Harvard Business School Drops Round 3 Deadline Option

HBS drops round 3Today on the Direct from the Director blog, Harvard Business School admissions director Chad Losee dropped an MBA admissions bombshell: HBS will no longer have a third round as of the 2018-19 application cycle.

Admitted round three applicants have always faced a time crunch where finishing up work and moving to a new city is concerned, and this shift down to two rounds will allow both admitted (and rejected) applicants more time to better plan their next steps.

“Given that we’ve seen more applicants in Rounds 1 and 2 and fewer in Round 3 in recent years, this change feels consistent with the choices you are making about when to apply,” Losee explains, adding that, “getting a decision earlier will give admitted students better access to on-campus housing, more cohort options for HBX CORe, and more time for visa processing.”

For applicants hoping to join the Harvard Business School Class of 2021, you’ll need to apply in either Round 1 (September 5, 2018) or Round 2 (January 4, 2019). The admissions director assures they have no preference between the two rounds.

Come spring, the admissions team will focus solely on HBS’s 2+2 program for college seniors seeking deferred admission and the April deadline remains.

In an interview with Poets & Quants, Losee noted that the move was designed to give the Class of 2021 a jump on planning ahead for the September and January deadlines.

“When we bring students to interview on campus,” Losee tells P&Q, “we plan whole day of events for them with students and faculty to get a sense for what that’s like here. That has been harder to do in round three because since students and faculty are in finals and those types of things, so they won’t have as complete of a picture of what HBS is. We get to know the applicants and we hope the applicants get to know us as well as they can so they can make an informed decision.”

Image credit: Chris Han (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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