Category Archives: Harvard Business School

Analyzing the Applications: the HBS Recommendations (PART II)

By Kyle Watkins (last updated: December 17, 2013)

Yesterday we published part one of this post analyzing the HBS recommendation questions for Class of 2016 applicants. Today we pick up where we left off and break down the second (and more difficult) recommender question:

Please describe the most important piece of constructive feedback you have given the applicant. Please detail the circumstances and the applicant’s response. (250 words)

This is such an excellent question, and one HBS used last year, too. I expect it produces a whole lot of terrible answers and perhaps only a handful of truly excellent ones. Let’s consider it from the perspective of each of the main players in the admissions process:

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Analyzing the Applications: the HBS Recommendations (PART I)

By Kyle Watkins (last updated: December 17, 2013)

Strong recommendations are more important than ever now that the HBS admissions committee has scaled back the number of recommenders to two and reduced the number of essay questions to one. What’s more, HBS recommenders only have about half the word count that they had last year, which means they need to make the space that they do have count that much more.

Before analyzing each of the two recommender questions, it’s worth reflecting on what HBS wants to get out of your recommendations more generally. Ultimately, there are really two qualities they want to see. First, the recommendations test your self-awareness. How closely does what your recommenders think about you mirror what you think about yourself (in your essay and interview)? Consider the importance of self-awareness to the school’s curriculum: after I was accepted to HBS (but before I matriculated), I had to solicit a handful of people to complete a survey about my strengths and weaknesses, which I also completed myself. During FIELD, we reviewed the survey results to see how closely others’ opinions of us aligned with our own self image. Suffice it to say that the two didn’t always align for my classmates or myself. Self-awareness was also a consistent theme in classes like LEAD, LCA, ALD, and others. That’s why it’s important to, in part, view the recommendations as an attempt by the admissions committee to screen out any candidates that are too far disconnected from reality.

Second, the recommendations test whether you inspire other people. After all, the school’s mission is to educate business leaders who make a difference in the world, and it’s awfully hard to make a difference in anything if you can’t inspire others along the way. I’m not saying your recommendations need to be pledges to follow you to the ends of the earth or anything quite that dramatic. So long as the HBS admissions committee senses some admiration in your recommendations, all will be achieved.

If you’re going to get either of these qualities out of your recommendations, you absolutely must heed the advice iterated time and again by HBS: select recommenders that know you well. Once you’ve done that, it’s worth looking at the two public recommender questions for the Class of 2016 application:

How do the candidate’s performance, potential, background, or personal qualities compare to those of other well-qualified individuals in similar roles? Please provide specific examples. (300 words)

This question is really just a combination of the first two questions from last year’s application. The intent is twofold. First, did you do what the admissions committee asked and select recommenders who know you well? Hence the question’s emphasis on “specific examples.” Second, this question is your recommenders’ best opportunity to convey your ability to inspire others. To achieve this, the best approach is the one I took when I applied in 2010 (described in detail here): provide your recommenders with a few good anecdotes that they can rely on to illustrate your strengths rather than forcing them to lean on a list of vague platitudes.

Additionally, as we mentioned in our post analyzing the new HBS essay question, if your application has a particular weak point (for me, it was a lack of significant quantitative experience), the recommendation, not the essay, is the best place to mitigate it because you can have a credible source address it on your behalf. Focus the anecdotes you provide your recommenders on examples that demonstrate strength where your weaknesses may be; it will go a long way to assuaging any concerns the admissions committee may have.

Part two of this post continues here and looks at the second recommender question (the more important of the two) and provides some additional advice on how to make your recommendations count…

Analyzing the Applications: the HBS Essay

By Kyle Watkins (last updated: October 15, 2019)

The HBS application for the Class of 2016 is live, officially marking the beginning of a new admissions season at Harvard. Here on the Founders’ Blog, it also marks the start of a new, recurring series, which will break down the applications of several top business schools.

Given the significant changes to HBS’s application this year, it seems as good a place as any to start the series by analyzing Harvard’s new essay question:

“You’re applying to Harvard Business School. We can see your resume, school transcripts, extra-curricular activities, awards, post-MBA career goals, test scores and what your recommenders have to say about you. What else would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy?”

When I applied to HBS in 2010, I was required to complete four essays, and while I bemoaned the task at the time, in hindsight it seems far simpler than trying to navigate the minefield that is this single, word limit-less prompt. Why? Because the new prompt requires extraordinary judgment — and, frankly, I always thought it was difficult to be an objective judge of my own application while I was in the midst of writing it.

Nonetheless, the HBS admissions committee has staked out a pretty clear position: the essays don’t add much value to the application. Dee Leopold has been espousing some version of this view for years now, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see even more extreme manifestations of it in the years to come. But for this year’s applicants, the key to writing a good essay will be demonstrating good judgment and keen self-awareness.

The purpose of your essay should be to advance one of two storylines the HBS adcom looks for in each applicant. First, the admissions committee wants to know whether you can hack it in the classroom. Do you have the analytical capabilities to keep up with the quantitative and understand the qualitative? Second, it wants to know whether you will add value to the school’s culture and case discussions. Do you bring a unique or particularly insightful perspective, or will you actually distract others from learning?

Fundamentally, those two questions are what the HBS application process is all about, and any essay you submit should seek to advance one storyline or the other. However, because the admissions committee will already have a pretty clear picture of your analytical abilities from your GMAT, GPA, and professional history, it will likely serve most applicants better to write about how they will add value. If your application doesn’t speak as loudly as you’d like toward your analytical strength, the best place to address it is not in the essay, but rather in the recommendations – a topic we’ll get into during our next post in this series. In fact, the biggest mistake applicants could make is to use this essay prompt as a place to apologize for a weakness. As we advocate in our 10-step guide to writing killer essays, it’s critical that you use essays to highlight your strengths and added value. For example, your essay could focus on:

  • Something unique you did before school — an extracurricular activity, social enterprise, a family business, TFA, government, etc. — and therefore how you bring a different perspective to the classroom.
  • Something unique you want to do after school, although the bar for what defines “unique” is set quite a bit higher here and will require specificity and support from the other parts of your application, such as what you’ve done in your career thus far.
  • Why you want to attend business school, if it’s not readily apparent. For example, this may be the case for applicants who’ve already been successful entrepreneurs or who are borderline mid-career managers. These types of applicants may need to prove they are as eager to learn from the HBS experience as their 2+2 peers; otherwise they risk being perceived as know-it-already applicants who could detract from classroom learning.

There are certainly many options beyond these broad categories, and many applicants should avail themselves of them. However, before you embark on your writing, invest heavily (and skeptically) in asking yourself whether the topic you’ve chosen advances a new line in the story of how you will add value to the HBS case discussion and to the community as a whole. At the very least, don’t write an essay that demonstrates you’ll detract value from the classroom by, for instance, building a laundry list of your accomplishments and appearing arrogant or unfocused.

A recommendation on your word count: aim for between 750 and 1,100 words (more on that here!). The adcom sent a pretty clear sign last year that shorter tends to be better (and they are absolutely right). A paraphrased version of a Blaise Pascal quote seems apropos: “I apologize for writing such a long letter; I didn’t have time to write a short one.” Focus on a single, important, persuasive essay topic. Avoid broad themes that are only meant to disguise a laundry list of accomplishments. Be thoughtful and targeted about what you include in your essay; anything else will demonstrate a lack of self-awareness at best and poor judgment at worst.

As you think more about writing your essays, don’t forget to check out our 10-step guide for additional advice, and of course feel free to contact us for a free consultation if you have any questions we didn’t address here. We’ll also be breaking down the rest of the application for HBS and other schools in the coming weeks so keep watching this space! In the meantime, check out our custom algorithm to calculate your odds of admission. Next, we’ll be breaking down the HBS recommender questions and explaining why the school expects so many more words from your recommenders than they do from you…

HBS Application Down to One Essay (Class of 2016)

By Kyle Watkins (last updated: December 17, 2013)

Dee Leopold – the admissions director at HBS – announced this week that Harvard Business School will only require one essay from applicants to its MBA class of 2016, down from 2 last year, and 4 just 2 years ago.

Here is this year’s question:
“You’re applying to Harvard Business School. We can see your resume, school transcripts, extra-curricular activities, awards, post-MBA career goals, test scores and what your recommenders have to say about you. What else would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy?”

Applicants who feel that their application is strong enough will even be able to skip the essay, although this is probably a risky thing to do.

Mrs. Leopold also revealed that only two letters of recommendation will have to be submitted this year (vs. 3 in previous years).

These changes should allow applicants to focus on aspects of their profile and experience that they want to emphasize, while making it easier to apply (finding 3 recommenders was sometimes a challenge for less experienced applicants). However, cutting the number of essays may turn out to create new challenges for HBS hopefuls. Our co-founder Kyle Watkins will soon be writing about possible strategies to successfully answer this question.