Thanks for this objective well-thought out response.

In your opinion, what made your HBS classmates such an awesome group of people? How do you compare it to your undergrad experience (i'm guessing you went to duke based on your pic; i'm a unc fan myself).

I was talking about undergrad....there were people who prob should be considered above middle class in math phd programs that I knew....but 8 figure trust funds is obv another level.

So when I started at HBS, I was expecting a pretty large number of dbags/*******s/spoiled rich kids. The actual number was wayyyyy lower than expected. Most of the guys from banking/private equity/family money who I would have thought might have sucked were surprisingly fun, down to earth, and helpful. In general the people were all really impressive and motivated, but looking to have a good time, take a break and reflect on what they really wanted out of their careers, and help bring everyone else up. It's a very non-competitive environment, somewhat cause grades don't matter all (vs. law or med school).

I dunno, you just get people like a guy I was in class with first year who was a doctor at Mass General Hospital prior to starting business school, started a non-profit on the side to help sick kids in large cities, still worked the 7 PM - 7 AM shift at the hospital a few days a week during bschool, would lift weights 5 days a week, and was the nicest guy you could imagine. HBS/business school is a HUGE bubble where you are surrounded by the same group of people in class and socially, but it really was a surprisingly awesome group of people.

Hard to compare it to Duke. I loved Duke, and a lot of my best friends were friends from college. Business school is much more of a bubble where you all tend to have a pretty similar experience (vs. college where I had no f'in idea what the engineers were up to most of the time, and people were into wildly varied things). Both were great experiences though.

So anyway, it pisses me off to see articles like the NYTimes one that make HBS seem like it's filled with a ton of rich *******s. Some people do have a ton of money and travel/party like crazy, but those same people are doing voluntary Finance training sessions in their free time to help the non-finance people get up to speed, or just hanging out drinking beers and watching football on random monday nights with the rest of us.

Just want to say that I went to a top b-school and didn't experience this stuff much at all. Then again, I didn't go to Harvard where I would expect this stuff at a much higher degree, both at the undergrad and grad level. Students in b-school have money, most (but not all) are decent people regardless.

HBS is a hated for a number of reasons and jealousy is the occasional manifestation of this hatred. HBS symbolizes entitlement and how wealthy elitist use connections and networking to maintain their competitive edge while extracting way more from society than they contribute.

Intellectually, Harvard is beneath my old school, U of Chicago. I would take U of C students and teachers (or MIT and Cal Tech) over any Ivy League institution.

The HBS is full of wealthy entitled young adults who ultimately will make more money in their careers. However the intellectual ruling class is less concerned with money and more with intellectual curiosity and challenges that lead to world changing discoveries. While molecular geneticist work out the next cancer treating drug, the Harvard guys are scrounging around trying to figure out ways to rip people off from the discoveries of the academics.

When the HBS set is not busy figuring out ways to capitalize from other's intellect/discoveries, they engage in their favorite pastime, trying to capitalize off of the financial investment sector. In the financial sector, which is almost totally run by graduates of top MBA programs, the HBS/Ivy League set can use their networking from school to establish clients.

More importantly they can finally utilize their educations...... to figure out ways to confound the terms of agreements and investment laws/policies so they can make excessive commissions from sales. I saw a Goldman Sachs worker hi five a co worker, right after he bilked an extra one million dollar commission from a trust fund he was managing because he was able to confuse the trust fund holder with rule/law complications.

Fixed

I prefer Playahata1 as it is more generalized and it better appreciates the full spectrum of all things that I hate. I am more than HBShata1, that is too restrictive.

There were several points I made about the school symbolizing what is wrong with capitalism in the country, to which you conveniently avoided responding.

I'll respond.

You presented nothing but unfounded opinions and speculation. The only facts you presented were:

"Intellectually, Harvard is beneath my old school, U of Chicago." -- which is actually false according to any college rankings ever, and also talks about Harvard undergrad which is very different from HBS

and

" I saw a Goldman Sachs worker hi five a co worker, right after he bilked an extra one million dollar commission from a trust fund" -- which also has nothing to do with HBS

Otherwise everything you said can more or less be distilled down to "HBS grads steal money from others, they are young and entitled, they rip others off" which is just a bunch of generalizations for which you present no evidence.

Shocking update: everyone hates MBAs and think they ruin culture/companies/countries/etc

And the hate goes both up and down.

Top tier programs hate other top tier programs
2nd tier programs hate top tier programs
3rd tier programs hate 2nd tier programs
Top tier programs hate that everyone at 2nd and 3rd tier programs who think their degree is worth anything
Non-MBAs hate everyone with an MBA because they expect the MBAs think they can fix every business problem

LOL to all of this.

Are you referring to students beyond bschool (Cal-Tech doesn't even have a bschool or at least one I can think of)?

Generalizing intellectual dominance is typically pretty silly, and something most intellectuals hate doing. I would bet some of the schools you quote on average are smarter b/c all 3 are quite small. With that being said, who cares about the average. Most of those schools are also on par with most of those Ivy League with respect to academics, so I'm not sure what you are really getting at. Ivy League is just a conference with very similar standards. As an engineer from an Ivy League school, I typically thought it was tough **** when I was going through the program. I know now, it really doesn't matter that much although it's a nice thing to have on your resume.

I'm also pretty sure Harvard consists of a ton of middle class due to their amazing endowment and aid. HBS might be slightly skewed but again your generalizations are funny. I hope you don't go around preaching this kind of stuff at UC.

Personally, I would have never gotten into HBS even if I tried (**** Ugrad grades for HBS's standards) nor did I ever really want to go there (I had enough intellectual stimulation in undergrad). But I doubt many people who went there would really complain. It's a great school and a great program. Not sure why it should really be hated on. Being purely intellectual I think is overrated if you can't apply it to stuff that really matters. I fear that's what many true intellectuals grasp and I've seen it from experience to be the case on average with intellectuals, the pure lack of any or much common sense like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory.

PlayaHata1, lot of major generalizations in your post.

I agree that UChicago is tough academically and quite rigorous, especially the undergrad. And at the MBA level, Booth does offer some very challenging finance courses. But we're comparing apples to oranges here. HBS is very much a general management focused program with a required first-year core while Booth is finance heavy and offers a super flexible curriculum. Culturally and socially, there are substantive differences as well (I have friends at both schools and have visited multiple times).

Elite schools, especially HBS, will always get hated on due to a combination of deep envy (who would not want to go to HBS?), stereotypes, and misunderstanding. The % of super rich kids who got into HBS based on their family connections is rather low (maybe 10%), not representative of the broad student body of roughly 1800 students.

I've met great people and douchebags from every school imaginable, so I tend to refrain from these types of critiques. I have no shot in hell, but if I could get in, I would absolutely LOVE to attend HBS (dream of mine since I was in middle school) because it attracts some of the most interesting accomplished dynamic people from all over the world. Add to that the social scene and overall intellectual energy of Harvard University and Cambridge, and I am sure it's a truly transformational experience.

As for the financial crisis, there are plenty of culprits, including Greenspan (for lowering the teaser rate 17 times), Congress, Bill Clinton (repealing Glass-Steagall in 1999), ratings agencies, fannie/Freddie, bankers, and a host of others. Some of them were MBAs while others were not. So let's not oversimplify the endemic problems inherent in our system.

When I was at Harvard I was surrounded by middle class kids like Rupert Murdoch's boy and Quincy Jones's daughter.

This is just standard run of the mill anti-intellectualism. It's just as stupid as any other unthinking stereotype.

You really think i'm anti-intellectual? I wouldn't be posting on 2+2 if that were the case. I'm just saying I've seen many cases where intellectuals are a little weird, including myself when it comes to many simple tasks. I know that's another silly stereotype, but it's why I said on average. Obviously there are many cases and it's a silly stereotype. sorry you were offended by that comment.

this thread is bringing the silly.

Intellectuals can be eccentric, which is simply to say they might not conform to societal norms, but to say they lack common sense compared to the general population is pretty dumb imo.

Glass-Steagall, at least the artificial division of investment and commercial banking clauses, had to go.

After reading that Times article my beatnik buddies and I became radicalized beyond the breaking point and we are now planning to Occupy Harvard Business School. We feel that our rhythmic drumming and Tibetan chants will spark the empathic part of the Jungian collective unconscious and the masses will demand equitable redistribution of resources. The revolution will not be tweeted!

was going to chime in and say i thought the article was incredibly stupid.

one student took an exam hungover?

they went to sporting events and put pictures on instagram?

$1000 vacations?!?!

like these are all pretty pedestrian. i think the nyt forgets that people who get into hbs are some of the most successful people from ages 21-26 and may actually have some spare cash and a desire to have fun! and yes, all the europeans and south americans at b-schools are loaded. this is all pretty ho-hum and sensationalist imo.

I can't tell what you are trying to say. Harvard business school has no relevance when comparing Harvard to MIT and Cal Tech and Harvard holds up quite well in those comparisons.

Article is painfully bad.

I'm really supposed to feel sorry for Harvard MBAs? Really? GJGE, something tells me the people in question will get over not being able to fly to the Alps with their classmates. They may even prosper professionally despite not being included somehow!

They are all generalizations that can be supported with empirical evidence. If I weren't busy watching the ocean, listening to a killer live version of "Pick Myself Up", smoking super lemon haze, and looking over college football stats to destroy the bookies again this weekend, I would do the requisite research to better document my claims. It would take many hours, literally books can be written on the subject, so I am forced to abbreviate my thoughts and documentation. Also I am playing tennis at 9 AM so maybe some other day. While my claims are fairly open generalizations, they are based on not only years of experience in academia, but documentable evidence as well.

The reason Harvard outperforms U of C on the rankings you mention, but fail to cite, is because of reputation and the fact U of C borders a ghetto and does not represent a typical campus environment. The kids are generally anti social and extremely smart. It is not a safe place to roam the campus at night either. For undergrad it is not a very friendly or fun place unless you are committed to your work. From a purely intellectual perspective there is no comparison between U of C and Harvard undergrad.

The intense workload and lack of grade inflation at U of C make it way more intellectually rigorous than Harvard. I had a friend at Harvard who was going through the same program the same years I attended U of C, and we would laugh at the difference, openly admitting his program was way easier and grade inflation was rampant there.

Someone mentioned intellectuals not competing. This is a very unfortunate tendency among smart people. All disciplines are not created equal. The less rigorous disciplines gradually incorporate concepts and practices from math and hard sciences.

Psychology is a good example. It is a weak and easy degree to obtain. But at its highest levels, psychology merges with math, biology, and chemistry to become a meaningful, useful science. Business guys also become mathematicians and adhere to the scientific method when doing analysis at the highest levels.

Finally, the Goldman Sachs worker who bilked the extra million in commissions from the charity group's trust fund was a Harvard grad, thus the connection to HBS and yet another example of par for the course work done by HBS grads. In fact, if I had the time, a lot of what I would document would be related to HBS and the financial investment sector.

Someone is cranky.

Great stuff.

Nobody gives a ****.

Lolz.....grades are way less relevant at places like Harvard (and Chicago) because the top students are expected to do much more than sit in class and get As. This is especially true in the hard sciences and becomes more true as you progress from freshman to Phd and beyond.