The document summarizes and critiques Harvard Business School's (HBS) new "post-interview assignment" which requires applicants to send a 400-word email after their interview. It makes three key points: 1) Telling anxious MBA applicants to "relax" about the high-stakes assignment is unrealistic and won't stop them from stressing. 2) Comparing the assignment to the "real world" is a weak justification, as the primary function of applications is not realism. 3) Attempting to block admissions consultants from helping is misguided, as applicants will understandably prepare and brainstorm for such an important task. The assignment risks becoming a

1. Everyone relax - HBS' third essay
really just a 400-word chill pill (email)
http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com/

2. Everyone relax - HBS' third essay
really just a 400-word chill pill (email)
By the Amerasia Consulting Group,
Boutique MBA Admissions Consulting
MBA Admissions Consultant | http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com

3. Today the MBA-journalism website Poets & Quants published
an article (http://poetsandquants.com/2012/07/02/hbs-third-
essay-really-an-email/) that was more or less a summary of a
recent blog post
(http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/blog.html/) from Dee
Leopold, the managing director of admissions and financial aid
at HBS.
In it, she tries to better articulate HBS' much-discussed new
"post-interview" assignment. In a series of emphatic points,
she takes great pains to tell applicants the following:
1) Relax
2) This is meant to emulate the Real World (capitalizing these
words was not our idea, by the way)
3) Admissions consultants are NOT ALLOWED
MBA Admissions Consultant | http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com

4. First, relax. Ha! These are people applying to
Harvard Business School. Surely Dee has
encountered this type once or twice before. Does
she really think saying "don't stress" is going to
allow HBS applicants not to stress?
These candidates ask 25 of their friends, relatives,
and co-workers to review their essays. They have
their application data (much of which is purely for
reporting purposes) proofread time and again. They
want to get involved in their own letters of
recommendation so that they are *perfect.*
MBA Admissions Consultant | http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com

5. These are not the kind of people who are just going
to relax and rip off a quick email after the interview is
over. There's no higher stakes game in admissions
than applying to a school like HBS, so anything
included in that process is going to be treated as
such - high stakes.
That means tension, pressure, and anxiety. No
matter what the school says.
MBA Admissions Consultant | http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com

6. Second, this whole Real World notion. Do people
send emails after interviews in the Real World.
Yes, of course. In fact, most candidates should
already be doing that. But since when is the
application process' primary function to mirror the
Real World?
If that was the case, candidates would have specific
qualities and traits they would be told were required
of "the position" (an HBS student), they would be pre-
screened purely on resume, and then brought in for
multiple, escalating interviews until they "get the
gig."
MBA Admissions Consultant | http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com

7. Of course, it doesn't work that way. And it can't!
Now, if we're misunderstanding the meaning of this
whole Real World analogy, and it's supposed to
suggest, "Look, you are going to have to send emails
in the Real World, so we're going to measure your
ability to do so," well, then that is kind of hilarious.
Even so, there's a precedent for this in things like the
resume (half the reason schools want to see a
resume is to see that you can successful put one
together, so they can put one in their Resume Book
that fall) or an assignment like Booth's famous
PowerPoint essay.
MBA Admissions Consultant | http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com

8. It seems a little paternalistic to tell an "elite" MBA
applicant, "hey, we want to make sure you can write
an email or put together a PowerPoint presentation,"
but more power to the schools if they want to do that.
News flash though: people are going to want to get
those things perfect.
You don't just toss together a PowerPoint
presentation for Booth, nor will people want to just
toss an email together for HBS. Going back to Point
1, this would ask applicants to completely throw out
all emotion, instinct, tradition, and history inherent in
this process in order to just let it rip. Not going to
happen.
MBA Admissions Consultant | http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com

9. Third, this somewhat obnoxious in its attempt to
block admissions consultants.
There's a part of the piece - not in Dee's words but in
the author's - that suggests consultants are having
their clients "hold back" material from the essays so
they can write about in the post-interview
assignment.
Hold back? There's a mere two questions, totaling
800 words. The applicants are already "holding
back" just about their entire life stories!
MBA Admissions Consultant | http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com

10. HBS is not asking "Why an MBA?" (the lone question,
to our mind, that has always separated the very
responsible nature of the MBA process from the Wild
West of law school applications - cut to about a
million unhappy lawyers and out of work law school
grads going, "oh yeah, I guess I wasn't ever asked
why a JD...").
HBS is not asking "Why HBS?" (even though HBS
has long wrung its hands over applicants applying to
Harvard for "the wrong reasons").
MBA Admissions Consultant | http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com

11. It's not asking about the applicants upbringing.
Values. Passions. Vision. It's asking almost
nothing! You don't have to do a lot of holding back to
still have plenty you can talk about (in the interview)
or write about (after).
Which brings us to the ongoing discussion of how to
handle this whole thing.
A smart consultant would advise a client to of course
have some powder already jammed into that gun.
MBA Admissions Consultant | http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com

12. Who would hop on a plane and fly to Boson with zero
notion of what they want to say to this most powerful
of schools?
You'd have to be borderline insane to just flow with
the action.
We'll say it right here: yes, we have advised our
clients to do some brainstorming on the front end
and to even get some thoughts down on the page. It
only makes sense.
MBA Admissions Consultant | http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com

13. When you have the pressure of this process,
combined with the logistics of travel, combined with
the desire to get your voice through to the school in
question ... why wouldn't you think about this stuff
months in advance?
Of course you would - the stakes are too high to just
bury your head in the sand. And what's funny is that
we are the consulting firm that Dee would probably
most agree with philosophically.
We challenge our clients to be completely authentic,
to search within, to avoid cliche.
MBA Admissions Consultant | http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com

14. We stay completely hands-off on letters of
recommendation, valuing authenticity over
perfection.
We say "don't worry so much about this" about a
thousand times to our clients. And even we can't
pretend that applicants won't stress about this, or
want to work on it, or at least *think* about it. It's
almost negligence if we tell them "just deal with it in
the 24 hours after it happens."
But hey, they can make oodles of grammar mistakes!
So I guess we're all off the hook.
MBA Admissions Consultant | http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com

15. The truth of the matter though is that now this
diatribe is out there (and so is ours, too, we guess).
So will we continue the measured approach
described in the previous paragraph? Probably not.
What the messy and ill-conceived "post-interview
assignment" has become is a vetting instrument
designed to measure how "coached" an applicant
looks in 400 words.
The messier and crappier the email that follows the
interview, apparently the better it will be. Because at
least no one will have thought about it, looked it at, or
- heaven forbid - edited it.
MBA Admissions Consultant | http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com

16. We're going to have no choice but to tell our clients:
sorry, we're out on this one.
Any involvement from us now hurts their chances to
succeed, because we can't risk a piece of writing
being "too good" or anything (now we're starting to
sound like an Aaron Sorkin character in "The
Newsroom.")
MBA Admissions Consultant | http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com

17. In the end, this will be much like Wharton's highly
publicized switch to behavioral interview
(accompanied by the leak of a super amateur
presentation to alumni interviewers) two years ago -
something to just shuffle through without upsetting
anyone along the way.
Kind of a shame, really.
MBA Admissions Consultant | http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com

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