A Harvard Plan Targets College Juniors

The B-school's 2+2 track will give third-year students deferred entry to its MBA program. They must complete senior year and two years of work

Andrea Mitchell Kimmel

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Harvard Business School has launched a new plan to encourage undergraduates to give business a chance even if they have never considered such a career path. The school (BusinessWeek, 5/31/07) recently announced it is recruiting students, particularly those in engineering, science, and liberal arts programs, for a new initiative that would have potential MBA students applying to HBS as early as their junior year of college.

The applicants will know whether they're accepted by the fall of their senior year of college. If they accept HBS's offer, they will have to defer their admittance for three years but will gain access to the Career Leader self assessment test (BusinessWeek, 1/19/2006), six sessions with a career counselor, and contact with corporate recruiters who have a relationship with the B-school, as they prepare to launch their careers.

Then they will participate in two week-long summer sessions—one after they graduate college that will prepare them for work, and a second before their second year in the workforce that will build on the concepts introduced in the first summer. The following summer, they will join the full-time MBA program. Students will not have to pay any extra fees or tuition for these additional resources.

Harvard says it has signed up a number of corporate "recruiting partners," including Google (GOOG) and Teach for America.

Although HBS has offered deferred acceptance to undergraduates for a number of years, this will be the first time that the applications come from college juniors instead of seniors and also the first time that the school is offering resources to those who are accepted. The first applications are due by July 1, 2008, and HBS administrators are hopeful that the school and the students can benefit from this program, which they are calling 2+2, for the two years of work and two years of graduate school that students will be completing.

Recently, Andrea Mitchell Kimmel, who directs the 2+2 program, spoke with BusinessWeek reporter Francesca Di Meglio. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:

How far-reaching is this program?

We'll be going to roughly 35 college campuses [to recruit] the first year. Most of those will be domestic. Some will be international. The program is definitely international in scope. You don't need to be a U.S. citizen to apply. The first year we'll put our feet on the ground domestically mostly, so we can learn.

Which schools will you be going to?

It's a pretty broad range, and we're not making that list available publicly because we don't want other college students, who are not at these schools, to feel unwelcome. That's not the case at all. What we're trying to do is visit schools where the folks we're targeting for the program may be in higher numbers. One of the groups we're very interested in are scientists and engineers, so we'll be going to a lot of schools like MIT, Georgia Tech, Rose-Hulman [Institute of Technology], Kettering, Cal Tech, and some large state schools that have great science and engineering programs. We'll be going to a lot of liberal arts schools where we think we'll find talented leaders who very much fit our admissions criteria and want to make a difference in the world.

How much of an investment is HBS making in this program?

Unfortunately, we have a policy at HBS that we don't discuss departmental budgets.