Does anyone have any updates of interviews at HBS?? I still haven't received an invite and am wondering if I should just move on or keep refreshing my inbox frantically!

Thanks!

They had 50 invites left to send out.... two weeks ago. Move on I'll say, and if you happen to get one, that'll make your day.

I have decided to move on. After dinged by Wharton and plus I still have not heard back from Harvard yet.

Makes sense. Ugh, back to the drawing board I guess.

Don't be discouraged. If you haven't already, draft out what you want to do with your life, and then try to see which schools fit in that profile. Once you got that, you can wholeheartedly apply to these other schools in R2. Good luck!

If anyone has heard from HBS since the 50 invites posting by Dee, please post.

I have moved on! I am tired with the whole HBS selection process nonsense!

One of the application questions asks if I have ever been convicted, ever, of basically ANYTHING.

Is this even legal?

Many years ago I got into trouble for drinking and fighting. Not sure if admissions would find out, but if they did, and I said I haven't been convicted, I'm sure that is an automatic DENIAL.

Anyone have thoughts on how I should answer? If I click yes I am supposed to provide an explanation...

i would recommend telling the truth.

if it happened many years ago, then it's not a big deal IF you have learned and matured from the experience. This is what you should write in the explanation.

In terms of legality of the question - I'm sure business schools would not add a question on the application that is illegal. And even if it were illegal, would you sue the business school? I mean, you are the one who is applying and spending money and energy to go to school.

there are ways around this.....call an attorney & get advice......should cost no more than $150.....

for instance, you can get convictions overturned, or records expunged.....and if you are referring to getting into fights while in college......this is not a big deal....blame it on the frat hazing or something.....

focus on why you are the best person worth admitting not on explaining your mistakes in the past

Tell the truth, and accept that you won't get accepted to a top 5. Sorry.

Of course admissions would find out. Hell, if you give me your information, even I can find out if you have a criminal record. We live in the information age and your criminal record is there for the whole world to see.

Kroll will most definitely catch your criminal record.

Not all criminal records, however, are equal.

Here are mitigating circumstances:

1)You have only one criminal record and it happened over 5 years ago.
2)Your criminal history is not the serious kind (murder, kidnap, rape, drug dealing etc).

If you have a series of felony violations, then not only will Kroll catch it, but you can kiss your MBA chances goodbye.

So I am on a bus again...This time with the business to business marketing (B2B) Career Acceleration Module. We've traveled to Raleigh and Charlotte NC to visit SAS, IBM and Cisco. We are learning from the executives themselves how these leading companies sell their products to their customers, which in this case means other businesses. I should probably correct myself here and instead say we are learning how these companies use their value and solutions to solve business problems. If there is one thing we have learned on this trip it is that in B2B marketing it is more than the product. If you're talking about the product you're not selling.

While I've said it before it can't be said enough: these trips are really valuable learning experiences. Not only do we get to visit industry leaders and meet with executives using the very skills and tools we are learning in class, I am always surprised at how much I learn about what I didn't know I didn't know. Hearing these executives talk about their businesses and challenges makes me realize how my business understanding was before b-school was just the tip of the iceberg.

Here's an ah-ha moment that hit me on this trip. We were visiting SAS and hearing about how they create marketing strategies around their partner channels. What does that mean? Well, it concerns how they work with consultants, such as Accenture, and hardware manufacturers, such as HP, to help sell their software solutions to existing and new customers, such as the federal government. This might seem interesting on its own, but for me it was particularly relevant. Before coming to business school I worked in public relations for a leading software company, and one of my responsibilities was managing partner press releases for several product launches. In my world, that meant making sure the releases talked about the product correctly, coordinating executive quotes, and ensuring their timely release and media coverage. I (naively) thought that partner engagement was limited to launches and wondered what these "partner management teams" did with the rest of their time. After the SAS presentation I realized how integral these teams are to marketing software solutions. I could take this further and say that I probably didn't fully appreciate the B2B nature of the business we were in. I can only imagine how much better I could have done my job and the value I could have added if I had known then what I know now. These types of realizations - seeing the integration in business strategy from PR to marketing to supply chain to etc... - is why I came back to school and so far, I haven't been disappointed.