Rejection Time At Harvard Business School

“Trying to keep from bawling my eyes out at work today.”

A death in the family? A surprise breakup? Denied a job promotion over a less-qualified person?

Nope. The despairing writer was an MBA applicant to Harvard Business School who found out yesterday that he didn’t make the school’s first cut.

He had plenty of company. By some estimates, Harvard rejected a couple of thousand round one applicants. And in the 24/7 glare of today’s social media, many rushed to online forums to broadcast their results on the same day that Fortune named Harvard’s MBA program best in the U.S.

The news released by Harvard-whether an invite to an admissions interview, an outright rejection or being placed on a waitlist–came as candidates went to their application status page at noon EST on Oct. 6. A surprising number of veterans, with exceptional GMAT scores, reported being dinged. Some sample reports:

760 gmat veteran – dinged. on to the next one.

770 pilot dinged as well. Can’t win them all

Rejected also. 330 GRE vet. 3.65 @ Ivy

Top 20 University Army Vet 3.78 gpa 337 GRE dinged smh

760 service academy grad, dinged as well

770 GMAT, Magna at Ivy league and dinged.

Dinged too. Maybe I should be more sad (?), yet strangely I am not. I know I gave my everything for the app/essays. But ok time to move on! Stats: 770, 4yoe, consulting + tech s&o, 3.8 gpa from top engineering school

740 GMAT, 3.7 GPA from a T5 University, First-Gen/Low Income Background, Tech S&O dinged

LAST YEAR HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL REJECTED NEARLY 7,500 MBA APPLICANTS

Of course, all highly selective MBA programs routinely turn away exceptional candidates. At Harvard, where the acceptance rate last year was just 9.5%, nearly 7,500 applicants out of 8,264 were rejected. Many admission experts estimate that typically 80% of a school’s applicant pool is fully qualified to get into an MBA program and do well. So that leaves the vast majority wondering why they were dinged.

As we have in the past, we’ve asked Sandy Kreisberg, founder of HBSGuru.com, a leading MBA admissions consultant and an astute reader of all HBS tea leaves, to take a look at the profiles of “released” applicants and explain why they didn’t make the cut.

To a rejected Indian male with a 730 GMAT—Harvard Business School’s class median score—and stints at both Teach for India and an educational startup, Sandy was himself surprised the candidate didn’t even get an invite to an interview. “At some point HBS admits for Indian guys with 730 (and even higher) GMATs become a lottery—something real tiny about your essay or recommendations could have flipped them. Put yourself in their shoes. The admit rate for Indian males is probably in single digits.”

Ultimately, it may have been his degree from the University of Delhi instead of a more elite, highly selective undergraduate institution such as the Indian Institute of Technology. “”Non IIT/NIT kids may have harder time, and working for companies with thin records of sending kids to HBS could have been enough to sink you in an impossible cohort—that plus any boo-boos in essays or recommendations,” Sandy concludes.

If you would like Sandy to explain your HBS ding, just post your profile, your GPA, GMAT, company information, and any other facts you think made your application different in the comment section of Poets&Quants’ website. The more detail you provide, including what you wrote in your essay to HBS, the easier it will be for Sandy to determine why HBS turned you down.

To give you an idea of how this plays out, here is his round one ding report from a previous version: Rejected By Harvard Business School: Here’s Why

‘MADE 10+ DRAFTS…DING, DING DING!’

Not everyone, of course, has bad news to report yesterday.

“Got an interview. 730 GMAT, 3.4 from a random state uni. Marine Infantry Officer.”

“I had very strong letters of rec,” he would later explain, “and I’ve been #1 ranked in several units I’ve been in. Otherwise typical grunt, in charge of 50-500 people. Couple deployments, one to the middle east. Several good ec’s once my schedule settled down. And I spent a lot of time on my essay.”

Another clearly exasperated candidate tried to make the best of a bad situation.

“Ding ding ding!,” the applicant wrote. “Made 10+ drafts of my essay, worked closely with extremely helpful alumni, read and reread my application- regret nothing. Got INSEAD, so that’s great consolation. But chin up, ding squad. We’re relentless and we’ll make ad comms regret not admitting us sooner.”

DON’T MISS: HOW NOT TO BLOW YOUR HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL INTERVIEW