‘2+2’ Generates Greater Interest

Entering its second year, Harvard Business School’s 2+2 Program has seen a significant increase in student interest in advance of the July 1 application deadline, according to Managing Director of MBA Admissions Deirdre C. Leopold.

While the Business School received 630 applications for the 2+2 program last year, over 2,200 prospective applicants have attended information sessions this year, Leopold said.

“Interest on campuses has been very high,” she said. “We’ve been filling sessions. We’ve had people standing in hallways.”

Admission this year is likely to be more selective, Leopold said.

Despite the increased interest, the school does not plan to admit more than about 100 students, the number accepted last year.

The 2+2 program allows students to apply to HBS in the summer following their junior year of college. After graduating, admitted students enter the workforce for two years and then study for two years at the business school.

Leopold and a panel of admitted students—currently seniors at the College—discussed the program with Harvard College students in a packed Fong Auditorium on Tuesday.

Despite the turnout of Harvard students, Leopold emphasized that the program was seeking students from diverse backgrounds—and other universities.

“News flash: this program was not designed for Harvard College,” she said, drawing laughter from the audience.

Leopold said in an interview that the program was conceived as a way to attract students who might not otherwise think of business school as an option. Some of the benefits of 2+2—such as access to an HBS career coach—were meant to appeal to students whose colleges do not have high-caliber career services offices, she said.

In last year’s “cohort” of 2+2 admits, 22 of 106 admitted students attended Harvard College.

Leopold attributed the increase in interest to the program’s expanded marketing campaign and the fact that word is out among college students.

Several students said that they were attracted to the security that the program gives.

“You know you have an MBA spot locked in,” said Anthony A. Pino ’10. “It allows you to be a little freer in the two years after graduation.”

In trying to attract a diverse applicant pool, Leopold and her staff have visited 58 schools this year.

These have included large public universities, in addition to engineering schools, liberal arts colleges, and Ivy League universities.

The program aims to attract more students with science and engineering backgrounds by showing the relevance of a business degree to those fields, Leopold said.

The school’s message about science appealed to Mary Caroline Szpak ’11, who attended Tuesday’s information session at Harvard. Szpak, an environmental science and public policy concentrator, said she has little traditional business experience.

“It’s a good program to study science and learn to apply it when I get out,” Szpak said. “You can use your undergraduate degree in a very unconventional way.”

—Staff writer William N. White can be reached at wwhite@fas.harvard.