HBS’s Dee Leopold updated her admissions blog the other day. While she offered a few new tidbits, stating that HBS would be dealing with its waitlist with some urgency and that news about loans to internationals would be forthcoming, the real news, from our perspective, was her statement that class visits would not be open prior to next year’s first round deadline and that interested students should visit now. (She also reminded readers that visiting HBS will not have any impact on your application.)
In our most recent Long-Term Planning seminar at Manhattan GMAT, we too emphasized that visiting schools now is a great idea for a variety of reasons:
- First and foremost, as Ms. Leopold confirmed, you just may not have a chance next year. More importantly, as the first round deadlines roll around, you may want to concentrate on creating your best application and not on planning a hurried trip to five campuses across the country/around the world.
- There is no time like the present to identify what you like and what you don’t like within your target school’s program; you don’t want to rush school selection decisions in the fall.
- Some schools do appreciate the visits and will factor them into their decision making process; the profundity of your interest can be expressed in the symbolism of visiting one year in advance.
In short, we agree with Dee. If you are interested, visit now…
