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Revision as of 23:07, 20 November 2007

Harvard Business School
File:Harvard shield-Business.png
TypePrivate
Established1908
EndowmentUS$2.8 Billion
DeanJay O. Light
Students~1,800
LocationBoston, Massachusetts, USA
CampusUrban
Websitewww.hbs.edu

Harvard Business School, officially named the Harvard Business School: George F. Baker Foundation, and also known as HBS, is one of the graduate schools of Harvard University.

The school was founded in 1908 with an initial class of 59 students in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In the 1920s, the class size reached 500 students. In 1927, the School moved across the Charles River to its present location in Allston (part of Boston) - hence the custom of faculty and students of referring to the rest of Harvard University as "across the river." Women were first admitted to its regular two-year Master of Business Administration program with the Class of 1965. The dean of HBS is Jay O. Light, who was appointed by then University President Lawrence Summers on April 24, 2006.

The school offers a full-time MBA program, a doctoral program and many executive education programs, but does not offer an 'Executive MBA'. The School owns Harvard Business School Publishing , which publishes business books, online management tools, teaching cases and the monthly Harvard Business Review.

Organizational relationships

Harvard Business School has a number of relationships with other leading business schools. It offers its students cross-registration at the MIT Sloan School of Management, one of the few leading pairs of business schools to offer such an arrangement. HBS also has a cross-registration program with the Fletcher School at Tufts University. It also offers a number of Executive Education programs jointly with the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford Graduate School of Business. Harvard Business School has a partnership with the Asian Institute of Management in Manila, Philippines, and collaborated with the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and IESE in setting up their post-graduate programs in management. Faculty and research associates author a large portion of the case studies used at many other business schools around the world.

Rankings

Harvard is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world. It is currently ranked #4 by BusinessWeek magazine , #3 by the Financial Times, #7 by Forbes Magazine, #8 by Princeton Review , #1 by U.S. News and World Report, and #14 by the Wall Street Journal. Different publications use highly varying MBA ranking methodologies. The school does not provide assistance, other than publicly available data, to publications that rank MBA programs. The school has suffered some in the rankings due to students who project the wrong attitude to recruiters. In a survey by the Wall Street Journal, recruiters repeatedly used words like "sense of entitlement," "ego problems" and "arrogant" to describe the chief shortcoming of Harvard M.B.A. students.

MBA Program

HBS, as seen from across the Charles River. In the background is the steeple of Baker Library.

Harvard Business School offers a two-year full time MBA program, which consists of one year of mandatory courses (Required Curriculum) and one year of unrestricted course selection (Elective Curriculum). Admission to the MBA program is one of the most selective graduate programs in the world , with an admission rate of 15% for the class of 2008. The student body is highly international and diverse, coming from a variety of different backgrounds. Women comprise 35% of the class of 2008.

The Required Curriculum consists of two semesters. The first semester focuses primarily on the internal aspects of the company and includes the courses Technology and Operations Management, Marketing, Financial Reporting and Control, Leadership and Organizational Behaviour, and Finance I. The second semester focuses on the external aspects and includes the courses Business, Government, and the International Economy, Strategy, The Entrepreneurial Manager, Negotiations, Finance II, and Leadership and Corporate Accountability.

The Elective Curriculum can be chosen from more than 50 courses. The students assign each course a priority and the courses are filled through a lottery system based on student priority and class availability. Elective curriculum students can also complete a field study in lieu of a class.

Current MBA classes have a size of approximately 900 students, divided into ten sections (A-J) of 90 students. Each section takes classes together the first year, with the intention of forming deep social bonds. Graduation rates are approximately 98%. Teaching is almost exclusively (95%) done through case teaching (also referred to as the Socratic method), where the students prepare teaching cases and discuss them in class, with a professor as moderator and facilitator.

MBA students at Harvard are graded on a relative curve. The top 15-20% of the class receive "1's" (instead of A's), the middle 70-75% receive "2's", and the bottom 10% receive "3's". If a student receives more than a certain number of "3's" in the first semester of the Required Curriculum, they receive an academic warning. The student is offered help, in the form of academic counseling and tutors to improve their academic performance. The fact that most MBA students at Harvard have been at the top of their classes in undergraduate schools and high schools makes it more competitive. However, it is said that the relationships between students are not as cutthroat as rumored and that it is quite a friendly and collaborative learning environment.


Academic honors

The top academic honor at Harvard Business School is the Baker Scholar designation (High Distinction), given to the top 5% of the graduating MBA class. In a typical year a Baker Scholar will have achieved "1s" in approximately 70 - 75% of their course credits. Students receiving honors (top 20%) in both their first and second years are awarded the MBA degree with Distinction.

The student who receives the highest grades in the first year of the program is awarded the Henry Ford II scholarship and is known as the Ford Scholar. For a typical student to attain this honor, s/he must achieve the highest available grade in each of the ten MBA classes during the first year of the program. Other academic distinctions include the Thomas M. and Edna E. Wolfe Award, given to recognise scholastic excellence (generally to the student with the highest grade in the class) and the Loeb prize given for the most outstanding performance in finance.

Until 2005, Harvard Business School also awarded the Siebel Scholarship to each of the top five students in the first year of the program (see http://www.siebelscholars.com). However for reasons that were not publicised this was recently withdrawn.

Business Plan Contest

The Harvard Business School (HBS) Business Plan Contest is jointly sponsored by HBS's Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, the HBS Entrepreneurship Club and the Social Enterprise Club. The contest consists of the "traditional" for-profit track and the "social enterprise" track, for those plans with an explicitly social agenda. The winner of the traditional track contest wins the Dubilier Prize, including $10,000 in cash and $10,000 in in-kind (legal and accounting) services. The winner of the social enterprise track also receives the Peter M. Sacerdote Prize, including $10,000 in cash and $10,000 in in-kind services. Three runners-up from both tracks of the contest are also named, and each receive $5,000 in cash and $5,000 in in-kind services. In certain cases, a "specialty plan" prize may be awarded to a plan that may simply require less capital — and be targeting a smaller market, if such a plan is not already among the winners. These winners also receive $5,000 in cash and $5,000 in in-kind services. The contest is now in its 11th year and has had a number of prominent companies among its winners, including Bang Networks in 2000.

Student Life

Students can join one or more of the more than 75 clubs on campus. The clubs invite speakers to campus, organize trips, social events, and help forming bonds between students of similar interests. The Student Association is the main interface between the MBA student body and the faculty/administration. It is led by a four-person Executive Committee (2 co-presidents, CFO and COO). The decision power rests with the Senate, which is composed of one senator from each section (a total of 10), the Executive Committee, and various committees made up of section officers.

Doctoral Programs

The mission of Harvard Business School's Doctoral Programs is to develop outstanding scholars for careers in research and teaching at leading business schools and universities.

Flexibility in learning, independence in study, research with deep impact, notable faculty who are leaders in their fields, and the finest resources in academia—these qualities enable Harvard Business School to offer highly regarded doctoral programs.

To ensure a solid foundation in management, all students (without an MBA degree) are required to take at least five courses in the MBA curriculum. A deep knowledge of management practice—not only in general, but also specific to a student's area of specialization—is a critical component of business doctoral education. These courses provide a valuable source of research topics and institutional knowledge that will be important for future research and teaching success in business schools. At the same time, a broad knowledge of business ensures that students fully appreciate the interdependencies and complexity of management problems and may introduce them to the possibility of interdisciplinary research.

All students are admitted for full-time degree programs, beginning in September. Students, however, may begin the program in July, conducting research with an HBS faculty member. A minimum of two years in residence is required, and it is expected that students will complete their program in four to five years. Students typically spend two to two-and-a-half years on course work, and another two years on their dissertation.

Executive Education

In addition to Master's and Doctoral degrees, the Harvard Business School (HBS) offers non-degree executive programs which confer alumni status to graduates:

  • the Owner/President Management Program (OPM), a part-time, multi-year program for self-employed entrepreneurs;
  • the Advanced Management Program (AMP), an eight-week intensive course for senior managers; and
  • the General Management Program (GMP), which combines campus and distance learning and is intended for middle managers.

Other Executive Education programs at HBS also award certificates to attendees, but do not confer alumni status (an exception is the Program for Leadership Development, which also confers HBS alumni status if 10 extra days of HBS executive education are completed).

Campus

Hawes Hall at Harvard Business School.

The Harvard Business School campus is located in Allston, across the Charles River from the main Harvard campus in Cambridge. Many of the buildings have red-brick exteriors, as do many buildings in Harvard Yard. HBS maintains a number of facilities, including a sports center and The Class of 1959 Chapel, that are dedicated for the exclusive use of its community. A series of underground tunnels connects the basements of nearly every building on the campus, with the noticeable exception of the more recent student housing facilities that are SFP (Soldier Field Park) and OWA (One Western Avenue) buildings. Spangler Hall is widely considered HBS' main building with student lounges, meeting rooms, administrative offices and dining facilities. Most classrooms are located in Aldrich and Hawes, most of which are 100-student "amphi-theatre" rooms with approximately five rows in a half circle. This design facilitates the teaching of the case method. Baker Library was reopened in 2005 after several years of renovation. The new building features student study spaces as well as faculty offices. The fitness center is located in Shad Hall, across from Morgan Hall, which houses the majority of the faculty. Shad Hall is also the location of the Computer Lab for Experimental Research (CLER) where many business research studies are conducted. Closest to Charles River are MacArthur Hall and Baker Hall, which accommodate the Executive Education programs, and several student dormitories.

Academic Units

The school's faculty are divided into ten academic units: Accounting and Management; Business, Government and the International Economy; Entrepreneurial Management; Finance; General Management; Marketing; Negotiation, Organizations & Markets; Organizational Behavior; Strategy; and Technology and Operations Management.

Admission

To be considered for admission, a candidate must have successfully completed the following: A degree program at an accredited U.S. four-year undergraduate college/university or its equivalent; and the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) exam, The application for the MBA class entering consists of responses to the application essay questions, a resume, recommendations, academic history, GMAT scores, TOEFL or IELTS score, if applicable, and nonrefundable U.S. $235 application fee.

Notable Harvard Business School Students

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See also: List of Harvard University people

Alumni (MBA and executive programs)

See also

References

  1. Harvard Business School 2006 Annual Report
  2. BusinessWeek's "The Best U.S. B-Schools of 2006",
  3. Princeton Review 2007 Rankings,
  4. "Back on Top". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2007-07-29.

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