HBS Interviews–back of the envelope calculations
HBS INTERVIEWS: thoughts on the back of a napkin.
Number of adcoms at HBS reading apps= ~15 (my own guess, based on lots of things)
Number of apps typically processed in one day per adcom =10 (“official” reading time per app. including note writing and summary, 40 minutes, actual time it takes to do this, 25 minutes, time it takes ME to do this, 5 minutes (altho I dont have to write notes, that would make it 10 minutes). Typical amount of actual time adcom spends reading apps. per day=  ~300 minutes, calling it 30 min per app, to account for shuffling papers, stirring coffee cup, email joke breaks,  nose blowing, and often, flushing. Number of hours adcom works in day reading apps = 5. That is actuallly A LOT, how many hours do YOU in fact really  work? Adcoms also go to silly meetings, travel a lot,  spend about 40 minutes a day telling each other, “no, those pants don’t make you look fat…..” call each other up to read particularly stupid essays out loud,  and do lots of other normal things, just like you and me.  Â
Number of apps in round one–for sake of argument, 4,000.
Number of apps processed by total adcom staff in one day –150, in one week =750
Number of week days since they started reading apps= 17 (could be more, adcoms sorta work 6 days a week and sometimes more in crunch periods, w. work braided into travel, reading stuff on planes, reading on weekends etc. etc. )
AT LEAST THAT WOULD BE THE PARTY LINE
You can do the rest of this math folks, altho my real guess is, above is UNDERSTATED  based on fact that most adcoms work 6 or even 7 days a week in terms of app reading. I also think that while 15 adcoms are hard-core app readers, the officer corp, including field marshall Dee Dee,  is also in the hunt, altho not on per diem basis,  so they got more like 18-22 people reading apps…. yadda, yadda. They may be able to churn thru 1000-1200 apps a week if they have to, AND IN FACT PROBABLY DO ONCE THEY GET DOWN TO IT, ALTHO THEY MAY BUILD UP TO THAT NUMBER, SORTA LIKE PERSON ON A TREADMILL  WITH ONE OF THOSE CARDIO SETTINGS.
 altho that by no means indicates that many invites are out, since there is admin delay, and some kind of 2nd level review……..and they probably spend some time synchronizing metrics etc. esp. for new readers, e.g. going around a table w. benchmark apps saying this is admit, this is not, this is sorta WL, etc. etc.
October 26th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
a basic question:
what if, for some reason, my email gets lost due to the spam filters? Do we get a any follow-up phone calls from HBS?
October 26th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
correction: my interview email*
October 27th, 2007 at 8:27 am
Yes, if you are invited to interview, and DO NOT SIGN up, down the road, someone will reach out to contact you, altho it could be in like mid December. Make sure phone number you gave them still is operative–if you are deep worry wort, as apparently you are. Also, see if you can program spam filters to put HBS on safe list.
November 30th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
I recently had my HBS interview and was surprised that I was not asked any of the random or difficult questions that I have heard can come up in so many cases… I am obviously prone to over-analyzing now that I’m thrown into the endless waiting period between now and January (!!), but should I be worried that the interview felt very relaxed and positive? My stats are about at the 80th % mark for HBS, but I expected a few more probative questions given my unusual background. I read about these “dead meat” interviews and I go into fits of worry! To be honest, my Stanford interview was a little more difficult and my alumni interviewer asked more of the challenging questions specific to my background that I was anticipating at HBS. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!!
December 2nd, 2008 at 7:50 pm
How you think when the economic crisis will end? I wish to make statistics of independent opinions!