How not to get into HBS
At the start of this post, I must totally admit that this blog entry is inspired by MBAJackAss's blog.
This is was the deal...HBS was my number one choice (tied with Stanford, I thought Id make the choice when I had to cross that bridge, fortunately the decision was made easier when I got my ding from HBS).
On a personal note, I am sorta glad that I got dinged for two reasons
1) Personally I am better off being in the bay area, as my wife is from there. So as I immerse myself into a lot of course work (though I have a feeling that she will be helping me with my cases too), she has her own network of friends and family and does not have to start from scratch.
2) I will not deny that not getting into HBS hurt my ego more, than hopefully my future career prospects and personal aspirations. Everytime in my life when I get too comfortable or cocky, such events happen, and they have a remarkable effect on cooling down my temprament and helping me focus more.
So, going back to profile analysis and why I did not get into HBS !
1) M/28/India (live in The Netherlands) - lots of applicants from this category, infact being of indian ethnicity and this age bracket hurts a little
2) GMAT 720, Undergrad - ChemEng (Bombay) top 5%, Masters - Petroleum Eng (Stanford)GPA:4.0 - I would consider this as a strong part of my app, as I am Indian but not from the traditional IT background, my GMAT percentiles were also reasonably balanced (86 percentile verbal and 90 percentile quant, 6.0 AWA).
3) 4.5 year work experience in the oil business working projects on 4 continents and 9 countries - at the outset, one could take this as a very strong point. However, perhaps the biggest frustration is (and I realised this as I had my mgmt consultant and I banking friends comment on my essays), is that most people dont understand this business, its critical issues (besides gas going to $4/gal) and whats cool here. For example, when I described some "cool" things which I did , most of my friends went...well thats not a big deal. But given that we work in a business with 4-5 other partners (competing oil firms), governments and NGOs, even simple things like agreeing on the route of a pipeline, takes one year and is a significant achievement. Also, trying to communicate the challenges faced by our business, I noticed that a lot of people could not relate to things, as they were "normal" in other businesses.
At the same time, not many people from this business apply for MBA degrees and it should have put me in the category of "novel" candidates (unless they bunched me with the "manufacturing" group)
[To understand this business better, I recommend reading a book called THE PRIZE]
4) Recommendations: reasonably solid. Though I was told by some of my recommenders that they had to talk to some of their counterparts who had mba degrees (as they told me later), because it turns out that:
a) the European style of writing recommendations is very different from the American style
b)European recommendations tend to be more generic
However, I think that my recommenders must have put in EXTREMELY solid recommendations, as I did get into Wharton and Stanford
5) Leadership skills: HBS has a strng focus on this. Since my early days as a student in school to my college days, to my current position, I have held leadership positions and hence was very confident. However in my leadership essay, I described a leadership situation in the oil business, and in retrospect I feel that though it was a really good example of leadership, people unfamiliar with the business could not relate to it (ofcourse the failing is mine, for not being able to understand my audience and cater my essay)
6) The essays: I think this was the most important part of the app for me. And I was always a little uneasy with 1 essay. I think, I nailed all the essays but for the most important one "THREE SIGNIFICANT ACHIEVEMENTS". The biggest mistake I made (or so I think), is that I chose three generic achievements. eg. my time at Stanford and how I evolved then from a student who had just lived in India, not travelled anywhere in the world to a person with a broad view, working and leading different student societies etc. But I get it generic. I put in too many details of what all I did as a student. Similarly for my other achievements, instead on focusing on something specific like ,say delivering reserves numbers for company X in country Y to the SEC, with solid detail of the challenges and what the achievement was); instead I spoke about the achievement over a protracted period of time, with too many examples, and was not able to communicate clearly, what the challenge was in each case and why it was an achievement.
Perhaps that is the reason why, I was not even invited for an interview at HBS. So my advice for essays would be:
1) Understand your audience. When you know that they might not relate to your job/line of work, dont be in denial about it. Tailor your essays so that even a high school student with zero business skills understands what you are tryin to say.
2) Focus your essay topics on specific examples and cases. The problem with being generic is that you may not be able to specify in detail what the problems were and how the solutions made sense
3) Dont shy away from hard metrics. Put in those numbers, eg. as a result of this, company X saved $50 million for the next 3 years
Any comments?
cheers
Ash
This is was the deal...HBS was my number one choice (tied with Stanford, I thought Id make the choice when I had to cross that bridge, fortunately the decision was made easier when I got my ding from HBS).
On a personal note, I am sorta glad that I got dinged for two reasons
1) Personally I am better off being in the bay area, as my wife is from there. So as I immerse myself into a lot of course work (though I have a feeling that she will be helping me with my cases too), she has her own network of friends and family and does not have to start from scratch.
2) I will not deny that not getting into HBS hurt my ego more, than hopefully my future career prospects and personal aspirations. Everytime in my life when I get too comfortable or cocky, such events happen, and they have a remarkable effect on cooling down my temprament and helping me focus more.
So, going back to profile analysis and why I did not get into HBS !
1) M/28/India (live in The Netherlands) - lots of applicants from this category, infact being of indian ethnicity and this age bracket hurts a little
2) GMAT 720, Undergrad - ChemEng (Bombay) top 5%, Masters - Petroleum Eng (Stanford)GPA:4.0 - I would consider this as a strong part of my app, as I am Indian but not from the traditional IT background, my GMAT percentiles were also reasonably balanced (86 percentile verbal and 90 percentile quant, 6.0 AWA).
3) 4.5 year work experience in the oil business working projects on 4 continents and 9 countries - at the outset, one could take this as a very strong point. However, perhaps the biggest frustration is (and I realised this as I had my mgmt consultant and I banking friends comment on my essays), is that most people dont understand this business, its critical issues (besides gas going to $4/gal) and whats cool here. For example, when I described some "cool" things which I did , most of my friends went...well thats not a big deal. But given that we work in a business with 4-5 other partners (competing oil firms), governments and NGOs, even simple things like agreeing on the route of a pipeline, takes one year and is a significant achievement. Also, trying to communicate the challenges faced by our business, I noticed that a lot of people could not relate to things, as they were "normal" in other businesses.
At the same time, not many people from this business apply for MBA degrees and it should have put me in the category of "novel" candidates (unless they bunched me with the "manufacturing" group)
[To understand this business better, I recommend reading a book called THE PRIZE]
4) Recommendations: reasonably solid. Though I was told by some of my recommenders that they had to talk to some of their counterparts who had mba degrees (as they told me later), because it turns out that:
a) the European style of writing recommendations is very different from the American style
b)European recommendations tend to be more generic
However, I think that my recommenders must have put in EXTREMELY solid recommendations, as I did get into Wharton and Stanford
5) Leadership skills: HBS has a strng focus on this. Since my early days as a student in school to my college days, to my current position, I have held leadership positions and hence was very confident. However in my leadership essay, I described a leadership situation in the oil business, and in retrospect I feel that though it was a really good example of leadership, people unfamiliar with the business could not relate to it (ofcourse the failing is mine, for not being able to understand my audience and cater my essay)
6) The essays: I think this was the most important part of the app for me. And I was always a little uneasy with 1 essay. I think, I nailed all the essays but for the most important one "THREE SIGNIFICANT ACHIEVEMENTS". The biggest mistake I made (or so I think), is that I chose three generic achievements. eg. my time at Stanford and how I evolved then from a student who had just lived in India, not travelled anywhere in the world to a person with a broad view, working and leading different student societies etc. But I get it generic. I put in too many details of what all I did as a student. Similarly for my other achievements, instead on focusing on something specific like ,say delivering reserves numbers for company X in country Y to the SEC, with solid detail of the challenges and what the achievement was); instead I spoke about the achievement over a protracted period of time, with too many examples, and was not able to communicate clearly, what the challenge was in each case and why it was an achievement.
Perhaps that is the reason why, I was not even invited for an interview at HBS. So my advice for essays would be:
1) Understand your audience. When you know that they might not relate to your job/line of work, dont be in denial about it. Tailor your essays so that even a high school student with zero business skills understands what you are tryin to say.
2) Focus your essay topics on specific examples and cases. The problem with being generic is that you may not be able to specify in detail what the problems were and how the solutions made sense
3) Dont shy away from hard metrics. Put in those numbers, eg. as a result of this, company X saved $50 million for the next 3 years
Any comments?
cheers
Ash
posted by Ash at 9:28 PM
15 Comments:
You made two points that I think are extremely important to future applicants.
First, as a married man (as am I), you have to place considerable importance on your spouse's situation and your relationship. This may sound logical, but I have heard plenty of horror stories - especially when a student travels abroad for their MBA. Anything you can do to make her transition easier will ultimately make your transition easier.
Second, as an internal auditor I have learned that the only parts of the reports that executives read deal with the financial impact to the company. Sure they act like they care about the controls, but they really care when you tell them that the lack of controls are costing the company $50M a year. I would assume adcom is the same in that they may not understand the significance of a stated accomplishment until you quantify it for them.
You made two points that I think are extremely important to future applicants.
First, as a married man (as am I), you have to place considerable importance on your spouse's situation and your relationship. This may sound logical, but I have heard plenty of horror stories - especially when a student travels abroad for their MBA. Anything you can do to make her transition easier will ultimately make your transition easier.
Second, as an internal auditor I have learned that the only parts of the reports that executives read deal with the financial impact to the company. Sure they act like they care about the controls, but they really care when you tell them that the lack of controls are costing the company $50M a year. I would assume adcom is the same in that they may not understand the significance of a stated accomplishment until you quantify it for them.
Thanks for the great post !!! Though I am not very sure if I can apply to HBS .. I surely want to :) but I fall in the IT/Indian/Male applicant pool and somehow not able to gauge if I shuld use my energies for a better and mroe achievable target school :)
Ash,
Kudos to you for the great post, it really gives an insight what to look at while writing essays.
Keep posting...
A really candid and helpful post. Thanks for sharing what you learnt from your own experiences. Not everyone can be so open.
In my interview with HBS, I was told that our - energy sector - bracket included oil services companies, downstream oil companies, and other oil majors. Not only are we grouped with what you call manufacturing/downstream, we're also being placed in a pool including people from companies such as Halliburton. In oil services, 28 year olds could have responsibilities for rigs resulting in very strong leadership skills, but not necessarily the required strategic mindset for big oil.
great post ashwini - very informative ... gives an excellent perspective for wannabes :)
I think it was the age more than anything else. Put that w/e on a 25 y.o. and HBS would've eaten you up.
Oh my, I hadn't seen what you wrote for accomplishments essay. You mean you worked on 4 continents and didn't talk about any of that. Shame on you.
its all good in the end. GSB was the place for me :)
I'm in the last year of my high school years and I haven't decided where I will go, what university to choose and your blog is helping me to get oriented a bit, thank you!
Your stuff is exclusively informative. I love reading your blog and I hope intellectual stuff in future also. Keep posting your innovative ideas which useful me in getting depth knowledge about subject.
kudos for great achievement!
i am from india i want to know that was it just the essays that curtailed you to get into hbs because you had a very sctrong academic background as well as recommendations.also if one does not have a work experience i.e applying immediately after grad(engg) how does 2+2 program sound?
kudos for great achievement!
i am from india i want to know that was it just the essays that curtailed you to get into hbs because you had a very sctrong academic background as well as recommendations.also if one does not have a work experience i.e applying immediately after grad(engg) how does 2+2 program sound?
Thanks for sharing such an interesting post with us. You have made some valuable points which are very useful for all readers
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