Bankers hours it is!!! Afterall, given they admit 1/3 from banking/consulting, they are probably trying to get a better understanding of their target audience's lifestyle!!

Hi Sandy,

I'm curious about how to handle a recent misstep.  I wanted to apply in Round 1 to gain entrance into Kellogg's 1Y program, but it appears that I missed the date to request an interview.  I was expecting the interview request date to be Oct 15th (same due date as the application), but apparently if you live near Kellogg's campus, the due date is Oct 2nd. 

So I'm wondering if you're familiar with their process and if there's anything you think I can do to still be considered a 1st Round applicant??      Thanks in advance for your time!

Hi Sandy,

I wanted to get your thoughts on my odds for getting into the following programs:

Northwestern (full time), Duke (full time), UCB (part time), UCLA (part time) and USC (part time).

Background: 26 year old, female, asian Indian, us citizen.

2.9 GPA from UCB, liberal arts, graduated in 3 years – the biggest hurdle. Reasonable story to justify the reason. 

690 GMAT (70% M, 89% V). Took 3 business courses after college – received A’s in all.

Have 5+ years full time work exp (6+ years at matriculation). Massive layoff at a bank I worked at –  was expected to be promoted to AVP prior to news. Since then I started my own marketing firm – 15 clients so far. Great community involvement. Great letter of recs from former manager (who can attest that I was supposed to be promoted had it not been for the layoff) and notable city councilmember of the city I reside in.

Would like to concentrate on marketing and entrepreneurship in grad school.

Thanks.

Larry Summers' Grad School Admission Essay--first sentence, fr. a very good (albeit pro Summers!!!) profile in the The New Yorker. Note that collaborator on first paper, Kim Clark, was later fabled dean of HBS, and one of Summers' only supporters (altho a quiet one) during "The Troubles." Kim  Clark is not a bad essay writer either. See next post.

When he  (Larry Summers) applied to the graduate program in economics at Harvard, where he studied from 1975 to 1979, the beginning of his essay read, “Many children are taught to believe in God. I came to believe in the power of systems analysis.”

At that time, economics was being transformed by the computer, which suddenly made enormous data sets readily accessible. “Larry was in the vanguard of the empirical revolution in applied economics,” James Poterba, a prominent M.I.T. economist, who once worked as a research assistant for Summers, told me. At Harvard, Summers’s most influential mentor was Martin Feldstein, a conservative who was known for his emphasis on data rather than on theory.

Summers’s first important academic paper, published in 1979, with Kim B. Clark, who is now the president of Brigham Young University, used Feldstein’s empirical approach to disprove one of his own papers. Feldstein had argued that most unemployment was short-term, and that workers quickly reëntered the labor force.

see whole story

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/12/091012fa_fact_lizza

HOW MANY APPS A DAY DO HBS ADCOMS READ?????? POSTER SAYS 16, SK SAYS PROB. MORE

At Wharton, where they have student adcoms review applications, they give em piles of 20 to do over a week-end, and these  are PT employess who ALSO have  school work to keep up with. 

Duh, I dont know what you think is so hard about reviewing an app. The essays are 1800 wds long, and you soon get into a real fast glide path of going thru part A. Recs can be read at about 4,000 wds per minute and DUDE you get the idea. Sure, every once in a while you slow down to figure something out, or scrutinize a transcript. 

I do mock interview prep for HBS (ABOUT 150 A YEAR)  and read the app., and recs (if available) b4 the interview. Folks, I can do that in an amount of time I am not going to admit to b.c. it would blow your mind.  (read the app, alas the actual interview takes an hour or more) AND I DONT MISS A FRIGGIN THING.  OK, I dont have to write up anything,and if there is something that bothers me, well, I am going to interview the kid and seek clalification, sooooooo, but still.  The real time sink in reading apps is not reading them, it is doing some reqd prelim write up. The faster app readers are not nec. fast readers, THEY ARE FAST TYPISTS.  Another quality that separates the chicks fr. the Hens in app reading is just what your stamina is--sure, anyone can plow thru the first 5 apps of the day, real fast, but how many then take a walk, or surf the net (just like you) or go over to Spang for coffee as Her Maj notes, and then whoa!!!! IT is one hour later!!!! Then you sit down to do five more, and gal in next carrel pops over to  read you hysterically stupid answer  fr. her app pile and you are both cracking up, and WHOA, another 30 minutes shot, and JEEPERS it is time for lunch and you have read a total of 6 apps.   Kids, trust me, adcoms are reading this and saying THE GUY KNOWS, HE DEEPLY KNOWS.

So Sandy.... in an attempt to translate Dee-Dee's message, if you had to put a % on it, what % of the total first round HBS interview invites will go out on Friday?

WELL, that is hard to say b.c. last year, the first squirt was 750/850 BANG ON DAY ONE -- Her Maj has said that aint going to be the case.  In year's prior (like prev. 4-5 years) , the invites went out over a two week period in bundles (which is what her pee-pee 'unscientific stream' blog entry probably meant) w. 40-80 or more going out on some days, and zero on others, depending somewhat on adcom reading habits but also on tech support, etc. My guess is, this year will revert to prior years (not last year) sooooooooooo on Friday you may get 40-80 invites, and everyone going nuts, and then over the next two weeks, bundle spurts of 40-50-80 on some days and zero on others, then it will all shut down, but she will continue to say more invites might happen, and she may in fact have 50-100 in reserve. She will also continue the lottery lie that you can get an invite on D-Day, and get interviewed after that--which has happened, like 10 times in the last 500 years.

So for the poor applicant, it becomes a game of endless + diminishing  musical chairs but by the end you got 4000 kids walking around one chair waiting for the music to stop.  Also, what will make it worse this year, and what she has already said at Forums, is that Wait LIst will be bigger b.c. unlike prev. years, THIS YEAR they will be making round 1 admit calls before getting R2 apps, so they may hold back some R1 spots to see what turns up in R2, in past years, they were able give R2 a quick eyeball b4 sending out R1 admits.  (B.c. Day Day for R1 was after deadline for R2)

Bottom line is that things this year are better for some, those quickly interviewed and accepted by Dec 15th, but worse for many --those in limbo, waiting list, waiting for interviews, etc.  KInda like the bank bailouts: GS and MS do great, while rest of the app pool gets screwed in various ways. 

So Sandy --it sounds like the interview stream you describe is more like an orgasm than a  tinkle?

Are you going to post a graphic of that?

sure, just pay attention to the WAVES which represent at their crests, days and intensity of interview invites.

IGNORE ANY THING ELSE IN THE GRAHPIC--NOT RELATED TO INTERVIEWS