first-year student teams presenting case-based management decisions to alumni playing the role of board members.
FIELD GLOBAL IMMERSION
As a complement to the case-study method that encourages students to think like leaders, Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development (FIELD) gives students opportunities to translate their ideas into practice. Having worked in small teams and applied the tools of design thinking – customer observation, brainstorming, and prototyping – to develop new products and services during Customer Interaction Days, students travel to global markets and work with their Global Partner. They interview potential customers, refine their ideas, and present their conclusions to their Global Partner.
First-year students
Global Partners
Countries