The Harvard Crimson

SANDY EXPLAINS WHAT HBS LIKES IN COLLEGE JUNIORS AND SENIORS.

Riding the College-to-Business School Express

Applying to HBS as a college senior is a path largely untaken as is getting accepted

By PRATEEK KUMAR
Crimson Staff Writer

The Business School received approximately 8,500 applications in total for all three rounds this year, according to HBS admissions director Deirdre C. Leopold roughly a 14.5 percent increase over last year’s total of 7,424 applicants.

Of those 8,500 applicants, 320 of them were current undergraduates applying to become members of the MBA Class of 2010.

(This year, after the completion of the second round, 21 undergraduates have received offers of direct admission, while 15 have received offers of deferred admission, according to Leopold. )

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Sanford Kreisberg, an independent consultant who runs the business school admissions blog HBSGURU.com, speculated that the increase may be tied to falling financial markets.

“Applications are up this year because of the worsening economy,” Kreisberg said, “but they’ll be up even more next year as the economy continues to weaken.”

Harvard MBA figures seem to support Kreisberg’s statements. Applications peaked at 10,382 for the class of 2004; candidates for that class submitted their forms around late 2001, when the U.S. economy suffered two quarters of negative GDP growth.

So what makes college seniors who apply to HBS stand out from the rest of the pack?

“We look for very strong academic performance, but there’s more than that. What do these applicants bring to the case-method classroom if they choose to come right away?” Leopold said. “We want…to measure maturity, agility, and the ability to think on your feet.”

Kreisberg and Leopold both noted the importance of diverse interests in an MBA applicant.

“The admissions committee is looking for students that have an impact beyond themselves,” Kreisberg said.“Many successful applicants participate in political and ethnic-identity clubs. Helping your own ethnic group [and] political campaigning are well-regarded activities. Health-related organizations are also popular organize breast cancer walks, or help bring awareness to some specific disease.”

But Kreisberg said that for younger applicants with less work experience, statistics like GPA and GMAT scores become more important.

“To its credit, HBS will blink at a lower GMAT score, as they feel that the GPA is more important,” Kreisberg said. “They will rarely blink twice, however. They won’t blink at both.”

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SANDY GIVES THE SKINNY TO THE CRIMSON ON WHAT NEW LIFE-SCIENCE GRANTS MEAN AND BECOMES HALF THE STORY.

HBS Puts Money Behind Life Sciences

Ten first-year Business School students to receive $20K for excellence in sciences

Published On 2/6/2008 2:51:36 AM
By PRATEEK KUMAR
Crimson Staff Writer

Harvard Business School will award 10 merit-based scholarships of $20,000 each beginning next fall to MBA students who show exceptional talent in the life sciences, the school announced in January.

. . .
The life science fellowships represent a “welcome wagon” to students in the sciences, said Sanford Kreisberg, who runs an independent consulting service for business school admissions.

He said he believed that the fellowships would attract older students by targeting applicants with medical or pharmaceutical experience, and that focusing on life sciences was a good choice for the Business School because of its comparative advantage in the field.

”In the battle with Stanford for who can be hipper, life sciences is one of the few advantages that the Northeast has vis-à-vis Silicon Valley,” he said.

Kreisberg also said the life science scholarships highlight the recent trend toward compartmentalization at the Business School.

“The class used to be a smorgasbord, and now it’s a chef’s tasting menu,” Kreisberg said. “They’re breaking the class into micro-groups.”

Kreisberg noted that age gaps between students would be further exacerbated by the recently-created “2+2” program, which admits college juniors to the Business School after two years in the workforce.

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AND HERE IS A 2007 CRIMSON ARTICLE DETAILING HOW HBS IS GOING AFTER EVEN YOUNGER STUDENTS, COLLEGE JUNIORS, AND MY CONTINUING COMMENT THAT THIS IS BEING DRIVEN BY COMPETITION WITH LAW SCHOOLS…..
AND HBS NEW-FOUND LOVE AFFAIR WITH GOOGLE.

HBS Unveils New MBA Track School launches ‘2+2’ program, allowing juniors to apply, defer enrollment

Published On 9/14/2007
By CLIFFORD M MARKS
Harvard Crimson Staff Writer

Harvard Business School (HBS) unveiled an admissions program yesterday that will accept applications from current college juniors starting this spring for enrollment in the HBS Class of 2013.
. . . .

According to Sanford Kreisberg, an independent admissions consultant at HBSguru.com, the program’s true value for HBS will be ensuring that stellar students don’t opt for a JD instead.

“Strategically, it’s a good move on Harvard’s part,” Kreisberg said. “They’re just trying to locate talent early and stop stars from going to law school.”
. . . .

Students in the program will gain access to pre-matriculation summer programs on campus, career counseling, and opportunities for jobs with recruiting partners, such as Google, McKinsey & Co., and Teach For America, which has promised HBS to consider 2+2 admits for positions.

Kreisberg said the school has been courting Google for some time, and this program provides an chance to strengthen ties with the company.

“This is a brilliant way for Harvard to make an alliance with Google, something they’ve been dying to do,” he said.

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HERE IS A 2006 HARVARD CRIMSON STORY ON THE SAME SUBJECT, CONFIRMING MY PREDICTION THAT HBS WOULD FOLLOW MARKET FORCES IN TAKING YOUNGER STUDENTS.

Can Younger MBAs Measure Up?

Holding their own in the job market, more college grads are heading straight to HBS

By MADELINE W. LISSNER
Crimson Staff Writer

Even with minimal work experience, 94 percent of the students who enter HBS within three years after graduating college leave with job offers.

In the pack of young business professionals, Daniel E. Kafie ’05 belongs to an unusual breed.

Kafie matriculated to Harvard Business School (HBS) directly after college, and, unlike more than 97 percent of his HBS peers, he’s never held a full-time, year-round job.

But when they try to land a position after business school, young MBA students like Kafie have little trouble competing with their veteran peers who average four-and-a-half years of work experience.

Ninety-six percent of the HBS Class of 2006 had job offers at graduation, according to the Director of MBA Career Services, Jana Kierstead. The figure was 94 percent for the handful of graduates who entered business school within three years of finishing college who make up about a fifth of the HBS student body, school officials say.

David M. Darst ’05 who will graduate from the Business School this spring with an offer at a New York venture capital and private equity firm says he believes that high performance does not require years of experience.

“Being younger makes it more difficult at first, because people do have stereotypes about people being young not being smart enough or experienced enough,” Darst says. “If you do a great job at your work, your age doesn’t matter.”

Beroutsos says that McKinsey does not cut candidates from consideration based simply on their job history. Instead, recruiters see prior work experience as a “training ground” for a position at McKinsey, he adds.

But Sanford Kreisberg, an independent admissions consultant who runs a blog about business school admissions on BusinessWeek’s web site, says that “experience, for better or for worse, is pretty overrated.”

“People are buying youth and the [HBS] brand,” Kreisberg says.

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BELOW ARE EXCERPTS FROM A 2003 HARVARD CRIMSON STORY ABOUT HBS’ MOVE TO TAKE YOUNGER APPLICANTS IN WHICH I PLAY THE GADFLY ROLE AND SUGGEST THAT HBS’ MOVE TO TAKE YOUNGER STUDENTS IS DRIVEN BY COMPETITION WITH LAW SCHOOLS.

Business School Strategy Snags Younger Stars

By LAUREN A. E. SCHUKER
Crimson Staff Writer
THE HARVARD CRIMSON
NOVEMBER 6, 2003

Some people are just ahead of the pack.

For Oliver Thomas, summers off from Oxford University meant time spent in an office tower, working with CEOs and top executives as an investment banker or accountant. For Lisa B. Schwartz ’03, internships at the U.N. and the Supreme Court of the United States offered a chance to relax from the hectic pace of maintaining her 4.0 GPA.

Thomas, 23, started at Harvard Business School (HBS) this fall after graduating from Oxford University. Along with ten other students in this class, he comes to the prestigious B-School right out of college. For these students, Harvard Business School’s Early Career Initiative—which aims to attract students within three years of graduating college—was just the ticket.

But it remains to be seen whether the initiative, which has been underway for at least three years, is rewriting the rules of HBS admissions, or merely acknowledging those students who are exceptions to them.

“This could be driven by competition over unformed brainiacs with law schools and even Stanford Business School, which has always trended younger,” said Sanford Kreisberg, an independent admissions consultant who runs a much-followed thread on Business Week’s website about elite business school admissions called “ASKANDY.” “Ivy grads with nose-bleed GPAs and unclear career goals used to be hired for two years by investment banks and consulting shops during the boom. Now those kids, by default, go to law school, the haven of the unemployed and undecided. HBS may want some of that DNA.”

But Kreisberg questions the level of follow-through on the initiative.
“They have said this in the past, and results are slim,” he says. Yet those “nose-bleed GPAs” appear to be alive and well across the river, some the results of the Early Career Initiative.

. . . .

But some say they are concerned about the larger implications of the change in student demographics. Kreisberg says that the change in targeted applicants comes at a time when HBS is undergoing what some call an “academization”—turning away from a management school into a technical school.

He says that having more students come directly from college might hurt HBS in the long-run, as it pushes the academization process further.

“If 20-30 percent of the class were new grads, it would be a sad trend towards more unreality over there,” Kreisberg says. “Their vaunted case method is devolving away from a Socratic dialog among experienced young adults towards problem sets for whiz kids.”

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SANDY EXPLAINS HOW HARVARD KIDS WILL NOT LET MORALS INTERFERE WITH STATUS JOBS!!!!

Wall Street Woes Don’t Deter Seniors

Published On 1/9/2008 2:37:22 AM
By PRATEEK KUMAR
Crimson Staff Writer

Several of the most desirable employers have been tied to . . . public relations fiascos such as Swiss investment bank UBS’ role in raising funding for PetroChina or Google and Yahoo!’s cooperation with the Chinese government’s investigation of political dissidents.

But seniors, officials at the Office of Career Services (OCS), and recruiters contacted by The Crimson say that the recent publicity surrounding such firms hasn’t affected Harvard students’ willingness to work there.

“Student outrage is important but selective and trendy,” says Sanford Kreisberg, an independent consultant who runs the widely-read business school admissions blog HBSGURU.com. “[Paychecks and name brands] are externalities that don’t go into issues of morality.”

. . . .
Kreisberg points out that other popular employers, such as Google and Yahoo!, have similarly not been affected by alleged unethical business practices.

“Yahoo! has just apologized for giving the Chinese police the names of dissident bloggers, and Google and Microsoft have been accused of the same collusion, but students still favor those companies because they are hip,” he says.

. . . .
Kreisberg says that looking at a student’s socioeconomic background could be one way to explain how much company actions will affect his or her decision.

“One important thing to note is that [upper-class] students tend to have these concerns while working class students don’t,” he says. “These students come from wealthy financial backgrounds and have many opportunities as a result.”

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SANDY FOLLOWS THE HBS MONEY TRAIL.

HBS Campaign Pays Off

Published On Friday, February 10, 2006
By MADELINE W. LISSNER
Crimson Staff Writer

Breaking the record for the most money raised by a business school, Harvard Business School (HBS) amassed nearly $600 million in its first-ever capital campaign, the school announced yesterday.

In the three-year campaign, HBS collected $598.8 million in alumni donations to further fund financial aid, faculty development, global outreach, educational technology, and construction of new buildings.
. . . .

Although HBS did not officially announce its final figure until yesterday, the campaign has been closely watched by those who follow the school’s affairs, such as Sanford Kreisberg, an admissions advisor and founder of Cambridge Essay Service.

“It was a 60 month pregnancy and a huge and great baby, but not a surprise to those in the know,” Kreisberg wrote in an e-mail.

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ANOTHER CRIMSON RANKINGS STORY, ANOTHER CHANCE FOR ME TO STRAIGHTEN OUT THE OFFICIAL HARVARD SPOKESPEOPLE.

HBS First in Rankings
Wharton and HBS tied in rankings of management programs

By DANIEL J. T. SCHUKER
Crimson Staff Writer
Published on Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Harvard Business School (HBS) earned a first-place ranking last month in the Financial Times’ annual evaluation of MBA programs around the globe. HBS tied for first with the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, which has perennially held the top spot alone.

The rankings were based on 20 criteria, with particular weight on graduates’ salaries three years after completing an MBA program.

. . . .

HBS spokesman David R. Lampe downplayed the importance of the Times’ assessments of MBA programs.

“These rankings are not really meaningful measures of the differences between the schools,” he said. “It’s inevitable that sometimes Harvard will be ranked as number one, two, three, or whatever else.”

Sanford Kreisberg, founder of Cambridge Essay Service, an admissions consulting firm for applicants to elite business schools, said that the Times’ rankings do not influence where students choose to apply.

“From an elite student’s point of view, the only rating that counts is how hard schools are perceived to get in to,” Kreisberg said. “That is taken by employers as a proxy for general intelligence.”

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ANOTHER INSIGHT OF MINE INTO BUSINESS SCHOOL RANKINGS.

Three Grad Schools Keep Top U.S. News Ranking; Law School Slips to 3rd

Published On Monday, April 03, 2006
By JORDAN G. LEE
Contributing Writer–The Harvard Crimson

Three of Harvard’s graduate schools ranked at the top of U.S. News and World Report’s 2007 list of “America’s Best Graduate Schools.”

This marks the fourth consecutive year that Harvard Medical School (HMS), Harvard Business School (HBS), and the Harvard Graduate School of Education (GSE) have all placed first.
. . . .

Harvard Business School spokesman David Lampe, in a telephone interview with Bloomberg.com, called the rankings “more of a beauty contest” than an accurate measure of an MBA program’s quality.

Local private admissions consultant Sanford Kreisbergexplained that although superficial, the U.S. News rankings accurately assess a business school’s selectivity.

“The U.S. News rankings, more so than other rankings (Business Week, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times), are a very good proxy of how hard each school is to get into and which schools applicants will pick if admitted to both,” he said. “You can dismiss that as a ‘beauty contest,’ but employers really care about that kind of beauty.”

ONE OF THE MANY HARVARD CRIMSON STORIES WHICH QUOTE ME ABOUT RANKINGS.

Magazine Gives Third Place Ranking to HBS

THE HARVARD CRIMSON OCTOBER 15, 2002
By LAUREN A. E. SCHUKER

Harvard Business School (HBS) maintained its third-place ranking when Business Week released its biennial rankings of the top U.S. business schools last week. According to Business Week, HBS now ranks behind both Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and The University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, traditionally ranked among the top two programs in the country, fell four places this year—from first to fifth.

. . . .

Sanford Kreisberg, founder of Cambridge Essay Service, an admissions consulting firm for applicants to elite business schools, dismisses the Business Week rankings. “From an applicant’s point of view, the top three schools are still Harvard, Stanford, Wharton,” he said. “And that is not likely to change year to year, as these rankings seem to do. Those places are, and remain, the hardest to get into and have the most clout with peers.”

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I THROW IN MY TWO CENTS AGAIN ABOUT RANKINGS.

HBS Blocks Media Access to Students

By DANIEL J. HEMEL
Crimson Staff Writer

Harvard Business School (HBS) will not give students’ e-mail addresses to BusinessWeek, the magazine that publishes a popular ranking of the nation’s business schools based in part on student satisfaction surveys.

HBS spokesperson David R. Lampe said the school has a long-standing policy of “not facilitating access to students and others on behalf of any commercial interest.”

While HBS has cooperated with BusinessWeek since the survey’s launch in 1988, Lampe said the school has now decided “that the process should be the same for the media, particularly since rankings have become a significant area of growth for an increasing number of publications.”

She vowed that BusinessWeek will use “other ways” to contact HBS students for the magazine’s survey, but she declined to specify further.

“There are plenty of people within the school who have contacted us to offer their assistance,” she added. “It’s possible that we could end up surveying the entire HBS class of 2004 highly possible.”

According to business school admissions consultant Sanford Kreisberg, “any survey which put Harvard and Wharton out of the top five would be laughed at.”

“BusinessWeek will get the data they need to have Harvard and Wharton in the top five one way or another,” Kreisberg wrote in an e-mail.

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