HBS Essay Guide
Harvard Business School
Grade your HBS essay against the leadership-impact lens.
HBS reads 9,000 applications for ~940 seats. Every essay gets at least two readers spending 7–12 minutes per file. The unstated rubric is consistent: leadership impact, analytical aptitude, community citizenship, and habits of leadership. Our critique scores against all four.
What readers look for
The HBS reader's lens
- 01Leadership impact — did you cause something to happen?
- 02Analytical aptitude under ambiguity
- 03Engaged community citizenship (you give more than you take)
- 04A distinct voice, not a polished one
- 05Quantified outcomes, named stakeholders, real costs
See example prompts
Browse this season's HBS essays
Click any prompt to start grading with it pre-filled.
What more would you like us to know?
Common pitfalls
What gets HBS essays rejected
- ✗ Describing what you worked on instead of what you caused
- ✗ Reading like an annotated CV
- ✗ Closing on ambition that lands as ego
How our critique works
Three steps for HBS
01
Paste your HBS draft and the prompt.
02
We grade against the HBS-specific rubric, not generic essay rules.
03
You get an overall score, paragraph-level flags, and the three fixes that move your score the most.
FAQ
HBS essay questions
Also applying to
Other programs HBS applicants target
Related reading
Deeper guides
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