The Harvard MBA Class of 2022 may be smaller than usual, but the 732 students still pack a punch when it comes to their experience, aspirations and more. We are excited to kick off our Real Humans: MBA Students series this year with insights and advice from the new HBS candidates.
HBS received 9,304 applications in the 2019-2020 admissions season. The school usually aims for a class size of around 930, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, accepted applicants were given the option to defer admission. 732 ultimately chose to matriculate. A third of the Class of 2022 are international, and women comprise 44 percent of the group. Out of domestic students and permanent U.S. residents, 45 percent are identified as a minority. During their undergraduate years, the HBS Class of 2022 had averaged a 3.70 GPA. Twenty-six percent had majored in engineering while another 22 percent studied business/commerce. Nineteen percent pursued bachelor’s degrees in economics and 15 percent studied math/physical science. Finally, 14 percent had majored in social sciences and four percent in humanities.
Following their undergraduate careers, the new crop of HBS students accumulated an average of 4.7 years of work experience. Venture capital/private equity was the most popular pre-MBA industry, as 16 percent of the class came from that sector. Consulting was a close second at 15 percent. Thirteen percent came from the technology industry and 11 percent each had worked in financial services or manufacturing/industrial/energy. Consumer products/retail/e-commerce covers nine percent of the group’s work experience while another seven percent came from healthcare/biotech. Six percent had worked in the non-profit/government/education sectors. Five percent each came from the military or media/entertainment/travel industries.
Seventy-eight percent of the HBS Class of 2022 took the GMAT as part of the application process and their scores ranged from 620 to 790. The median total score was 730, with the median verbal raw score landing at 42 and median quantitative raw score landing at 48. The rest of the class chose to take the GRE and earned median scores of 163 in both the verbal and quant sections.
While the class profile offers an overview of the new HBS students, get to know some of them better on the following pages!
