The dirty little secret of HBS (as well as every other elite university in the world) is that they don't create captains of industry and leaders of the world; rather they select people who are already successful leaders and then take credit for their future success. I'm exaggerating, of course, but not by a lot. What this means for someone applying is that in order to be accepted, they need to (a) be successful for someone their age and (b) be able to communicate that. A lot of folks apply to HBS (or some other elite b-school) thinking, "This is what I'll get out of this..." but the schools are looking for what you will contribute. This is especially true of HBS where they use the case method. If you're not familiar with the case method, read about it. It requires that 70%+ of the contribution in a class come from the students (the professor only talks for a minority of the time, although they add most of the value) so students in class have to have the appropriate experience in order to contribute.