Many of you have a date with destiny today!!
(Like we really needed to remind you of that! Wednesday, October 9th has been etched into your calendar for weeks now. Before we go too far with today’s post, and at risk of being a complete KilljoyBuzzkillSnark…. most of you will not get interview invites issued forth from Cambridge today. There. We said it.)
It’s pretty amazing that Harvard can be issuing invitations to interview already. They get a lot of applications, and while we know that they have a small army of adcom readers, still, it’s impressive that they could be through enough of them to issue a chunk of interview invites after only having those apps on hand for three weeks.
If you applied to Harvard, you’re probably pretty nervous today. Here’s how things will work:
- In past years, Harvard has released the emails right around noon Eastern time; they go out in a batch and everyone who’s getting invited in the first wave will receive them right around the same time.
- The timing of your HBS invite is meaningless. If your buddy gets an invite today, but you don’t get yours till next week, it says nothing about the relative strength of his app versus yours. The only thing you can interpret from the timing of an interview invite is if one doesn’t come at all. There is literally nothing to do with geography, career/industry, ethnicity, how early (or late) you submitted your app relative to the deadline, or anything else in terms of who gets invited when. Our assumption is that it’s just a matter of how many apps are in the pile that a particular reader is wading through, and where your app ended up in that stack. If your app was in the top half of the stack, and your app is awesome, you’re going to get an invite today. If your app is waiting towards the bottom, your invite will come next Wednesday. (No need to say that if the app isn’t awesome, it won’t come at all…)
Unlike most other schools, Harvard isn’t that generous with sending out invites; if you don’t make it to that stage today or next week, this doesn’t mean that you’re not going to make it into anywhere else. We see lots of amazing BSers get turned away from Harvard and still practically sail into Wharton, Booth, or Columbia. (Not Stanford though.) We saw a lot of Harvard essays come through in September and honestly, very very few of them gave us much hope at all that they’d result in an interview invite. So please, don’t get crushed if it doesn’t happen.
This is Harvard. And it’s not the end of the world if you don’t get in.
Still, we know how nerve-wracking these days on the calendar are. We wish you the best! There’s a bunch of resources on this site for those who do get the golden ticket today. We hope that many, many of you are in that group!!! Best of luck and please let us know if you’re one of them!
Just a dreamer says
October 10, 2013 at 6:45 amHey ES, could you please let me know where you got the info on the fact that timing has nothing to do with things like geography? I am especially concerned about this part. I sort of have a theory on it, but maybe you can help me understand if I am just crazy.
I am based in Europe, so it would be most convenient for me to go to a hub city for an interview, right? Two years ago I saw the emails some of my friends received on the first wave for the interview. In it, they were told that the spots in the hub cities go very fast. They’d receive an email the second day at a precise hour, at which point the registration would begin for interviews. Since they highlighted that hub interview slots go fast, it’s essential you sort of schedule it quickly when the registration thing opens. That’s why in my opinion, it is unlikely that HBS will be sending anymore interview invites to people too far off from Boston. The second wave people would only get the chance to register for hubs something like one week after the first wave people, limiting/completely eliminating that option for people like me. What do you think?
essaysnark says
October 10, 2013 at 3:41 pm@Just a dreamer, you’re really overthinking things. š Dee Leopold herself has said there’s no bearing whatsoever on the timing of invites and geography; please check out our post from last year on this subject. She’s said this over and over and over again, many years running.
Yes, the appointments go quickly, and availability in the hub cities is limited, but Harvard actually prefers people to come to campus if possible (they don’t emphasize this but it’s always an option). In addition, if needed they can accommodate more people at a particular location; they work with applicants who have trouble getting set up. Either way, one more week won’t matter in terms of getting an interview slot booked. The language about “slots fill fast” and “we encourage you to be prompt” is true, but it’s mostly to get people to act quickly. The admissions office deals with a gazillion stressed-out applicants calling in, and they are hoping to minimize some of that by generating a sense of urgency in the interviewees.
We’ll be posting again about HBS interviews tomorrow since this has generated a lot of chatter and misinformation is running rampant on them interwebs.
Just a dreamer says
October 10, 2013 at 4:33 pmThanks for your thoughts, EssaySnark!