"On the face of it, HBS appears extremely diverse. But how truly diverse is HBS, anyhow?
During my first week at HBS, I was amazed at how many people I had met from all around the world. Prior classmates cautioned that I would enter the "most diverse place I would ever encounter," and my initial interactions with students seemed to confirm this.
But now in my third year at HBS, the allure has faded.
HBS really is not the diverse, all-encompassing melting pot that many purport it to be.
There is a world outside the HBS bubble and believe it or not, the world looks nothing like HBS. We must be realistic about our diversity if we are serious about making a difference in the world. Otherwise, we're just fooling ourselves.
Upon some reflection, I'd like to present several areas where HBS lacks diversity.
Economic diversity
Although some may deny it, HBS students are highly privileged. This is no secret and although there may be instances where a student grew up in low-income or humble circumstances, this is more the exception than the rule. Let me provide two short examples to illustrate this point.
Example 1
One Western Avenue garage, where there is no shortage of imports and German engineering. During my first year at HBS, I was especially surprised to discover an Aston Martin in the underground student parking garage. Thinking it was just a visitor in the Executive Education program, I did not think much of it until I discovered that the car belonged to a student from Spain! In fact, two of my very own international section mates purchased cars upon arrival to HBS, both in cash of course.
Example 2
Whenever I meet someone from Houston, one of the first things that comes up is where we grew up. Nine times out of ten, the HBS student in question answers that he/she grew up in a wealthy suburb or a wealthy pocket of central Houston. Of course, they also attended prestigious high schools that cost more than the average college/university. This does not occur only in Houston but also in other cities where HBS students call home.
This disparity in upbringing is especially accentuated amongst our international students. As a friend of mine once said of HBS, "the only middle class kids are the Americans."
Geographic diversity
The HBS class profile shows that approximately 35% of students are 'international,' which sounds like a pretty significant percentage of the student body. I must admit, the accents and well-traveled HBS crowd was very enticing during the initial weeks of my RC year.
After a few months, however, the stark reality of the 'international' crowd hit me square in the face. Soon, I realized an individual's country of origin had little to do with his or her mentality, belief systems, and outlook on life. Many of the students I met from the 'developing world,' for instance, had not actually lived in their home countries since high school. Instead, these 'international' students went to boarding school in the U.S., then an Ivy League, then worked in Manhattan, then applied to HBS.
There is nothing wrong with going to school and working abroad (personally, I did just that on three separate occasions), but the reality is that a student's country of birth does not actually mean he or she represents a particular country. I still recall to this day how at least 3 or 4 students in my section were cold-called throughout our BGIE course to represent a particular country or region, despite having little current knowledge of the particular issue under discussion.
Intra-group diversity
Despite representation from various regions of the world, the intra-group diversity of particular regions is quite low. Among students from Asia, for example, a class card search reveals only one student that lists Indonesia as his home country. This is despite the fact that Indonesia is the fourth largest country in the world behind China, India and the United States.
As another example, many comment that South Asians are over-represented at HBS. Only two students call Bangladesh home, however, despite it being the seventh most populous country in the world with over 150M inhabitants.
Interestingly, all three of the students mentioned above went to college in the United States (please reference the geographic diversity section above). "
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Dirty Secrets of College Admissions
Dirty Secrets of College Admissions
by Kathleen Kingsbury
In a Daily Beast exclusive, college admissions officers reveal just how whimsical the selection process can be. Boring math geniuses, oboe-playing poets, and rich kids from New York need not apply.While you’re anxiously mailing off those college applications this week, you might want to recalibrate your expectations based on your race, your wealth, and whether the NFL team in the city where that college is located is on a losing streak. The shadowy world of college admissions has left millions of confused and frustrated rejects in its wake. (So stop practicing the oboe.) Current and former admissions officers from colleges and universities across the country talked to the Daily Beast about why attending a good high school can hurt your chances, the perils of too many recommendations, and why white girls from Jersey barely have a chance.On the arbitrary nature of admissions Former admissions officer at elite, small liberal arts college in the Northeast, age 25 “One year I had a student with a near-perfect SAT score and straight A’s. I’d originally put him in the submitted pile, but then we had to reduce the list. I reread his essays and frankly, they were just a little more boring than the other kids. So I cut him. Boring was the only justification that I needed and he was out.One night, I got food poisoning at a restaurant in Buffalo. The next day, I rejected all the Buffalo applications.I got sluggish in the afternoon after lunch, so maybe I wasn’t as scrupulous about a candidate as I would have been if I were fresh. Or even if my favorite sports team was in a slump, it affected who made the cut. If the [Pittsburgh] Steelers lost a game and I read your file the next morning, chances were you weren’t getting in. Where I could have been nice, I just didn’t go out of my way — I was a lot less charitable. Those are things that you, the applicant, have no control over. Which makes it all the more funny — the frenzy that parents and students work themselves into around getting in.”Current admissions officer, state university in the Northeast “All in all, we’re less selective than some of the elite schools or the Ivy League. But there are still some factors out of an applicant’s hands. One night, I got food poisoning at a restaurant in Buffalo. The next day, I rejected all the Buffalo applications. I couldn’t stomach reading them.”Current admissions officer, Ivy League university “Some 70 percent of kids who apply are qualified to come to school here, and we have space for one in ten. We can be as choosy as we like. It almost always comes down to whether or not you’re a likeable person. Let’s face it, some people are just more affable or more likeable than others. An admissions officer is really asking himself, ‘Would I like to hang out with this guy or gal for the next four years?’ So if you come off as just another Asian math genius with no personality, then it’s going to be tough for you. An admissions officer is not going to push very hard for you.”Former admissions officer, Ivy League university “Some middle-tier schools will reject top applicants, too — Kids that should have no trouble getting in. But the admissions officer’s attitude is, ‘Oh, he just applied here as a safety. He’ll never come.’ They don’t want to lower the yield they have to report for the college rankings.”Joie Jager-Hyman, former admissions officer at Dartmouth College, author of Fat Envelope Frenzy: One Year, Five Promising Students, and the Pursuit of the Ivy League Prize“People tend to like people like themselves. I could almost predict the application files my colleagues would support: this admissions officer likes the athletes; this one prefers the quiet, creative loner type; one person cared a lot about SATs; or another would be more likely to excuse things like teenage arrests than other colleagues.”On advantages in the admissions process Current admissions officer, Ivy League university “Any admissions director who uses the line about needing an oboe player is lying. There’s no admissions person in the country with a clue what the student orchestra needs. More likely, Mommy and Daddy gave a $1 million donation. That oboe thing is just a PR ploy.”Former admissions officer, Ivy League university “Of course there are files every year that the dean simply says aren’t debatable. It’s pretty easy to Google those kids and see Daddy is a U.S. Senator or gave the university $7 million. But it really takes paying for a building or endowing a chair to have that kind of privilege. Only about 70 percent of the other VIP kids get in, because it can be equally embarrassing if some big celebrity’s son fails out or gets arrested on campus. There have to be some standards.”Former admissions officer, elite, small liberal arts college in Massachusetts “Our school did away with on-campus interviews a few years ago, but if you were the child of a donor or an alum, you could get an unofficial interview. A face-to-face sit-down with the admissions office most people don’t get.Athletes’ applications at most schools go through a special committee. They’re read before all the other candidates’ files. That way the coach can push for the people he really wants and make sure they get a spot.We were always looking for candidates from underrepresented groups. So if you are just a typical white girl from New Jersey and your application didn’t pass muster, it was relegated to the reject pile without a second thought. With a minority kid with the same stats, you just can’t do that. They always warrant a second or even third look.”Michele Hernandez, nationally known private college admissions consultant located in Vermont. Author of the book A is Admissions: The Insider's Guide to Getting into the Ivy League and Other Top Colleges and former admissions officer at Dartmouth College“40 percent of every Ivy League school is filled up with special cases: athletes, minorities, low-income, legacies or development cases. They’re tagged, and schools lower the admissions standards a lot for those kids. So you got to know how to use those tags to your advantage. If you’re a legacy and you apply early to the school, you’ve got a 50 percent better chance of getting in.Most of the time you can’t predict what will push one candidate over the edge. Right now, for instance, schools are showing a large preference for non-college backgrounds—that is, applicants whose parents didn’t go to college. You have no control over who your parents are, but right now it helps if they didn’t go to college. Or Middlebury right now is on a kick for bringing in kids from outside the Northeast. They don’t want to be seen as a prep-school depository. Some 65 percent of their student body is from other parts of the country. Some schools even discriminate against the wealthy kid from Greenwich or New York City. They have to prove they have an actual love of learning and didn’t just spend summers flying to Europe on Daddy’s jet.”Stephen Friedfeld, private college admissions consultant in Princeton, New Jersey. Now works as an admissions officer for Princeton’s graduate engineering program; former admissions officer at Cornell “The biggest surprise for me was the difference in how much more contact private-school guidance counselors had with the admissions office vs. public schools. I went back to my own public high school alma mater and the guidance counselor asked, ‘Would it be okay for me to contact school regarding a student?’ I couldn't believe he was asking. That's just commonplace amongst the private school counselors or affluent suburban high schools. We brought in guidance counselors from a bunch of schools, most of them private high school counselors. And we visited those schools for events. We knew the private-school counselors by name and by face, and they've met the admissions officers from the most prestigious universities. That's a big advantage for students. Those counselors are pushing for them, advocating for them. I never got a call from a public school.People think you don't have to have a lot of savvy to work in admissions, but almost everyone at Cornell, for instance, had a PhD or masters. Applications are read in tandem with faculty, and that provides a different take. People look at putting a candidate forward as a personal endorsement. If I take a risk on a kid and he fails, that reflects on me personally. There's accountability there, so they tend to be risk-averse when it comes to students who academically are just on the line.”On definite “don’ts” in the admissions process Current admissions officer, Ivy League university “There’s an expression in admissions circles: the thicker the file, the thicker the kid. Don’t send in every newspaper clipping of your son on the high school honor role. That’s just redundant if we have his transcript.Admissions officers want this to be a hands-off process. If a parent calls them repeatedly, that’s almost always an automatic rejection. They worry that parent or student might become a nuisance to the university for the next four years. They just don’t want to be contacted all the time.”Stephen Friedfeld “A big mistake is sending too many letters of recommendation. Send three or four. Admissions offices don't want to see eight. They get the feeling you're trying to justify something that's bad or missing.And whatever you do, don't send poetry. That rarely works. A high school senior is probably not Shakespeare, so poetry is not going to help. Send sophisticated writing, answering the questions the application is asking. That's what admissions officers want to see.”Joie Jager-Hyman “After the letters came out, one father called me to complain his son hadn’t gotten in. He said he was an advisor on several TV shows and movies. So I asked him which ones, and he told me the show 90210. Well, that was my favorite show, so I asked him to give me some good gossip. Then the next day I got this huge package filled with stuff from the TV show: original scripts, autographs, etc. And I called him up and said, ‘Thanks for the cool package, but there’s still no way your kid is getting into this college.”Kathleen Kingsbury is a writer based in New York. She's a contributor to Time Magazine, where she has covered business, health and education since 2005.
by Kathleen Kingsbury
In a Daily Beast exclusive, college admissions officers reveal just how whimsical the selection process can be. Boring math geniuses, oboe-playing poets, and rich kids from New York need not apply.While you’re anxiously mailing off those college applications this week, you might want to recalibrate your expectations based on your race, your wealth, and whether the NFL team in the city where that college is located is on a losing streak. The shadowy world of college admissions has left millions of confused and frustrated rejects in its wake. (So stop practicing the oboe.) Current and former admissions officers from colleges and universities across the country talked to the Daily Beast about why attending a good high school can hurt your chances, the perils of too many recommendations, and why white girls from Jersey barely have a chance.On the arbitrary nature of admissions Former admissions officer at elite, small liberal arts college in the Northeast, age 25 “One year I had a student with a near-perfect SAT score and straight A’s. I’d originally put him in the submitted pile, but then we had to reduce the list. I reread his essays and frankly, they were just a little more boring than the other kids. So I cut him. Boring was the only justification that I needed and he was out.One night, I got food poisoning at a restaurant in Buffalo. The next day, I rejected all the Buffalo applications.I got sluggish in the afternoon after lunch, so maybe I wasn’t as scrupulous about a candidate as I would have been if I were fresh. Or even if my favorite sports team was in a slump, it affected who made the cut. If the [Pittsburgh] Steelers lost a game and I read your file the next morning, chances were you weren’t getting in. Where I could have been nice, I just didn’t go out of my way — I was a lot less charitable. Those are things that you, the applicant, have no control over. Which makes it all the more funny — the frenzy that parents and students work themselves into around getting in.”Current admissions officer, state university in the Northeast “All in all, we’re less selective than some of the elite schools or the Ivy League. But there are still some factors out of an applicant’s hands. One night, I got food poisoning at a restaurant in Buffalo. The next day, I rejected all the Buffalo applications. I couldn’t stomach reading them.”Current admissions officer, Ivy League university “Some 70 percent of kids who apply are qualified to come to school here, and we have space for one in ten. We can be as choosy as we like. It almost always comes down to whether or not you’re a likeable person. Let’s face it, some people are just more affable or more likeable than others. An admissions officer is really asking himself, ‘Would I like to hang out with this guy or gal for the next four years?’ So if you come off as just another Asian math genius with no personality, then it’s going to be tough for you. An admissions officer is not going to push very hard for you.”Former admissions officer, Ivy League university “Some middle-tier schools will reject top applicants, too — Kids that should have no trouble getting in. But the admissions officer’s attitude is, ‘Oh, he just applied here as a safety. He’ll never come.’ They don’t want to lower the yield they have to report for the college rankings.”Joie Jager-Hyman, former admissions officer at Dartmouth College, author of Fat Envelope Frenzy: One Year, Five Promising Students, and the Pursuit of the Ivy League Prize“People tend to like people like themselves. I could almost predict the application files my colleagues would support: this admissions officer likes the athletes; this one prefers the quiet, creative loner type; one person cared a lot about SATs; or another would be more likely to excuse things like teenage arrests than other colleagues.”On advantages in the admissions process Current admissions officer, Ivy League university “Any admissions director who uses the line about needing an oboe player is lying. There’s no admissions person in the country with a clue what the student orchestra needs. More likely, Mommy and Daddy gave a $1 million donation. That oboe thing is just a PR ploy.”Former admissions officer, Ivy League university “Of course there are files every year that the dean simply says aren’t debatable. It’s pretty easy to Google those kids and see Daddy is a U.S. Senator or gave the university $7 million. But it really takes paying for a building or endowing a chair to have that kind of privilege. Only about 70 percent of the other VIP kids get in, because it can be equally embarrassing if some big celebrity’s son fails out or gets arrested on campus. There have to be some standards.”Former admissions officer, elite, small liberal arts college in Massachusetts “Our school did away with on-campus interviews a few years ago, but if you were the child of a donor or an alum, you could get an unofficial interview. A face-to-face sit-down with the admissions office most people don’t get.Athletes’ applications at most schools go through a special committee. They’re read before all the other candidates’ files. That way the coach can push for the people he really wants and make sure they get a spot.We were always looking for candidates from underrepresented groups. So if you are just a typical white girl from New Jersey and your application didn’t pass muster, it was relegated to the reject pile without a second thought. With a minority kid with the same stats, you just can’t do that. They always warrant a second or even third look.”Michele Hernandez, nationally known private college admissions consultant located in Vermont. Author of the book A is Admissions: The Insider's Guide to Getting into the Ivy League and Other Top Colleges and former admissions officer at Dartmouth College“40 percent of every Ivy League school is filled up with special cases: athletes, minorities, low-income, legacies or development cases. They’re tagged, and schools lower the admissions standards a lot for those kids. So you got to know how to use those tags to your advantage. If you’re a legacy and you apply early to the school, you’ve got a 50 percent better chance of getting in.Most of the time you can’t predict what will push one candidate over the edge. Right now, for instance, schools are showing a large preference for non-college backgrounds—that is, applicants whose parents didn’t go to college. You have no control over who your parents are, but right now it helps if they didn’t go to college. Or Middlebury right now is on a kick for bringing in kids from outside the Northeast. They don’t want to be seen as a prep-school depository. Some 65 percent of their student body is from other parts of the country. Some schools even discriminate against the wealthy kid from Greenwich or New York City. They have to prove they have an actual love of learning and didn’t just spend summers flying to Europe on Daddy’s jet.”Stephen Friedfeld, private college admissions consultant in Princeton, New Jersey. Now works as an admissions officer for Princeton’s graduate engineering program; former admissions officer at Cornell “The biggest surprise for me was the difference in how much more contact private-school guidance counselors had with the admissions office vs. public schools. I went back to my own public high school alma mater and the guidance counselor asked, ‘Would it be okay for me to contact school regarding a student?’ I couldn't believe he was asking. That's just commonplace amongst the private school counselors or affluent suburban high schools. We brought in guidance counselors from a bunch of schools, most of them private high school counselors. And we visited those schools for events. We knew the private-school counselors by name and by face, and they've met the admissions officers from the most prestigious universities. That's a big advantage for students. Those counselors are pushing for them, advocating for them. I never got a call from a public school.People think you don't have to have a lot of savvy to work in admissions, but almost everyone at Cornell, for instance, had a PhD or masters. Applications are read in tandem with faculty, and that provides a different take. People look at putting a candidate forward as a personal endorsement. If I take a risk on a kid and he fails, that reflects on me personally. There's accountability there, so they tend to be risk-averse when it comes to students who academically are just on the line.”On definite “don’ts” in the admissions process Current admissions officer, Ivy League university “There’s an expression in admissions circles: the thicker the file, the thicker the kid. Don’t send in every newspaper clipping of your son on the high school honor role. That’s just redundant if we have his transcript.Admissions officers want this to be a hands-off process. If a parent calls them repeatedly, that’s almost always an automatic rejection. They worry that parent or student might become a nuisance to the university for the next four years. They just don’t want to be contacted all the time.”Stephen Friedfeld “A big mistake is sending too many letters of recommendation. Send three or four. Admissions offices don't want to see eight. They get the feeling you're trying to justify something that's bad or missing.And whatever you do, don't send poetry. That rarely works. A high school senior is probably not Shakespeare, so poetry is not going to help. Send sophisticated writing, answering the questions the application is asking. That's what admissions officers want to see.”Joie Jager-Hyman “After the letters came out, one father called me to complain his son hadn’t gotten in. He said he was an advisor on several TV shows and movies. So I asked him which ones, and he told me the show 90210. Well, that was my favorite show, so I asked him to give me some good gossip. Then the next day I got this huge package filled with stuff from the TV show: original scripts, autographs, etc. And I called him up and said, ‘Thanks for the cool package, but there’s still no way your kid is getting into this college.”Kathleen Kingsbury is a writer based in New York. She's a contributor to Time Magazine, where she has covered business, health and education since 2005.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Harvard Business Review Names Adi Ignatius As Editor-in-Chief
PR-Inside.com (Pressemitteilung), Austria - 8 hours agoAdi Ignatius, the Deputy Managing Editor of TIME magazine, has been named Editor-in-Chief of Harvard Business Review (www.hbr.org).
Thursday, January 8, 2009
MUMBAI: What started out as a small-scale venture by five friends in Mumbai is set to gain global a footprint.
MUMBAI: What started out as a small-scale venture by five friends in Mumbai is set to gain global a footprint.
The success story of the 1298 ambulance services, which was launched by the five to save lives, will soon be incorporated as a case study in social entrepreneurship for the curriculum at Harvard Business School.
A step forward was taken in this direction when a team of post-graduate students from Harvard Kennedy School dropped by at the 1298 office in the Bandra-Kurla Complex on Tuesday. This is the second batch of students that has visited Mumbai for the purpose.
The students got a first-hand orientation into how the ambulance service was started with a seed capital from five friends, modelled on the cross-subsidy principle and scaled up from a fleet of 10 ambulances in 2005 to 51 till date.
The exchange was engaging, as students enthusiastically questioned how the 1298 project became sustainable, what the challenges were along the way and if the team trusted citizens to pay after use. Explaining the intense thought that had gone into the project, one of the founders, Shweta Mangal, said they chose the colour yellow for their ambulances to distinguish their fleet from the ambulances that ferry bodies. "We had no marketing budget when we started out, so we turned to innovative ways such as networking with hospitals (which receive the maximum calls for an ambulance) and radio campaigns to spread the word,'' Mangal told the students. "We also learnt from the West that the concept of ambulances was drilled into them from a young age. So we started first-aid training across schools and colleges.''
Another partner, Shaffi Mather, said after studying ambulance models from across the globe, they concluded that a cross-subsidy model worked the best. Accordingly, patients being taken to private hospitals are charged full fare, those going to public hospitals charged subsidised rates and accident and calamity victims ferried free-of-cost. "We did consider the subscription model, but realised that it wouldn't work in a city like Mumbai where less than 8% of the population pays for medical insurance,'' said Mather.
The Harvard students who met municipal commissioner Jairaj Phatak on Monday to study housing projects and problems in the city, will also visit IT firm, Infosys, in Bangalore.
The visiting youths felt they had picked up invaluable lessons during their Mumbai visit. "I got to take away from India more than an ordinary tourist,'' said Samantha Black. Her friend, Sam Lee, who is particularly interested in social entrepreneurship, said he was inspired by the 1298 story. "We have been searching out effective innovative models, which can be replicated elsewhere. This worked within the existing constraints in India which is why the interaction was of particular interest,'' said Lee who works with the social enterprise initiative at Harvard. For many, like Anjali Doshi (27), the experience was an insight into the other world. "We take EMS (Emergency Medical Services) for granted back home and it helped me understand opportunities and challenges in the global context,'' she said.
The success story of the 1298 ambulance services, which was launched by the five to save lives, will soon be incorporated as a case study in social entrepreneurship for the curriculum at Harvard Business School.
A step forward was taken in this direction when a team of post-graduate students from Harvard Kennedy School dropped by at the 1298 office in the Bandra-Kurla Complex on Tuesday. This is the second batch of students that has visited Mumbai for the purpose.
The students got a first-hand orientation into how the ambulance service was started with a seed capital from five friends, modelled on the cross-subsidy principle and scaled up from a fleet of 10 ambulances in 2005 to 51 till date.
The exchange was engaging, as students enthusiastically questioned how the 1298 project became sustainable, what the challenges were along the way and if the team trusted citizens to pay after use. Explaining the intense thought that had gone into the project, one of the founders, Shweta Mangal, said they chose the colour yellow for their ambulances to distinguish their fleet from the ambulances that ferry bodies. "We had no marketing budget when we started out, so we turned to innovative ways such as networking with hospitals (which receive the maximum calls for an ambulance) and radio campaigns to spread the word,'' Mangal told the students. "We also learnt from the West that the concept of ambulances was drilled into them from a young age. So we started first-aid training across schools and colleges.''
Another partner, Shaffi Mather, said after studying ambulance models from across the globe, they concluded that a cross-subsidy model worked the best. Accordingly, patients being taken to private hospitals are charged full fare, those going to public hospitals charged subsidised rates and accident and calamity victims ferried free-of-cost. "We did consider the subscription model, but realised that it wouldn't work in a city like Mumbai where less than 8% of the population pays for medical insurance,'' said Mather.
The Harvard students who met municipal commissioner Jairaj Phatak on Monday to study housing projects and problems in the city, will also visit IT firm, Infosys, in Bangalore.
The visiting youths felt they had picked up invaluable lessons during their Mumbai visit. "I got to take away from India more than an ordinary tourist,'' said Samantha Black. Her friend, Sam Lee, who is particularly interested in social entrepreneurship, said he was inspired by the 1298 story. "We have been searching out effective innovative models, which can be replicated elsewhere. This worked within the existing constraints in India which is why the interaction was of particular interest,'' said Lee who works with the social enterprise initiative at Harvard. For many, like Anjali Doshi (27), the experience was an insight into the other world. "We take EMS (Emergency Medical Services) for granted back home and it helped me understand opportunities and challenges in the global context,'' she said.
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