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Transformational experience in
leadership. That was the title of Brit Dewey's presentation and that,
according to Brit, is what Harvard's MBA program is all about.
Harvard Open House started with
Brit Dewey's presentation of the Harvard's MBA program and then she
passed the microphone to another admission officer who described
different aspects of MBA experience and admission process. Here are some
of the important things that I remember from their presentations:
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Leadership: HBS
is all about leadership and because of that, leadership experience
and much more importantly lifelong leadership potential is something
that the admission officers want to see in each and every applicant.
In fact, Brit Dewey said something along the lines of "We want to
accept in our program leaders. When I read each application, I ask
myself "Is this person going to be a leader in life?" " (I don't
remember the exact wording, but that was the meaning). |
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Residential
Community: One of the important things that I thought admission
officers wanted to emphasize was that HBS has a residential
community atmosphere. HBS is building new apartment buildings on its
campus and when they'll be done, 75% of all students will be living,
studying and staying on campus 24-7. And since HBS has its own
campus, this creates a unique learning environment for students. |
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Transcripts:
Self-reported transcripts should be exactly like the official ones.
More specifically, "A-"s on the official transcripts shouldn't
suddenly turn into "A"s on the self-reported transcript. |
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Countries: The
students of the class entering this fall represent over 70 countries
(73 if I remember correctly) and that's probably the highest number
of any business school in the US. |
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Location:
Almost half of all HBS graduates of this year (49% I think) ended up
staying and working in the Northeastern USA after their graduation. |
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Recruiting: The
placement numbers for HBS students that graduated this summer are
good and also many students ended up accepting offers from their top
choice. |
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Rounds: There
are no differences between R1 and R2, but it gets harder in R3. |
After Brit and her colleague finished their presentation, they
introduced 5 currents students to share their experiences and answer our
questions. I think those 5 students were chosen to reflect the diversity
of HBS student body. There were 2 women and 3 men - Elliott, an African
American who had served in the Army for 5 years and who is represented
in the HBS booklet; a White American woman who worked for CVS and who
was instrumental in initializing the CVS card that you carry in your
keychain; a very sharp investment banker from NYC; a Chinese American
woman whose dream is to become the marketing leader of the Disney; and a
White guy from Belgium who had worked for McKinsey before joining the HBS. Probably
the most interesting question that was directed to the student panel was
along the lines of "Well, HBS is a transformational experience, right?
So how have you been personally transformed at HBS?". It was
clearly a tough question, but the McKinsey consultant saved the group by
saying "I can't tell you that since we're still in the transformational
process". The audience erupted in laughter. Although after that Melissa
(who had the CVS background) said that her thinking process has changed
and that's what she considers a transformational experience.
I guess that's it from the Harvard
Open House. I generally found the AdCom members of HBS very friendly and approachable. In fact, Brit Dewey herself
approached a number of applicant groups before the event and started a
conversation with them with a simple "Hi. I'm Brit". Unfortunately at that time most of the
people in the room didn't know that Brit
was actually Brit Dewey.
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