If you clicked “submit” last week on your Harvard Business School MBA application, congratulations! Getting all of your admissions materials together and making the best first impression can be challenging. Now, you’re likely anxiously awaiting the next step in the process: an interview invitation.
We are here to help you figure out the likely timing of Round 1 HBS interview invitations, based on our MBA LiveWire admissions tool and other historical trends.
HBS interviews are by invitation only and, while the school has yet to announce the dates they will be releasing interview invitations, historical data from MBA LiveWire tells us that they typically come in two waves around four weeks after the application deadlines. We also know from LiveWire that the first wave is usually bigger than the first. Moreover, the Managing Director of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid, Chad Losee, usually posts in the HBS Admissions Blog the third week in September to confirm the interview dates.
Here is a breakdown of HBS’s deadlines, when Losee has posted about Round 1 interviews, and when interview invitations have rolled out.
| Round 1 Deadlines | Blog Post from HBS | Interview Release Dates |
|---|---|---|
| September 6, 2017 | September 20, 2017 | Monday, October 2, & Thursday, October 5, 2017 |
| September 5, 2018 | September 18, 2018 | Monday, October 1, & Thursday, October 8, 2018 |
| September 4, 2019 | Likely Week 3 of September | Likely Monday, September 30, & Thursday, October 3, 2019 |
Candidates in 2017 and 2018 reported their interview invitations to LiveWire precisely on the days that HBS had announced. In 2015 and 2016, reports of Round 1 interview invitations also flowed into LiveWire in early October.
Taking these trends into account, we can reasonably expect that a majority of Round 1 HBS interview invitations will roll out on Monday, September 30, and the rest will follow on Thursday, October 3.
However, past patterns aside, keep in mind that anything is possible in light of the lower application volume across schools, and how that may result in increased competition among top schools to grab the very best candidates this year.
Best of luck to those awaiting news from HBS! Want to figure out when you may hear from your other target programs? You can use MBA LiveWire to sort past reported results to learn about interview invite timing. All you need to do is register (it’s free!) and click away.
