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美国顶尖商学院的申请是美国留学中最难的一个申请类型，如果精通了商学院的录取，其他专业研究生以及本科申请自然不在话下。此处转载华尔街日报对哈佛商学院录取和奖学金负责人的采访，希望给大家以启迪。

  

Only 12% of applicants made it into Harvard Business School last year. It's Dee Leopold's job to separate the wheat from the chaff.

（哈佛商学院负责录取与奖学金的执行董事Dee Leopold女士）

Ms. Leopold, managing director of M.B.A. admissions and financial aid at HBS, joined the admissions office after graduating in 1980 and took over its top spot in 2006. Though she doesn't look at every one of the 9,000-plus submitted applications, Ms. Leopold personally reads applications for the 1,800 candidates invited to interview. About half of those are accepted.

Harvard is accepting more engineers than in the past, as well as students with international experience.

Ms. Leopold spoke with The Wall Street Journal about how Harvard makes admissions decisions and what really stands out in a B-school application.

Edited excerpts:

WSJ: How long do you spend on each application?

Ms. Leopold: Ten minutes minimum, and if you aggregate all the times I go back, probably 30 minutes or so. I sweep over, look at everything, and then go back.

Everybody goes in different piles—things that I need to spend more time on, things that I trust my quick judgment on. I kind of go into hibernation after interviews. By the end of that period, I need a chiropractor.

 

WSJ: Candidates share who they are through their essays. How important are they from your perspective?

Ms. Leopold: I think people overestimate the role the essays play in the application. They're very, very helpful for the candidate, and they're a really good platform for starting a discussion in an interview, but we don't admit people because of an essay.

I don't need to have too much of a dramatic arc. There are some essays where I start reading and all of a sudden I feel like I'm in the middle of a very well-written novel. It can get overdone and overcrafted.

Sometimes the challenge in the essays is to be honest and to be clear. It may be helpful for someone to say, "I have no idea what you're talking about." De-jargonizing is helpful.

 

【图表说明：哈佛商学院2009-2013年级的申请人数从7000多人增加到了9000多人，录取人数维持在1000人左右。毕业之后三个月之内找到工作的比例在90%以上；2011年毕业生的中位数收入为12万美元，其中09、10年因金融危机薪酬跌入低谷，2011年已经超过金融危机前的峰值。可见哈佛商学院继续领先优势（博主注）】

 

WSJ: Do you ever have waves of certain kinds of answers?

Ms. Leopold: For a while, people were getting advice that when we asked for three accomplishments you had to give one professional, one personal and one community service. I don't know where that came from. They got to be a little formulaic.

 

WSJ: From whom do you like to see recommendations?

Ms. Leopold: We have a question that says, "Please describe the most important piece of constructive feedback you have given the applicant." If a person can answer that, they know the candidate well enough. We don't run around giving constructive criticism to virtual strangers.

The best recommendations have a lot of verbs. They say, "She did this," versus adjectives that simply describe you.

 

WSJ: Do you ever question your admission decisions?

Ms. Leopold: Sure. This process isn't perfect. We're like very experienced country doctors who see a lot of patients.

We're screening out undesirable qualities that would be toxic in our community. We like to think that our arrogance detectors are pretty good. We're looking for confidence, with humility.

I was interviewing at the Harvard Club in New York and the person I was supposed to interview was engaged in conversation with a mother and a daughter. They were adorable, but they wouldn't let him go. He knew he had 30 minutes, I'm standing there, and he had such grace and composure to treat these people well. That's a beautiful thing to watch.

 

WSJ: What do you want to see when somebody reapplies?

Ms. Leopold: You have to strike a balance between submitting the exact same application that didn't work the first time versus changing everything so it looks like you've had some out-of-body experience and you're a totally different person. Lots of times successful re-applicants use the same basics, but they simply reflect on it with another year of maturity or judgment.

 

WSJ: People pore over the class profile for insight into whether they'll fit. Are you seeing any trends in terms of who's applying, or who's attending?

Ms. Leopold: That class profile's really a result, versus the plan. We don't have a template.

I do see more people coming from entrepreneurial backgrounds, and we have more engineers. We've always had a really healthy mix of citizenship, although it is getting more difficult to classify a person by their passport.

I'd love to find a way to tell that narrative. We're going to try something a little different this year, asking [admitted students] to answer some questions: How many have been involved in a start-up? How many have worked abroad? That might not show up in their most recent work experience, which is the way we have captured a class before.

 

【摘译如下】： 

去年哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)的申请者中，最后只有12%成功入学。迪•利奥波德(Dee Leopold)便是那个负责去粗存精挑选千里马的人。

 

迪•利奥波德是哈佛商学院负责招生及助学金事务的执行董事。她于1980年大学毕业后加入招生办公室，并在2006年成为负责人。尽管她并不会把提交上来的9,000多份申请材料全部过目，但她会阅读受邀参加面试的1,800名候选人的资料，这其中约有一半人会被录取。

 

相比过去，哈佛大学录取了更多工程师和有国际经验的学生。

 

利奥波德在接受《华尔街日报》的采访时介绍了哈佛是如何筛选申请人，以及什么样的特质会让一名商学院申请者脱颍而出。

 

下面是编辑后的采访内容节选：

《华尔街日报》：你在每一份申请上花多长时间？

利奥波德：最少10分钟，如果算上每次回头阅读材料的时间，大概是30分钟左右。我会先把所有材料浏览一遍，然后再回头阅读。

所有人的材料被分成数堆──有些是需要我花时间仔细看的，有些则是我能迅速作出判断的。每次面试期结束后，我都有点像进入冬眠状态。那段时间结束时，我都需要一名按摩师来帮助放松及恢复。

 

《华尔街日报》：候选人通过个人文书告诉你他们是什么样的人。在你看来，这些文书有多重要？

利奥波德：有时，写文书的挑战就在于诚实和清楚。如果有人对你说“我完全不知道你在说些什么”，也许你就得好好考虑对其加以修改了。不要把它写得晦涩难懂。

 

《华尔街日报》：你们有没有收到过许多相似的特定类型的答案？

利奥波德：有一阵子候选人得到建议说，当我们要求他们说出自己的三个成就时，他们必须说一个职业上的、一个有关个人的和一个社区服务方面的。我不知道他们从哪里得到的这种建议，他们必须少点公式化的东西

 

 

《华尔街日报》：你希望看到什么人写的推荐信？

利奥波德：我们有这样一个问题，“请描述你曾给予申请人的最重要的一条建设性意见。”如果一个人可以回答这个问题，那么他肯定非常了解这名申请人。我们是不会费神去给一个完全陌生的人提建设性的批评意见的。

而且，好的推荐信中会有许多动词。他们会说，她做了这件事，而不是罗列一堆描述她的形容词。

 

《华尔街日报》：你曾怀疑过自己做出的招生决定吗？

利奥波德：当然，这个过程并不完美。我们就像看过很多病人的乡村医生，经验丰富。

Bloomberg News去年哈佛商学院的申请者中，最后只有12%成功入学。我们将那些具有会对这个团体有害的不良品质的人筛选出来。可以说我们非常善于甄别一个人是否傲慢。我们寻找的是自信且谦虚的人。

有一次，我在纽约哈佛俱乐部(Harvard Club)面试一个人，那个人正忙着和一对母女交谈。那对母女非常可爱，但是她们不肯让他走。他知道自己只有30分钟，而我就站在旁边。但他依然友好、沉着地礼待她们。看到他这样做我很高兴。

 

《华尔街日报》：如果有人重新申请，什么是你希望看到的？

利奥波德：你既不能提交和上次失败时一模一样的申请材料，也不能将其全盘改变以使自己看起来经历了什么事情后变成了一个完全不同的人。你必须在这两者间找到平衡。很多时候，那些成功的再次申请者使用的基本材料和上次没什么两样，但是会用一年后更成熟的心态和判断力对材料进行仔细思考和反省。

 

《华尔街日报》：申请者会仔细研读班级简介来判断自己是否合适这个班级。关于那些申请人或是入学者，你们发现了什么新趋势吗？

利奥波德：相对于计划而言，班级简介真的只是一个结果。我们没有统一的模板。

我看到了更多拥有企业家背景的入学者，我们也招了更多工程师。我们学校学生的国籍比例一直很合理，尽管现在越来越难通过一个人的护照来判定他是哪国人。

今年我们将尝试一些稍微不同的东西，询问被录取的学生，了解他们有多少曾自己创业，有多少曾在海外工作等。这些信息有可能不会显示在最近的工作经历中，而近期工作经历以前一直是我们给学生分班时的重点考虑因素