How to get into Harvard Business School?

Harvard has always been the dream school of every MBA aspirant. No need to explain why. The following picture is self explanatory.

Let’s come straight to the point. What does it take to get into Harvard? For that, we would need to deep-dive into who has made it to Harvard. Let’s see the class profile:

As we can see, Harvard admission committee wants to add as much diversity to the class as possible. So, chances of getting into it will increase if your domain is underrepresented. This is not restricted to education only. Let’s look into the kind of pre-MBA work domains:

Again, this picture is self explanatory. Consulting and private equity is over-represented for a very long time and will continue to do so in near future. The relevant point being that if your domain is underrepresented, your chances will go up.

It is immensely difficult to get into Harvard Business School. Consider this:

This should not come as any surprise. Almost everyone with a score of 720+ wants to take his/her chances for Harvard. The real competition is among the top 3000 people. In domains such as consultancy, PE etc, the competition is even tougher as more and more people with similar profiles apply. They have to really fine tune their applications to stand out. For people from other domains, application need to highlight main achievements and rest can be taken care of.

Median GMAT score required is 730. But for Asian people, this score may not be enough as Asians do exceptionally well in academics. So, they need 750 and above to make cut.

Apart from academics and professional work experience, personal rating which includes qualities such as grit, determination, leadership etc., carries a lot of weightage. Your application, including letters of recommendation, is essentially a demonstration of such qualities. Make sure you spend a lot of time in trying to figure out what could be demonstrative for such qualities. It could be personal or professional. Ideally, it should be a mix of both professional and personal stories.

At last, I am compelled to say that there is no fixed formula that works. The best bet is diversity (educational, professional, gender, geographical) and a well structured application so that the admission committee feels compelled to have a better look at your profile.

Do write to me at mohit@gmathub.com for any queries.

Thanks and best of luck.

Mohit