Kim Clark became dean two years ago. Have there been any changes in the strategy of the admissions area since that time?

The criteria have remained the same. We are looking for bright people with potential to lead businesses. That part hasn't changed. But the way we look for those people and the admissions process itself we're always trying to improve. Kim has helped us involve faculty members to help us develop the questions we ask both in the application and in interviews.

Has the profile of the student you accept changed in recent years?

The international makeup of the class has changed pretty substantially. When I graduated in 1989, 15% of the class was from outside the U.S. with relatively few countries represented. Today international students represent 26% of the class and come from over 60 countries! We're also proud of having increased the percentage of minorities and women students in the class. About 18% of the class is now composed of ethnic minorities. It was 13% or 14% a few years ago. And about 29% of the class is composed of women. It was about 24% when I was a student. It is a very diverse group with at least one thing in common: potential for business leadership.

How do you assess leadership potential?

Succeeding through others is one way of thinking about it, especially others who are different from the candidate. We value that highly and it seems to be associated with people who go on to positions of leadership. We want to see that in work experience, community service, or in extracurricular activities. We hope people will go on to be outstanding leaders in business, but we also hope they will go on to be outstanding leaders in the community.

Let's pretend for a moment that you are not the admissions director at Harvard. Let's pretend you're on the outside again as an applicant. In the ideal world, could you tell us what steps you would go through to increase your odds of getting in?

I think it would be good to start during your sophomore year in college. If you're thinking you want to be a business leader, you should talk to advisers there, and you should pursue what you love as an undergraduate. You shouldn't study business because you think it is something business schools will want or because it will get you a job. Follow your dream. Study what you love. And master it. Take the highest level courses you can find. Work in the field. Tap into the faculty on campus and really master what you love. And show some level of excellence in it, whether it's biology or French, linguistics or architecture. You can study business later. But you should follow your passion and do well in it. It also would be wise to be involved in your undergraduate community. If it's being chairman of the biology tutors group, that's terrific if that's your passion. That would be my advice at that early stage.

Then, when you're thinking about what to do after you graduate, you should again follow your dream. Don't think there is any prescribed path to where you want to be. When you're interviewing for a job, think about what those people do and how they spend their days. Ask yourself if you would like to do that. Would you be excited to get up each morning to do that? And again, follow your dream. The worst thing to do is follow someone else's dream, and find yourself there and unenthusiastic about it. You won't perform well and you'll be much worse off. Decide what's important to you and pursue it with zeal.

And then think about studying business and applying to Harvard. After you've followed your dream and gotten some work experience, the best thing to do is get the first-hand data. Visit the campus. Sit in on classes. Go to lunch with students. Talk with faculty after class. Try to get as much first-hand data as you possibly can because the schools will look alike when you read their catalogs and literature, but when you're on campus they feel much different. It's important to get that first-hand information because you'll be investing a lot of money and this is going to be your network and developmental experience.

When should they start that process?

A year or two before they apply would be ideal. If it's April and they want to apply next year, come now. The data we get is that the most important factor in making a decision to come to Harvard is the campus visit. No matter how many events we had in their city or books they read, that was the deciding factor. Once a person asks for an application, they enter our database and we might invite them to an information session in their vicinity to speak with an admissions representative; that is, if we are having an open house in their area. We tell people that these "open houses" are for informational purposes because we don't do any evaluating there. We don't decide whom to admit based on whether they show up at all our events. By far the most helpful thing they can do is schedule a class visit. Every day we have 10 or 12 people coming here, and on Fridays it's as many as 25.

How important is the candidate's undergraduate school in the admissions process?

It does make a difference, but we do take note of everything. We are not just interested in Ivy League alumni. There are many schools that are not Ivy League schools that we regard as quite rigorous and are very well regarded in our process. Public schools, private schools, military academies.... there are many excellent schools that fare very well in our process. It is not so much where you went, but rather what you did there that matters most.

If you apply earlier, are your odds of getting in better?

Your odds are the same, whether you apply in the first, second, or third round. We do find that the people who apply in the earlier rounds tend to be stronger candidates. But your individual chances are the same. The people who apply earlier tend to be more focused or more committed.

What about the strategy on recommenders?

They should ask people whom they have worked with closely who can comment on their ability to work with others, to manage others, and who have some insight into their long-term potential. We have a problem with people who feel that they need the most senior person they know or who they have ever run into to write their letters of recommendation or that they should only get letters from our alumni. But the quality of the relationship is more important. The person needs to know you very well in order to do a good job answering our questions. We get letters from senators and CEOs and others who may have run across a candidate once in a blue moon. That only wastes a data point that they could have used to provide more valuable information.

Do you have any advice for candidates sweating those essay questions?

What I tell people is that they should answer them as if the questions were asked of them by a good friend. They shouldn't get so focused on this being a business school application and overly restrict the scope of how to answer the question. Be candid. We need to understand the whole person. The people who overthink or craft their responses do themselves a disservice because we don't get to know the true person behind the application.

Do you have any idea how many Harvard applicants use paid consultants to help them apply?

We think fewer than 2% of our applicants use them. We wish that it was zero and are disappointed that any of our applicants could believe that another person could represent them better than they can themselves.

Are you now using the Internet to help facilitate the admissions process?

We now have our application up on the Web. We have a downloadable application that candidates can simply download and print and use those forms to get going. About a third of the people who applied last year have used the downloaded application. We want to make it even easier to interact with us via the Web. This year, we made it so that they can request an application not by sending an E-mail to us, but by having them actually enter their request right into the database through our site on the Web. The thing that is great about the Web is that when the catalog and application go off to press, you can immediately put it up. Otherwise, there is this four-week lag time while weíre waiting for it to come back from the printers so we can mail it.

How does the January cohort differ from the candidates you admit for the program that begins in September?

The overall quality is the same. We choose from the same pool. We first decide we want to admit the person and then we decide where to put them, based on whether they state a preference for January or September. They are of equal quality in any way we can measure it. One difference is that the January students are more focused in terms of career planning. They are people who were able to articulate their career plans fairly well, and often their career plans are related to their previous work experience.

Why has the interview become an important part of Harvard's admissions decision?

We care so much about trying to assess someone's ability to lead and run a business that we feel as though just relying on the paper application would be foolish, especially when people are clamoring to be interviewed and share a fuller picture of themselves. To bring more data to bear on a difficult decision is a good idea.

If an applicant is invited to do an interview with admissions, is that a plus or minus? Could an interview indicate that your odds of acceptance are greater than someone else's?

If you get an invite for an interview, it's a positive sign. After all, it means you are still in the running, and last year, just over 50% of applicants interviewed were offered admissions. Last year we interviewed over 1,100 applicants. Of course, we are not able to interview everyone. In the past few years, we have ramped up interviewing capacity so that we can continue to interview a large majority of the applicants eventually admitted. This year, like last year, we expect that number is going to be about 75% of the class. In other words, only about a quarter of the class is admitted without an interview.

Seventy-five percent of the entering class was interviewed?

Yes, only three years ago, that number was less than 40%. Two years ago we bumped it up to 65%, and last year we made 75%. Although 70% of our interviews are conducted by the admissions staff, we have just over 100 alumni around the world to help us with the remaining 30%. We're very selective about which alumni we choose, and we work with the alumni office and the dean's office to pick the right people. And we've chosen people who are in senior positions so they will have some perspective on the long-term leadership potential of the candidate.

Do you conduct interviews?

Yes, about 10 a week as part of my regular regimen. It's a big commitment, and it's probably worth understanding the way we do it. We do it after we have reviewed the person's application. They are evaluative interviews. They are not informational interviews or sell interviews. Since we've already read the application, we can use the interview to delve into things that we didn't learn enough about or would like to learn more about.

What are some of the questions that you ask?

We really think long and hard about the questions. We get advice and input from faculty members and alumni. And when we originally started doing interviews, we received help from a consulting firm that came in and studied what we thought was important and how to assess business leadership in a candidate in an interview. They are usually questions that a candidate isn't prepared for. That is part of the goal. And questions that will get at someone's ability to deal with ambiguity and imagination. We feel strongly that we would like to hear about actual experiences people have had, and we try to add depth to the application that we have already reviewed in detail.

How long does an interview last?

About 30 to 45 minutes.

How important is the interview in the overall decision-making process?

The interviewer only casts one vote, then writes up the comments from the interview to the board for a final decision. So it is similar to one of the votes that a reader would cast after reading an application. The board makes a final decision based on all of the information we have.

How quickly is a decision made on a person after an interview?

We promise a decision two weeks from the interview date. So it's not a long lag time. After that the applicant will receive our decision.

How long do you give candidates to decide whether they want to accept your offer of admission?

We're pretty generous with that and I think we can afford to be. We want people to make the right decision, and we don't want them to just decide because we impose a hasty deadline and then have them change their mind later. It depends on the timing of an admitted student's interview (whether they were invited before or on each roundís decision dates), but usually people have at least a month to make a decision. Those admitted late in the third round may have the least amount of time, because we are trying to close out the process and release whatever waiting list we might have as early as possible. Admits who ask for decision extensions are usually given them as long as it's for a good reason, whether they are trying to weigh financial aid or have a new job opportunity.

I'm sure you get plenty of people who are worried about financial aid. How does that figure in the admissions process at Harvard?

Although I am now responsible for both admissions and financial aid, there is a conceptual separation between the two. Admissions decisions are completely separate from financial aid decisions. We have only need-based financial aid. We admit people and at the same time send them a financial aid application. It's their responsibility to send it in. It takes us three to four weeks to turn around their application for financial aid.

The quality of Harvard's applicant pool must force you to turn down many candidates by only the smallest of margins. Is that true?

There are always decisions that can go either way. You are always disappointing people who would do very well in the program.

So if a person like that called you after all the chaos in this office is over, will they get feedback as to why they were rejected?

We are able to give feedback to some people. We feel it's worthwhile to give feedback to people who came close. It's less worthwhile to give feedback to others who haven't come close because we have found over the years that people who get feedback think, "My gosh, Harvard Business School, which has so many applications, took the time to give me personal feedback." Regardless of what we say, they are encouraged by that and reapply. So we are very reluctant to give feedback to those that didn't come close. That is how we have structured our feedback policy. We give feedback to candidates who were interviewed but not admitted and to a small group of other candidates who came close. If feedback is available to a candidate under this policy, we will indicate that in our original denial letter.

How many people does that constitute?

It will probably be about 600 to 700 people this year, roughly 500 who were interviewed and another 100 or so who came close but didn't quite make it.

Why did HBS reinstate the GMAT last year?

We viewed it as a relatively simple way to get even more data, in this case standardized data, about applicants. Just as an interview can provide more data, so can measurement devices such as the GMAT. And it was a relatively "easy" piece of information to get. After all, the fact of the matter is that 85% to 90% of the candidates took the GMAT anyway. So it's not imposing a real burden on the majority of our MBA candidates.

Does the GMAT requirement make your job easier or harder?

I think we'll feel better about the job we do at the end of the day for having this data point. There are cases, especially as our applicant pool gets more and more diverse and we have new undergraduate institutions popping into our pool every year, that we'd like a standardized piece of data like the GMAT. We'll feel better about our ability to treat some cases.

What is HBS's average GMAT score?

In our first year after reinstating the GMAT, our average score for an admitted student was in the 670-680 range. We do not have a particular GMAT target in mind, nor do we have any minimums in mind.

How much weight does the GMAT carry in the admissions process?

It will vary from one application to another. There are no standardized weights to any of the data we evaluate. We feel pretty strongly that there is a certain level of intellect necessary to perform in the program. But that's the easy part. The hard point is determining who it is that will use the degree to become a business leader, who is going to impact the well-being of others. So there is no way to put a weighting on it because it's a very subjective thing to choose people who you think will be good business leaders.

Any last comments for potential applicants?

Sure. I really hope that potential applicants will take full advantage of the variety of ways to learn enough about HBS and MBA programs to make a good decision on this subject. Take the time to read carefully the catalog/brochure we publish and to visit our Web site. If it is at all possible to visit campus, prospective applicants are welcome, and with advanced notice we may be able to schedule a class visit for them. Also, we have an information session on campus every day, conducted by second-year students. The best way to learn about HBS is to learn first-hand, and we welcome applicants to visit.

Jill, thanks for your insights today.