Could You Get Into Harvard Business School?

Could You Get Into Harvard Business School?
By Melissa Korn

What have you done well? What do you wish you’d done better? Answer those questions right, and you could be on your way to a Harvard M.B.A.

Harvard Business School, usually the first elite business school to unveil its M.B.A. application, is halving the number of essays that all prospective students must write – to two, at 400 words apiece. At the same time, it’s adding an extra essay for applicants who make it through an in-person interview with a school representative.

That means that instead of slogging through 2,000 words from each of the 9,000-plus applicants, the admissions office will get just 800 words per candidate to start, and then another 400 words from the 1,800 or so invited for interviews.

(Quick math: if all last year’s applicants used the maximum word limit last year — two 600-word essays and two at 400 words, for a total of 2,000 words a head– the admissions team could have read upwards of 18 million words last year. Now, they’re looking at fewer than 8 million.)

https://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2012/05/22/harvard-business-school-reveals-essay-questions-applicatio/