How to Stand Out to Harvard Business School: Q&A with Min

Min: First and foremost, top business schools are looking for business impact. Competitive programs want to see that you have made a marked impact on your organization in your 3-5 years of work experience. This can manifest in many ways: driving sales for a critical business line, completing a major cost-savings initiative, transforming the IT system to manage budget, seeing through a major M&A transaction—the list goes on. The key here is that business schools are not just looking for personal success stories—they want to see that you made a sustained and quantifiable contribution to your organization. Your application should thus clearly articulate how your work has influenced broader business objectives and made a meaningful difference in your industry.

Leadership goes hand-in-hand with business impact—top programs not only want to see that you made a tangible difference, but also how you accomplished business goals during your time at your organization. How did you lead, motivate, and direct others to support your initiatives? How did you convince the organization or your team of your strategy? It’s important to be able to show initiative and your ability to manage others and complex, cross-functional projects.

Finally, competitive business schools want to see that you have a clear vision for how an MBA can accelerate and enhance your career (in other words: they don’t want you to come just for the prestige). Are there gaps in your skill set that you want to improve? Maybe you want to develop strong people management skills, or pivot completely to a new sector of business. Whatever your vision is, clearly articulating your long-term goals and how the business program will help you achieve them is essential.

Min: Unlike undergraduate admissions, there is no such thing as “Undecided” in business school admissions. While some flexibility is permitted, business schools will expect candidates to be confident about their trajectory and have a clear understanding of how an MBA can help them achieve their goals. Top business schools expect candidates to have solid and measurable leadership skills with a resume of business results that parallel those skills. Though business schools will look at your academic history and extracurricular affiliations, they will be far more invested in your background as a business professional. They will look for more polish, professionalism, and leadership potential than undergraduate admissions, which tend to focus on intellectual curiosity, community engagement, and extracurricular involvements.

Min: Applicants should primarily consider their ultimate career goals when choosing a business program. For instance, students should think about whether they want an MBA to accelerate and amplify their current career path or enable them to pivot to a different industry or role. This will help them narrow their list—for example, Harvard Business School is known for their case-based general management education, sending many alumni into investing, consulting, and corporate strategy. On the other hand, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Business is known for having high-ranking alumni in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) and technology industries. Knowing where the alumni operate in the business world can help you clarify what kind of network you want to have after you complete your MBA.

Applicants should also consider the location of the business schools on their list. While geography can be a small factor in deciding between schools, it is worth noting that it does play a role in your alumni network. For example, graduates from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) tend to stay on the West Coast at a higher frequency than graduates from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, who mostly stay on the East Coast. If network and physical access is important to you, geography should be a strong consideration in choosing your school.

Finally, applicants should take into account the graduate student experience they can expect from various schools on their list, in particular, the type of academic curriculum each school offers. For example, Harvard Business School requires that all first year students take the same courses, often known as the Required Curriculum (RC), which lends itself to a more General Management track. Other schools, on the other hand, offer opportunities for a more individually tailored curricular structure. In addition, applicants should look into community factors such as the size of the school (HBS enrolls about 1,000 students per class whereas GSB only enrolls about 400) and other clubs and resources that the school offers in order to clarify what kind of experience they want from their MBA.

Min: It is absolutely critical that applicants to HBS have a clear perspective. One of the most attractive features of HBS is the case method. Students read printed copies of cases in classrooms that observe a no-technology policy. Every student is expected to be prepared with a perspective on the case. Some volunteer to share, but others will be “cold called”—professors will call their name and ask them to share their thoughts on the case.

Given this unique pedagogical approach, your application should reflect a strong sense of perspective in the respective field you’ve worked in. Identify a problem, challenge, or opportunity in that field and your vision for how you would be able to address it through a Harvard MBA. Showing excitement for your industry and how the Harvard curriculum can transform your career is vital for a successful application.

Min: Command Education Senior Mentors help students develop their business hook in two main ways. First, by leveraging prior success stories with other business school applicants, we ensure that a student’s application essays present them as a compelling candidate who will add value to the alumni network of the business school they are applying to. This involves diving deep into each applicant’s work experience and highlighting the most relevant and impactful aspects to showcase in the application.

In addition, we support applicants through each part of the application journey, including the interview process, which is highly important and can vary significantly from school to school. For example, Wharton uses a team-based interview in which each applicant is randomly placed into a group with 3-4 other applicants and asked to solve a business case. On the other hand, Harvard Business School uses a quick, 25-minute rapid-fire interview where interviewers can ask up to 30 rapid-fire questions about the applicant’s work experience. We prepare applicants for all types of interviews to make sure they know what to expect and approach the process with confidence in their unique voice and perspective.

Finally, we maintain an extensive network of alumni from top business schools, including Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, and Booth. We connect Command Education applicants with our alumni network, allowing them to gain in-depth insights into each school’s student experience and empowering them with a nuanced understanding of each of the schools to which they’re applying.