MBA Road Trip: Harvard Business School
From Day One at Harvard Business School, students step into the shoes of so-called protagonists -- business leaders grappling with complex issues such as expanding operations into a new foreign market or addressing social media strategy -- and work toward solutions together.
During class discussions -- participation often counts for half the grade -- professors are "more of a facilitator than they are an instructor," says first-year student Ben Zatlin, 27, who worked in engineering and manufacturing roles at Abbott Laboratories before coming to Harvard.
This case method of instruction has been the cornerstone of the MBA program here for some 90 years, and all told, students work through more than 500 case studies. The highly credentialed faculty includes innovation expert Clayton Christensen and world-renowned strategy pioneer Michael Porter, as well as former executives of companies like General Motors, Amgen and Fidelity.
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In 2011, in an effort to inject more experiential learning into what is a standardized first-year program, the school added a yearlong hands-on component, Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development, to the curriculum. While tradition is a vital part of Harvard's DNA, "we can be simultaneously classic and contemporary," says Dean Nitin Nohria.
After some background prep and a course focused on sharpening interpersonal skills, students might spend 10 days in January in India, Brazil or another emerging market developing a car-sharing service for workers, say, or creating a mobile app for a company. Then they work in small teams to develop a microbusiness that their peers can "invest" in through a simulated stock market.
With more than 1,850 MBA students, Harvard has the highest full-time enrollment of any business school in the country. To foster community, an entering class is broken into sections of about 90 students who take classes as a group and share in many social activities.
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More than two-thirds of students live in Harvard-affiliated housing or on the HBS campus in Boston, set on 40 acres just south of the Charles River and about half a mile from the university's Cambridge hub, where they can take classes and pursue joint degrees.
That "makes it a lot easier to continue conversations," says second-year student Jennifer Rybak, 27, previously a consultant in New York. Underground tunnels connect many of the buildings -- a real plus in winter -- and each of the five coveted residence halls features single rooms, most with private bathrooms, and dry cleaning and laundry facilities.
While the close proximity to each other can be an asset, HBS can at times feel "almost like a 24-hour experience," says second-year student Daniel Lennox-Choate, 29, who arrived after serving in the U.S. Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a competitive culture, students say, but mostly in a good way.
"You constantly feel humbled" by the achievements of classmates, says second-year student Nabil Mohamed, 27, who has an engineering degree and formerly worked at Vodafone in Cairo. But "it lifts you upwards."
The school has taken some heat for not being welcoming enough to women, who make up some 41 percent of MBA candidates and 23 percent of the faculty. The administration is intent on adding more female professors and case studies featuring women protagonists.
"This is a long march," says Nohria, "and we are committed to that journey."
More From the Top MBA Programs Road Trip:
-- Stanford University Graduate School of Business
-- Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania
This story is excerpted from the U.S. News "Best Graduate Schools 2016" guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.
