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Shortly after the unveiling of the new Harvard Business School application with its changed essay set, Poets&Quants interviewed Sanford “Sandy”  Kreisberg, the founder of HBSguru.com, an admission consultancy which focuses on HBS and other leading business schools.

Kreisberg has been consulting with applicants since the 1970s and has seen more than a dozen iterations of HBS applications, including the one Harvard MBA Admissions & Financial Aid Managing Director “Dee” Leopold herself filed with eight essay questions. (He was not Dee’s consultant).  He also typically does over 100 mock interviews for HBS candidates and writes the perennially favorite Poets&Quants’ weekly feature handicapping the odds of MBA applicants. As always, Sandy was his provocative self.

PQ: So Sandy, what do you think is driving this?

SK: Well, it could be the admissions office picking up a hint from some direct or off-the-cuff remark from the new Dean, Nitin Nohria, who has been ‘disruptive’ himself in his first years, especially the initiation of the Field Program (of trips and business plans) to the first year curriculum and who seems to like to shake things up.  It could be Dee Leopold wanting to make changes for the sake of changes, pre-empting a seven-year itch (she has been the adcom head for six years now). It could be “innovation envy,” a feeling that with the whole school running around and hiring coders to start companies, as part of the Field Program, well, admissions had to make a splash as well.  It could be all of the above.

PQ: What is your assessment of who this helps and who this hurts?

SK: It turns the application into something like a law school application, where they have your grades, your standardized test scores, and a couple of short essays.  That helps people with high grades and high GMATs and a clear and branded work pedigree.  It hurts non-traditional candidates, who have less room to explain themselves initially, and it hurts traditional candidates who were on the bubble, and also wanted to explain themselves.  One word you don’t hear about in this application is “leadership”–  which used to be the one-word description of HBS and a keystone of its motto, “to develop leaders who make a difference in the world.”  What they appear to looking for now are high-achievers who are hip to starting disruptive things, however defined, and new businesses. “Disruption potential” has replaced “Leadership potential” as the new buzz words.  Call it the Post-Zuckerberg effect.  Well,  the alternative –reality Zuckerberg Effect, they want Zuckerberg-types  who did not drop out, and instead get good grades, good jobs,  and found their “disruptive”  Zuckerberg mojo later in life.

PQ: But how is that reflected in the new application?

SK: First, by the very fact that is new, and disruptive itself, “Hey look at us, we can innovate too!!” Second, by {Admission Director] Dee’s oft-stated and now even more clear obsession, especially in 2+2 candidates, with STEM applicants. (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). STEM and Disruption have now replaced Leadership and Old-Fashioned Change (“change” was a hot HBS topic five years ago, and a required essay) as some useful clichés in understanding admissions policies and fancies.  The fact they have slimmed down the essay part, and jettisoned such classic questions as “Describe three significant accomplishments” and “Describe three set-backs.”  They even jettisoned, “What do you wish we had asked?” which is a pretty blue-sky question.  So last year, you had to come up with seven stories (3 accomplishments, 3 set-backs and one blue sky event, what do you wish we had asked) over 1600 words, plus some goals blah, blah blah which could also be creative, all of  which took some real digging around in your life and thinking about what matters to you, and then strategically picking seven value-adding and representative stories, while this year, it is more high-stakes, more like a business plan, where you need less writing but one   “bet the ranch” what are you good at idea, and one “Hey, I’m a work in progress because  . . .” idea.

P&Q: Let’s take a look at the actual questions: Tell us something you’ve done well and tell us something you wish you had done better. 

SK: There is one word to describe the tone and content of those prompts-California. The very removal of the word ‘accomplishment’ for the more touchy-feely  ‘something you’ve done well’ and the banning of the judgmental  ‘setback’ for the infantile and Little-Train-Who-Could ‘something you wish you had done better’ is a way of signaling, “We Don’t Need No Real Accomplishments or Setbacks” (well, of course, aside from getting into ace feeder colleges, getting strong grades and solid GMATs and working for traditional feeder firms), you can just riff on this.

But, of course, I am just being analytical and old school. The most important part of the new application is the naked fact that the initial essay set has been reduced, as you noted, from 2000 to 800 words.

PQ: Meaning?

SK: Words don’t count so much, or more charitably and probably more accurately, “Folks, we get the idea about you real fast. You’re a start-up, we just need the elevator pitch. We don’t need you to explain it to us. We know what we want and we know a future HBS admit when we see one.”

PQ: How do these changes impact the rest of the application? The parts of the application that applicants can control? 

SK: Well, it upgrades everything else a bit. Your resume becomes more important as a way of featuring significant accomplishments. They may start seeing more two-page resumes, with “mini” essays about extra-curriculars that somehow did not make it into the essay set. Recommendations become more important, especially recommendations which can tell your work accomplishments with some color to how you are a leader, etc.  Preparing recommenders becomes more important.

PQ: OK, all that said, let’s take what they are asking, one question at a time.  “Tell us something you’ve done well.” What is your advice?

SK: Well, one knee-jerk answer is that “I’ve done well in different environments,” and then sneak in some concise, ahem, accomplishments, and allude to how you were successful. To their credit, they are never legalistic with their instructions. So “something” does not necessarily mean one thing.  So some catalog of accomplishments in different settings is  one OK answer, and one which I suppose they will see a good deal of, especially if you don’t have the facts to support, “Something I have done well is forgive the sadists in Hell-Hole Despotic Country who tortured my parents to death while also maintaining my parents’ activist ideals about human rights here in America.”

OK, just an exaggeration to point out that an answer which deals with overcoming adversity, especially any adversity with an identity politics/PC twist is still a good answer.  Another way to deal with the question is to say LEARNING FROM OTHERS is something I’ve done well, or FINDING OUT WHAT DRIVES ME or even BEING HONEST WITH MYSELF.

Of course, all those answers gain force by the concise examples you are able to squeeze in. The question then becomes a mini version of the Stanford classic, “What matters most to you and why?”  where the answer resonates with some big words like GROWTH, LEARNING, SELF-AWARENESS and manages to screw in some compelling examples. If you are a STEM nerd, you could probably get away with, “Making stuff better” or” making products better,” or even “making my start-up better” is something I have done well, and follow it with 400 words about how, and why. If you have been deep enough into something like starting a company or designing a product, and have some tangible proof, HBS will meet you more than half-way on the actual execution of the essay (assuming you bring along a  great GPA and good GMATs). And if you screw up, the essay won’t count so much. They can tell if you are total basket case at the interview.

PQ: OK, what about “Tell us something you wish you had done better.”

SK: It’s actually 90 percent the same question as “tell us something you have done well,”  with some built in reflection. You can take all the suggestions above and work it into this format. With some therapeutic mumbo-jumbo. To wit, you could write about not learning  from persons X, Y and Z  (your parents, mentors and friends) and why those were key watersheds, or not being honest with yourself in situations 1, 2, 3 with blah, blah takeaways. Not to mention the classic, “I wish I had not let my anger about the sadists who tortured my parents to death interfere so much with my mission of spreading their great human rights initiatives in America. “ That version is actually better than the original.

HBS is not looking for the Dalai Lama, more like “not-so-spaced son of Dalai Lama.”  Of course, you can also say, to go from the sublime to the banal, “I wish I had done a better job with the due diligence of Widget Inc, but the reasons for my weaknesses in those models and meetings are revealing . . . blah, blah, blah.” That answer, as banal-sounding as it is, along with a 3.9 from Princeton, a 720 GMAT, and some solid recs from two non-indicted guys at Goldman or JP Morgan and a final rec from the board member of a charity you founded will get you in to HBS, in most cases. And even if your recommenders have been indicted, hey, innocent until proven guilty plus  1. no one yet has been indicted, and  2. even if your recommender has not only been indicted but convicted and in jail, well, he probably will have more time to write your rec and being in jail won’t take away from what he says about you.

PQ: What do you make of the 24-hour post interview essay, where they ask you to say what you wish you had said.  

SK: Let me be real careful here. It’s apples and oranges. Or more precisely, apples and oranges and then, when you thought you were done, another apple. The actual interview (oranges) is an important way to get a lot of information you cannot get in an application (apples), so I support interviews for sure. Throwing in some stunt essay after the interview will not churn up any new information not already in the application and interview, and it certainly will NOT make applicants feel better about getting in the last word. Dee, baby, I love ya, but that is dreaming.

I’ve done hundreds of mock interviews for HBS applicants. The ones that go well, go well. Those kids are just going to be burdened with yet more homework and anxiety and instead of walking out of the interview and saying, “OK, this is over . . .” there is now one more stupid and made-up essay to write, which probably can only damage you. The vast majority of kids who don’t do well on the interviews, screw up because they got lost, or were digressive, or arrogant or unlikeable (from the adcom’s POV).

Well, I guess they can rush over to Starbucks and write 400 words about “I wish the interviewer had asked me right near the end to explain why I am not usually such a spaz, and won’t be after you admit me.” Which, however heartfelt and convincing and unlikely, will not change their view that you are a spaz.  How come? Because they saw you spaz out with their very own eyes and ears, and you saying “don’t believe it,” won’t change anything.  And, most importantly, for the vast majority of interviewed applicants who have OK but not super-duper interviews, it is just more stressful work that is not going to add any value  or new information or change anything.

The whole exercise strikes me as too clever by half, desperate innovation for innovation’s sake, a logistical nightmare for some jet-lagged kid who also needs to catch another plane home in those 24-hours, an invitation for those who interview on campus NOT TO VISIT CAMPUS and instead stay holed up for 24 hours doing a hateful and made-up essay  (ditto, those who travel to Paris or Mumbai for interviews) and finally, some crazy Christmas gift cum nightmare for consultants.

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