HBS Curriculum
The 1st year (RC year) encompasses a required curriculum with the purpose of building a solid foundation of general management concepts across key business disciplines. First-year courses include Finance, Financial Accounting and Control, Leadership and Organizational Behavior, Marketing, Technology and Operations Management, Business, Government and the International Economy, Strategy, The Entrepreneurial Manager, Finance II, and Leadership and Corporate Accountability.
The aim of Harvard's curriculum is to provide a manager’s perspective and to build pattern recognition and intuition across some ~250 cases in the RC year of common business issues and concepts. HBS also does a great job of inter-linking course concepts and cases across different classes. After the first year, every student, no matter the background, comes away with a respectable grip on how the “business world” ticks.
Further info can be found here: www.hbs.edu/mba/academics/required.html. The 2nd year (EC year) or “elective curriculum” is wide open - students can choose from a vast selection of courses taught by renowned professors. Typical strategies are to load up on courses that cater to where your interests or weaknesses lie.
Here is a comprehensive list of 2nd-year courses: www.hbs.edu/mba/academics/coursecatalog/.
It is also notable that students can choose among a variety of independent research opportunities (discussed below) or cross-register with other graduate schools at Harvard. I took advantage of this and took a class on the US charter school movement at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
The Case Method
Harvard Business School uniquely employs the case method. The case method is rigorous. First you read a 12-18 page case that details a company, a business context, and a key decision a protagonist must make. Then, you spend time preparing your opinion of the case - what the protagonist should do and why - based on the facts and quantitative information provided. Subsequent to hours of preparation, you must argue your case in front of 90 other highly intelligent businessmen. After doing this 2-3 times every day for two years, you learn to think critically on your feet and to express yourself eloquently under pressure - indispensable skills for the real world.
HBS's Grading System
Grading is straight-forward at HBS. Students receive a term score of I - IV. This score is frequently determined by a combination of performance on your final (50%) and class participation and attendance throughout the semester (50%). Some classes deviate from this formula by adding papers or other projects that may take a 10-20% chunk of your final grade.
One common complaint is that grading can be highly subjective at HBS. Your final is a written 4-4.5 hour case and, like any essay, its quality is subject to interpretation by your professor. In terms of participation, the quality and quantity of your responses determine this portion of the grade. While quantity is an objective measure, quality is again subjective. You learn that both great content and a bit of “gravitas” earn the best participation grades, for better or for worse.
Fortunately, a hyper-competitive atmosphere is almost non-existent at HBS. While the occasional “shark” comment occurs, the importance of grades is severely diminished by the fact that they are completely private to you. Grades are not even disclosed to potential employers without your permission. Thus, only the folks that are gunning for Baker’s Scholar (top 5% of the class) truly worry about grades on a day-to-day basis. I found that this enforces a pleasant collaborative and supportive learning experience.
Classroom Experience
The HBS classroom experience is truly differentiated by the quality of its professors and speakers, its use of technology in the classroom, and its 4-step learning cycle.
It has to be said that the quality of the professors and the guest speakers are second to none. While some of the most famous business professors in the world (e.g., Michael Porter, Clay Christiansen, Bill Sahlman) teach at HBS, the majority of professors are truly great, particularly in the 2nd year when they tend to be more experienced. It is an art to master the case method as a professor. The role is more like the conductor of an orchestra than a traditional lecturer.
Most professors spend perhaps 3-7x longer preparing to teach any given case than students spend preparing for it. In addition to the top-quality of the professors, the guests are equally inspiring. I’d estimate that throughout your HBS experience, a top leader in nearly every major global company steps foot on campus to interact with students in one form or another - often, these interactions take place in the classroom.
The use of technology is also commendable. If a case protagonist only has time to attend one class, cameras and movie screens drop-down with precision to allow the speaker to engage with students from all classrooms, not just the one in which she is physically present. Alternatively, the same method is employed for speakers who can’t actually set foot on campus. They are simply piped in through a seamless webinar forum. Finally, HBS leverages videos, slides, live Excel modeling, and a clever tech-enabled voting system that allows professors to quickly gauge the distribution of class opinion on any given topic being discussed.
Lastly, it is worth discussing the standard four-step cycle that you will follow to prepare and discuss cases:
- Step 1: Read the case. The first step is typically to read and analyze the case on your own. This could include basic note-taking or an in-depth financial analysis to drive decision-making. Cases generally fall within the range of 3-40 pages, but the average case is 12-18 pages long. Your objective is to develop assumptions, conduct a brief analysis, and make a decision about what the protagonist should do at the end of the case.
- Step 2: Discuss the case with your learning team. Your learning team is a group of six individuals across sections to whom you are assigned to discuss the cases on a daily basis. Your team decides its own schedule and routines, but it is typical to meet at 7:30 every morning to discuss the cases and engage in some initial debate to deepen everyone’s understanding of the cases before an actual class.
- Step 3: Go to class. After reading the case on your own and integrating some ideas from your learning team, you head to class. Whether you’re “cold-called” to get the ball rolling by presenting your thoughts about the case, or you participate later by adding on to the course of discussion with a point you debated with a learning team member, you will be actively engaged for 80 minutes, further developing your understanding of the nuances of the case’s business principles.
- Step 4: Solidify lessons learned in your mind. While this step admittedly does not occur nearly as often as it should, the ideal way to finalize the learning process for each case is to jot down your key lessons from each class and review them at the end of the day or week to solidify the important points in your mind.
Research At HBS
As a 2nd-year HBS student, you have ample research opportunities at your fingertips. HBS is a veritable powerhouse as a research institution (indeed, it’s a major criterion that factors in to a professor getting tenure), and you can get involved with ongoing research, if you so desire. It is more common, however, to replace one of your 2nd-year classes with a research project of your own design. You can choose to do this as a group-based “Field Study” or as an Individual Student Research (ISR) project.
In addition to doing research as a class requirement, there are a plethora of opportunities to get involved with local businesses or to partner with students from other MBA programs to work on business ideas.
To provide a few illustrative examples, I conducted a semester’s worth of research on the characteristics of operating systems that enable effective teaching at both the classroom and district level. I did this in collaboration with Professor Allen Grossman, the former CEO of Outward Bound who teaches the Leading and Governing High Performing Nonprofits class. He and I leveraged his own network and that of the Harvard Graduate School of Education to talk to all types of school and district leaders, professors and PhD students, and education consultants to inform the research.
A Learning Team member of mine conducted a group field study on “conducting difficult conversations.” The work included practicing difficult managerial discussions (e.g., firing an employee) in role play scenarios, and reflecting on the discussion to better prepare for the real situation.
Another friend completed an ISR with a battery energy company that led to a full-time position in the start-up. As you can see, the world is your oyster!
HBS Courses: A Summary View
Phew! That was a lot of information thrown at you. Let’s briefly summarize some of the most important pros and cons we covered with regard to the courses and the classroom experience at HBS:
The Good
General Management and Leadership Curriculum: After completing >500 cases over two years, you develop a business intuition for leadership issues that span across many industries and functions. You recognize patterns, learn to think critically, and develop solutions rapidly. Also, through the 4-step learning process, you leverage the collective expertise of your Learning Team, your section, and your professors to arrive at these insights.
Learning to Communicate: In communicating at least once in nearly every class 13-15 times per week, you develop an influential communication style and an ability to express yourself eloquently under pressure.
World-renowned Faculty and Guests: HBS boasts the best and the brightest. And you have them all at your disposal for classes, research, career advice, or just plain entertainment.
Cross-registration: Whether you’re into taking Portuguese at the College as a Peruvian friend of mine did or public speaking at the Kennedy School, all the resources of the entire University are at your fingertips.
The Section Experience: The section can be very supportive academically. Having trouble with finance? With resident experts in practically every area of business, just ask for a one-on-one session with a sectionmate who’s fresh off doing deals on Wall Street.
The Learning Team: Your Learning Team is another invaluable resource academically, and many Learning Teams turn into a tight group of friends. Meeting and working with your learning team also helps develop your listening and collaboration skill set.
Use of Technology: Wi-fi internet, video plug-ins to other classes and across the world, live Excel modeling sessions, real-time voting technology, and Bloomberg terminals right around the corner in Baker Library - you can’t beat HBS’s tech offerings.
Experiential Learning Opportunities: Business is a profession, and no matter how great the classroom experience, the majority of learning takes place outside the classroom. That’s why HBS is leading the way with Immersion Experience Program opportunities, required global experience, and various consulting and venture philanthropy activities available to students.
Joint Degree Opportunities: HBS has five joint degree programs that balance expertise with effective management skills. This also means a wider diversity of students in your classrooms. I loved having MDs, JDs, MPPs and more to weigh in with expertise in class discussions.
Further info at www.hbs.edu/mba/academics/jointdegree/.
The Bad and the Ugly
General vs. Technical: Nearly all courses are designed from the general management perspective (the CEO, the SVP, the Regional Director, etc.). While certain technical subjects are absolutely addressed in 2nd-year courses, the reality is that if you’re a real propeller head with a voracious appetite for statistics and upper-level finance, your appetite may not be fully satisfied at HBS.The Case Method’s Dark Side: Let’s face it. The case method is inefficient and repetitive. Some students are comfortable with a more theoretical, less practical understanding of some subjects. Others prefer a more solitary learning experience.
Pressure and Stress: Every year, a subset of students experiences HBS as an extremely stressful place - too many activities to juggle outside of class, too much pressure to speak in class, too much time needed to get an internship, etc. While HBS has a variety of resources to help students cope with these stressors, it is important to recognize that students can find the environment a difficult one.
Lack of Flexibility: From a class perspective, the first year is completely planned out for you. While this is great for those who value laying a solid general management base, it is not desirable for those seeking to specialize throughout their MBA experience.
