Sandy,

From HBS’s directors blog the February 12th post mentions- “Candidates who do not receive interview invitations in round 2 will be considered for spots on the waitlist” - I am one of those WL w/o interview. I had written off HBS and now I’m unsure of what WL w/o interview actually implies - any idea? I suppose there is potential they would include me in the Round 3 interview invites depending on the strength of Round 3 which go out next Friday but didn’t know if you had any idea what HBS’s strategy was.  Thanks for your help.

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Intuition and common sense can lead you down a dark rabbit hole when it comes to WL w/o interview and what it means. Sometimes it is just decision fatigue over thre in Dillon House, that, and keeping folks guessing. My guess is R2 WL kids w.out inerviews, and any R1 kids w/o interviews, if those are still around????  should cert. get interviewed in the R3 window

HRH blog says

Most interviews will take place from May 3-6th. We will be conducting round 3 interviews here on campus and in London and Palo Alto.

That sounds like 3 days PA (18 interviews) 2-3 days London (12-18 interviews) and GOD knows how many on campus, where they can throw lots of adcoms  in the fray if they have to (and adcoms not all that busy once they chew thru R 3 apps and rest up for 2+2). I’m thinking  ~200 interviews in R3 total, which will also include a lot of college seniors. For a R3 accept cohort of ~110-125 (maybe ~30-40 being college seniors who will defer). So total add to the class after R3 blows thru is  60-80 kids. R2 deposits are due at end of April, so there will be one more big WL shake out in May, where they will cut down the current ~200-240 WL to 50, 25, etc. (but I am not sure how many of those will be accepts, sorry, that is the missing piece of this puzzle)  and string folks out thru June/July, They usually fold the tent in early July -w. last two WL accepts being kids who live in Cambridge already (if you want to incrementally improve your odds, move here, same for Stanford, which is explicit about limiting last x spots to kids who already live near school, seriously.

If you’re one of those “last 50″ interviews (invited a month after invites went out) does that mean your chances of getting in are better?  Obviously they spent even more time debating your application and decided to extend an invitation to you, is that an “we decided we like you, you’re in if you don’t blow it” situation or is it more like “ok, let’s try to give you a shot and see what you’re about”?

hmmm, not really either, you can speculate on this 12-ways to Sunday.  About 20 of those last 50 invites are falling fruit from bigfoots shaking the tree (e.g. bigshots calling up and saying take a close look at this kid), the rest are more random than you think, and a bunch could just be logistical (someone was late handing in stuff). The adcom likes to nurse the delusion that they are reading folders night and day, right to the end,  and going over every last folder 3, 6, 9 times to make sure that no poor soul has slipped thru the cracks, so you imagine that every folder gets an independent rejection from 4 different readers, and every day, some new, last, ‘never-say-die’  reader finds an interview-making piece of DNA in YOUR folder that every other of the 3, 4 5 prior readers has overlooked, like the innocence project on TV, and then the call goes to the governor to stop the execution at one-minute to midnight. The reality is, after first wave of invites went out, there may have been some reserve pile of  200-300 folders which they just put off, for one reason or another, and at that point, ALL THE OTHER NON-INVITES WERE BASICALLY SENT TO SIBERIA NEVER TO BE LOOKED AT AGAIN. Of those remaining 200-300 folders, HRH Leopold just keeps some running, macro mental track of how round 1 replies are shaping up, in terms of kids accepting etc., what emerging demographics are, etc. How Accepted Week-End for Round One Went, etc. After that,  everyone likes to be mercurial a bit  (calling Derrick Bolton!!), so over the next x weeks,  when she wants to give herself some cheap thrills, she ( or some bunch of inner adcoms) just read over some bunch of   folders, and keeping in mind the running tallies & the micro theme de jour/ de week, she/they  find a few they  like, and reach  out and give quite an exciting email  goose to  some lucky, formerly doomed person.  Another way it works is that HRH or some other Officer level adcom read a story in New York Times etc. about X (some new initiative, industry trend, organization), and say, “Dont we have some kid like that  in the 300-limbo folders ?” And just to test their memory and office  search capabilities, they locate the folder, re-read it, and all of a sudden, it is just a bit more interesting.  Poof, another zombie brought back from the dead. Maybe. 

But whatever triggered your escape from the Limbo 300, it was not really some compelling, lost jewel of overlooked accomplishment, it was just some demographic or topical hook, or 2nd look, or even late look,  and after your Interview, you are just in the Big Ol Interview Pile O’Kids.  I’d be surprised if accept rate of the Last 50 was diff than first Wave.

Sandy,

If I got waitlisted at Wharton, chances of getting into HBS ( I was invited to interview ), are pretty slim, right?

as others have pointed out, WL at Wharton and accept at HBS is not uncommon. Nor is ding at Wharton WITHOUT Int and accept at HBS. You can toss Stan. into mix in same heads and tails ways: all outcomes happen. Sure, if you get interviews at H/S/W–chances sorta increase that you will get admit to one or more, and all the way down to opposite, no interviews, chances of one turning up on decision day fr. HBS not looking good, but between those predictive and outcome poles–lots of variance.

Sandy,Any advice for Wharton waitlisters?  What’s the best course of action, if any?

That said, most kids who get off WL just wait, but that does not mean you should not wrack your brains coming up w. angles. Current students, if they are on adcom, or good-goody types and class leaders, can also move the needle in some cases.  No gives a flying frig who gets in off WL except the poor SOB’s who are on it.  It is easier for adcom to do some random big shot a favor, or return a favor (for hiring W kids)  and take you, than it is to  take the other guy.  Also, since dif between you and other guy is near flippin zero, in many cases, taking you (the connected one) makes sense–there is a perfectly rational  and intelligently corrupt basis  for it. Make it easy for them, man, buddy up.