10 Common Misconceptions about Stanford GSB and Harvard Business School
Round 1 commit dates are coming up! We’ve been talking to dual admits and wanted to give you our take on common misconceptions about life at Stanford GSB and Harvard Business School. Email us your questions at dualadmit [at] gmail and we may make them into another post!
- Business school is just vacation and parties
Business school is about priorities. Do you want to try out a startup, learn about a new industry, find a job, make new friends, or even learn something in class? It’s your choice but there’s no way to do it all. If you want to make vacation and parties a priority, you can but we both found that business school has been one of the busiest periods of our lives because there are so many opportunities that fill your time. Don’t expect a huge weekend party scene as many students are out of town for jobs, significant other, or yes, vacation.
2. GSB doesn’t do the case method
One of the biggest misconceptions we’ve heard about Stanford is: “Oh HBS is all about the case method, but Stanford GSB doesn’t do cases right?” This is certainly not the case. GSB classes are often a mix of cases, lecture, and guest speakers. The cases that we review are Stanford GSB written cases and we do use some HBS cases as well. While the case method may not be as formalized as at HBS, we certainly go through the process of the case method. Some students note that they prefer learning quantitative based topics such as accounting and finance by lecture, but others are fine with learning more advanced quantitative topics through cases. At the GSB you’re likely to find a mix of teaching styles including experiential learning and lectures by practitioners, and you will definitely go through cases as well.
3. HBS only does the case method
While the HBS academic experience is defined by the case method, some of my most memorable class experiences were more hands on. FIELD Global Immersion sent me to India to work for one of the country’s biggest cosmetics brands to design a mobile beauty concept. In Private Equity Projects, my classmates and I had the opportunity to work on projects with some of the industry’s top private equity firms with teaching and mentorship from a senior managing director at one of the world’s largest private equity firms. HBS offers 17 experiential FIELD elective courses in addition to the required FIELD Foundations and FIELD Global Immersion across technology, product management, sales, healthcare, search funds, and entrepreneurship among other offerings.
4. HBS is not touchy feely
One of Stanford’s best known classes is Interpersonal Dynamics or “Touchy Feely” where students get feedback on how their behaviors affect others in real time. As Stanford’s defining class, this often gives the impression that Stanford is the touchy feely school in contrast to the argued analysis of HBS’s case method. I found HBS to be a very touchy feely place rather than cutthroat. The section experience, where you sit with the same 94 people every day for a year, creates the familiarity that allows the vulnerability needed for people really to open up. Classes like Authentic Leadership Development, FIELD Foundations, and Power and Influence serve many of the same goals as “Touchy Feely”. A lot of student effort at HBS was put into each person’s unique personal priorities and how professional success and its necessary sacrifices might fit into that vision.
5. It’s always warm in the Bay Area
We both grew up in California (Jeffrey is a 3rd generation San Franciscan) and have both lived in Boston for 6 years. There’s no getting around it. Boston winters are cold, but people tend to be mentally prepared for that. What many aren’t prepared for is that the Stanford isn’t all shorts and flip flops (that’s Southern California). It’s chilly here during the winter months. No wonder the VC uniform includes a vest because usually you need it.
6. At Stanford, everyone wants to start a company
Just because Stanford is in the heart of Silicon Valley, it doesn’t mean that everyone wants to start a company. Yes there are many entrepreneurship resources to take advantage of, but it doesn’t mean you or your friends will want to start a company. I have friends who started a company and want to continue, friends who only had jobs in corporate who want to be first time entrepreneurs, but I also have friends who worked in startup and just want something more structured. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone and you certainly don’t have to feel pressured to start something at Stanford. Most people won’t try to start something in business school and are just trying to get a job.
7. HBS is really big and impersonal
While the class size at HBS (~950) is more than twice that of GSB (~420), HBS is far from impersonal. The section experience is one of the most personal experiences in business school which does not have a real equivalent at GSB. Your section is your family. Your section means you don’t have the put in effort to get invited to the best parties or gatherings, they just happen with a group of people you get to know really well (whether you like it or not). For significant others, that means a consistent group of faces to more easily integrate into the community. Throughout the rest of the class, people with similar interests tend to congregate anyway in clubs, extracurriculars, and similar classes in the second year so there are communities around shared interests in which you well get to know people well.
8. After HBS or GSB, you can get whatever job you want
We hate to break it to you but getting into a top business school doesn’t mean an automatic job offer to any job you want. Many more people want to be venture capitalists or go into (or back into) private equity than there are jobs out there. In the packed VC Club info session at GSB at the beginning of the year, the club’s president gave the honest truth. Statistically very few people in the room would end up with a VC internship or job. Even for traditional on campus jobs, not everyone gets that offer from McKinsey. Still, if you are really willing to hold out for that great offer, I have had a few HBS classmates keep at the recruiting game and take a job even 6 months after graduation that they are really happy with. For others, the experience of business school can make you consider whether that “perfect job” is really so perfect after all. Consider this. For almost every job you could want, someone in your class had that job before business school and no longer wants it.
9. Everyone coming in has lots of business experience
Neither of us came from formal business training and we weren’t alone. Both GSB and HBS were full of people like us from medicine, science, non-profits, military, engineering, and many other fields that made the classroom our first academic experience with business. The accountants, private equity bros, and consultants are all there for a reason but so are you. Business school is a place to learn and if you were already an expert in all of this stuff you wouldn’t need to go.
10. You will find your future spouse in business school
Prior to business school, did your parents or friends ever tell you that you’ll definitely find a girlfriend/boyfriend at business school? And that because it’s a top business school, you’ll be able to choose from a sea of smart, good looking people? Even though we met before business school, from seeing what our friends have gone through it definitely doesn’t seem as easy to find someone in business school. At both schools, there’s a pressure to not cause potential drama or conflict within a section or class because you don’t want to rock the boat. Your classmates are not only potential mates but also future business partners and there is a concern that things can certainly get complicated. That being said, the dating scene is quite active at both schools ;) We’re just not sure whether the rate of couples meeting at business school and staying together is all that high. We know a lot of single people.
Jeffrey is HBS ’16 and Carol is GSB ’18. They have been partners/SOs through both schools.
