HBS Targeting Undergraduate Applicants
Several interesting points came out of the Admissions Officer Panel held at our Chicago center this week. Possibly the most interesting was that Harvard Business School, represented by Assistant Director of MBA Admissions Nereyda Salinas, is focusing on increasing applicants to its program directly out of college. To back up this commitment, Harvard is offering undergraduate applicants:
1. Waived application fee (ordinarily $235);
2. Deferral and/or Postponement - HBS may either defer your admission to another year if you’d rather work for a year, or also postpone your admission if they feel another year or two would help you develop as an MBA candidate; and
3. Feedback - Harvard will give feedback to any college senior denied admission.
Sure enough, all of the above is indicated at Harvard’s website:
http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/collegestudents.html
I think this would be very surprising to most young applicants, as most people believe that business schools want you to develop a long work history before applying.
Still, don’t be discouraged if you’re applying to Harvard and you graduated a while ago - many applicants to HBS remain professionals who have been out of school a good long while.
We’ll have a couple of other insights from our panel early next week from Chicago GSB and Kellogg.