[转帖]一篇关于HBS和Stanford的日记

下面是一篇日记，关于H/S在Boston举行的Information Session，供大家参考。

This week, two of the business schools that I'll be applying to - Harvard and Stanford - had recruiting events in Boston area. Harvard's Open House was on Thursday and Stanford's Information Session was on Saturday. I've attended both of those events and the following is a brief summary of them. I'll start with Stanford since it's still fresh in my memory.

Stanford: Derrick Bolton started the presentation by saying that organizational leadership is a noble pursuit. He said that after families, managed organizations are the most important entities in our society and they play an enormous role in our lives. Because of that, Stanford MBA program aims to teach students to someday successfully lead managed organizations whether they be in business, government or non-profit sectors.Then Derrick made a PowerPoint presentation about the Stanford MBA program and here are the things he said that I remember from his presentation:

Recruitment: The class of 2003 had a better placement numbers than the class of 2002. It looks like the class of 2004 will have even better choices, since the number of jobs that are currently posted for Stanford MBAs is much bigger (40-60%) than it was last year at this time.

Housing: Most of the single students will live in laceName>SchwablaceName> laceName>ResidentiallaceName> laceType>CenterlaceType>. Married couples who have children will get the best deals and Derrick jokingly told couples who don't have children to "get busy" so that they would have better housing opportunities.

Peer recommendations: ; Stanford means peer in spirit i.e. those whom you treat as peers and who don't report to you and you don't report to them. Roommates, brothers, sisters, friends are not good choices for peer recommendation providers.

Essay A: You can write about one thing or you can write about many things, whatever you want. Some applicants write that balance is what matters most to them and then describe a laundry list of things under "balance". Stanford AdCom, while reading such essays, often writes on the essay "Couldn't decide what matters most to him/her".

Essay B: It's important to describe why do you need/want an MBA degree and the answer to that part should be clearly separated from the "why do you need a Stanford MBA" part.

Rounds: There are no differences between R1 and R2, but it gets harder in R3. Those are the important things that I remember from Derrick Bolton's very articulate presentation. After the presentation, Derrick asked 3 alums to come and share their perspectives and answer some questions. One of the alums was a COO of a company, the other worked in investment management and the third was doing her Ph.D. and wanted to teach in a business school later in her career (I hope I remember this info correctly).

They answered the questions that we asked and they were really straightforward with their answers and directly told whatever they thought. From their answers, I learned that there is actually a class at Stanford that all students refer as the "touchy-feely" class. But I can't remember the official name of that class. I guess those are the important things that I remember from Stanford's info session.

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vagrant发表于 2005-7-29 00:18 | 只看该作者

Harvard:Transformational experience in leadership. That was the title of Brit Dewey's presentation and that, according to Brit, is what Harvard's MBA program is all about. Harvard Open House started with Brit Dewey's presentation of the Harvard's MBA program and then she passed the microphone to another admission officer who described different aspects of MBA experience and admission process. Here are some of the important things that I remember from their presentations:

Leadership: HBS is all about leadership and because of that, leadership experience and much more importantly lifelong leadership potential is something that the admission officers want to see in each and every applicant. In fact, Brit Dewey said something along the lines of "We want to accept in our program leaders. When I read each application, I ask myself "Is this person going to be a leader in life?" " (I don't remember the exact wording, but that was the meaning).

Residential Community: One of the important things that I thought admission officers wanted to emphasize was that HBS has a residential community atmosphere. HBS is building new apartment buildings on its campus and when they'll be done, 75% of all students will be living, studying and staying on campus 24-7. And since HBS has its own campus, this creates a unique learning environment for students.

Transcripts: Self-reported transcripts should be exactly like the official ones. More specifically, "A-"s on the official transcripts shouldn't suddenly turn into "A"s on the self-reported transcript. o Countries: The students of the class entering this fall represent over 70 countries (73 if I remember correctly) and that's probably the highest number of any business school in the US. o Location: Almost half of all HBS graduates of this year (49% I think) ended up staying and working in the Northeastern USA after their graduation.

Recruiting: The placement numbers for HBS students that graduated this summer are good and also many students ended up accepting offers from their top choice.

Rounds: There are no differences between R1 and R2, but it gets harder in R3. After Brit and her colleague finished their presentation, they introduced 5 currents students to share their experiences and answer our questions. I think those 5 students were chosen to reflect the diversity of HBS student body. There were 2 women and 3 men - Elliott, an African American who had served in the Army for 5 years and who is represented in the HBS booklet; a White American woman who worked for CVS and who was instrumental in initializing the CVS card that you carry in your keychain; a very sharp investment banker from NYC; a Chinese American woman whose dream is to become the marketing leader of the Disney; and a White guy from Belgium who had worked for McKinsey before joining the HBS.Probably the most interesting question that was directed to the student panel was along the lines of "Well, HBS is a transformational experience, right? So how have you been personally transformed at HBS?". It was clearly a tough question, but the McKinsey consultant saved the group by saying "I can't tell you that since we're still in the transformational process". The audience erupted in laughter. Although after that Melissa (who had the CVS background) said that her thinking process has changed and that's what she considers a transformational experience.I guess that's it from the Harvard Open House.

I generally found the AdCom members of both Harvard and Stanford very friendly and approachable. In fact, Brit Dewey herself approached a number of applicant groups before the event and started a conversation with them with a simple "Hi. I'm Brit". Unfortunately at that time most of the people in the room didn't know that Brit was actually Brit Dewey.Have a great weekend！