The Application is Finished

Well, the appliction is finished. It was whisked off to its electronic resting place courtesy of the folks at AY to await the review of the Admissions Board or some such organization of professional perusers of HBS applications.

And what, if any, are my feelings upon the resolution of such a feat as this? First, that even if not accepted I feel such a relief at having finished the appliction that it is something of a reward in and of itself. Second, I would like to know the statistics regarding how many people begin the application process only to never finish.

To my partial regret I did not astudiously track how long the application took to complete in part or full. I was told by one associate, now graduated from HBS, that he spent approximately 100 hours on his essays. Even combining the time I took writing the essays and the additional time my wife spent editing them I should not think we spent more than 50 hours, but if we did indeed spend 50 hours neither should I be very surprised. I would estimate that something in the neighborhood of 10-15 hours was spent on the remainder of the application.

And now I have nothing to do but wait. As I understand it the next step is for me to either be informed that I will be interviewed as part of the application process, or I will be informed that I have not been accepted. I do not know how quickly the interviews begin to happen, but I suppose they might happen at any time between now and January 11th when applicants will be informed of their status. However, I have heard that in some cases at the deadline the applicant is merely informed that they will be interviewed and they are not told whether or not they have been accepted. I hope I shan’t be part of that group.

And what are my thoughts regarding my prospects now that I have finished the process? They waiver between complete confidence and the dread of failure. On the one hand I feel that my experiences are unique, that I am superior in every way to any other possible candidate, and that the quality of my application is well above par. On the other hand I sometimes feel that every other candidate has probably accomplished 10 times as much as I have, is six years younger, and has personal connections to those on the admissions board or has a rich uncle who has bought them all off. The logical part of my head suspects that reality is somewhere in between.

In case I haven’t mentioned it before, I should say that the most helpful information I received regarding my application came from the website HowToGetIntoHBS.com. Yes, the website doesn’t look like much, and the author’s work could do with some editing, but I would say the $97 package was well worth it.