The mbaMission Podcast: Harvard Business School and Stanford GSB: Key Differences in MBA Admissions, Culture, and Career Outcomes | Ep. 95

March 24, 2026

Katharine Lewis

The Ideal HBS and Stanford GSB Applicant

Jeremy Shinewald: Okay, so we’re here with my old friend Harold Simansky and certainly my old friend Katy Lewis, who has such a wealth of experience, having gone to HBS, HLS [Harvard Law School], and having been a Stanford admissions reader, has an incredible perspective on both these schools. And also, admitting 2%–3% of these classes each year herself, just having helped over the years an incredible diversity of applicants. We couldn’t be luckier to have someone who has this depth of experience on the show to talk about comparing HBS to GSB.

Harold Simansky: Let me just highlight one thing. If I’m working with someone who’s looking to apply to HBS, GSB, or both, the person that I will frequently call is Katy. And that’s the nice thing about mbaMission. The reality is that there is a huge amount of resources here, Katy maybe just being our most precious one at this point.

Jeremy Shinewald: And Katy will say, “Harold, stop sending me clients,” because she is booked up so quickly. Anyone who’s watching this can call and see if you can get some time with her, but it’s tough. So thanks for being here, Katy. Let’s talk about the highest level. Both of these schools have, I hate to say it, but huge rejection rates. Let’s talk about who gets in. Who gets into these schools?

Katy Lewis: The people who get in are not “box checkers.” And what I mean by box checkers, they’re often very high performers. They did really well in school. They get into the top investment bank or consulting firm or the top private equity firm. They have one or two outside volunteer activities. But there’s nothing that really shows their direction. They haven’t become the architect of their own career. They’re just checking the boxes, they’re doing the next thing all their friends are doing. Those people rarely get into these schools. What Harvard and Stanford are looking for are leaders, not MBA students. They’re looking for leaders in any area: private industry, public sector, nonprofit sector. And if you’re looking for leaders, basically, you’re looking for people with inner drive.

Jeremy Shinewald: What I always say to applicants when they ask me about who gets into both—I think this sort of crystallizes what you’re saying—is the applicants who get into the other M7 schools generally have made the most of their opportunities. And the ones who get into Stanford and Harvard tend to create the opportunities. And I think that’s a way of getting a little bit beyond kind of the moniker of “leader.” They often can put a flag in the ground and say, “This is mine. I created this. I wasn’t just given a project.” It doesn’t mean they had to create the next Tesla. There’s some ownership over some outcomes and the creation of those outcomes. And I think that’s layered on top of the good grades and the great GMAT score or whatever it is. There is this spirit almost not in the conventional sense of entrepreneurship but a more abstract sense of creating something on their own.

Katy Lewis: That’s what I mean by being the architect of your own career. They know where they’re going. And they’re putting the pieces together to do that, and it shows. It absolutely shows in what they do.

Jeremy Shinewald: And that doesn’t mean that they’re perfect applicants. They can still have obstacles in their path, and they can still reveal challenges. I think there’s this perception of the Stanford or Harvard applicant as being perfect.

Katy Lewis: Oh, no, not at all. Many have had very nonlinear careers, have had real setbacks, real personal hardships in their families. The kind of drive that gets you in is often forged in those experiences.

Harold Simansky: As I think about my folks who have been dual accepts, and that’s also extremely rare, into both HBS and GSB, it’s sort of interesting to think about their through line. One was an illegal immigrant, literally; came here, ended up going to a top Ivy League school, but every piece of it he did alone. He was really following a North Star. And interestingly, another one is not so dissimilar in [that he was a] political refugee, Eastern Europe, landed there, but then got himself into college, which is not an immaterial thing, and then got himself a job, and then eventually worked in private equity. Just this notion of being so self-driven, I mean really exceptional in that way. And again, it’s so far beyond scores, it’s so far beyond GPA. I will never say they’re not relevant. Clearly, everyone has to “check those boxes,” but the reality is it’s less important if you think about these personal stories.

Jeremy Shinewald: They’re just intangibles, I guess. And that’s why when people call and they’re years out, they go, “Well, what do I need to do? Give me the three things I need to do.” It doesn’t work that way. In many ways, some of the best applicants that I’ve worked with who’ve gotten into one or both of these schools have had no intention of going to business school. They’ve just been doing things incredibly well and arrived there, and they’re like, “Oh, I need this now. And I’ve got a resume, a life resume, that says I make the most of my experiences.” So all of that said, there are still applicants who come from overrepresented fields. So what do you make of the applicant from consulting, the applicant from private equity? And I want to tee you up for this, because one of the things I love the most about the way Katy works with clients is she’ll say to an applicant straight up, “You’re not ready. You need two more years. You need to do this.” So tell us about when you get an overrepresented applicant and how you evaluate them.

Standing Out as an Overrepresented Applicant

Katy Lewis: Basically, overrepresented applicants have to show the same intangible drive. They have to be doing something different within that world. For example, I have one private equity client who’s actually within her private equity firm doing one of the first new company builds, a brand new healthcare company. Basically being an entrepreneur within a healthcare company, or a consultant who created the behavioral health practice at McKinsey in New York. Those kinds of exceptional things people do, where they’ve taken a theme or an idea and pushed it and made it monetizable. Many people from overrepresented backgrounds—investment banking, private equity, consulting—come from very distinct personal backgrounds. People have very different struggles, very different accomplishments that really set them apart and can show that edge that you need for Harvard or Stanford.

Jeremy Shinewald: The examples you gave, I think they’re quite relevant, about having that thing you own in your consulting firm or your bank or whatever it might be. I remember a private equity applicant that I worked with who was San Francisco based many years ago. And she was extremely smart. She’s one of those people you meet who just oozes competence. I think she was a top-notch private equity associate. I don’t doubt that in any way, but her excellence came through her volunteer activities. She had done a remarkable project with the head of a nonprofit to effectively create a whole bunch of mechanisms that professionalized that nonprofit—budgeting and reporting and all these types of things. And she did it out of sheer interest. She had something to say, “This is mine. I did this.” And it required some really nonconventional entrepreneurship to do it, to have a passion and interest for this area, maybe for this nonprofit, and then say, “They don’t have this. I’m going to convince them they need this, and now this is mine.” So, okay, we’re talking a lot about who gets in and who doesn’t.

Harold Simansky: We really lump together Harvard and Stanford. These people are applying to Harvard and Stanford, they get into Harvard frequently or Stanford. But the reality is they’re very different schools, they attract very different people. Katy, how are the schools different? How do they attract different people?

HBS’s Exceptional Use of the Case Method

Katy Lewis: I think that the case method is a huge differentiator. It’s actually a way of training you to think. It’s not a curriculum. Most people don’t understand how the case method works. I was actually offered a teaching position at Harvard, and I would have taught one of the nine classes to the full school. And when I went through the recruiting process, this is after I’d worked for McKinsey for five years, I went through the recruiting process and talked to a lot of the professors that I’d be co-teaching with, and I learned for the first time—and I was surprised at this, having gone to Harvard Business School—that what I thought looked like an offhand teaching process, where the teacher says, “Well, what about this? And what about this?” and the class chimes in, was actually a very deliberately structured set of questions.

If I had worked at Harvard Business School, before I taught every one of the classes that was going to be taught across nine sections, I would have met with the other professors teaching it and the person who wrote the case, and we would map out what is the best sequence of questions to scaffold to the decision. And the point of the case method is the professor never tells you what the answer is. The professor elicits the evidence and responses from the class in a structured way to scaffold up to the class realizing, “Oh, that’s what I should be learning from this.” It’s based on a Japanese Socratic method. It is profoundly educational; it honestly changes how you think. When I went to business school, most business schools used the case method. They don’t now because it’s too hard. Harvard does, and you will see at Harvard Business School as a result of it, some of the best teaching you have ever seen in your life.

In contrast, Stanford, which I also like, has this blend of teaching approaches. They do the case method, they don’t do it in that structured way at all. I actually helped a professor at Berkeley Haas teach one of her international finance classes. She did not use the case method the way Harvard does. She just used it as a story, and then everybody just chatted about it. So Stanford has this variety of lecture classes, team-based classes, some case method, but they’re not the same. Stanford has some wonderful professors, many of whom I know, so they have some great professors, but the level of that rigorous teaching excellence that changes how you think is not present.

Jeremy Shinewald: I think the case method is incredible.

Katy Lewis: Darden has the case method. So you know. And they do it well.

Jeremy Shinewald: I love it. I needed that. I needed that narrative to get into it and understand, as someone who had no foundation in business. I was a speechwriter. It really helped me to contextualize things. But I will play devil’s advocate just for the sake of it, for people who are listening. The case method is a lot of work. That’s not a bad thing—you’re here to push yourself and learn something. You should invest yourself. It’s a ton of reading; it’s a ton of group work. It requires participation in class to get a grade. If you’re a shy person, you don’t like talking in public, maybe this pushes you out of your comfort zone. Maybe you just don’t like it. Maybe it’s torture for you. So playing devil’s advocate, there are going to be some people who just don’t fit with the case method. And every once in a while, someone, like in the good old days when there were more class visits, people would say to me, “Oh, I went to Harvard, and that approach didn’t jive with me,” as if there was something wrong with that person. It’s okay not to feel like either of these schools is the right school for you. They’re not so awesome that they have to fit you. Aspects of a different experience might not be right for you.

Katy Lewis: Unless there’s something wrong with you, you would love either school. But addressing that issue of the case method, frankly, that’s a reason to go to Harvard. My daughter actually chose Harvard over Stanford for that very reason.

Jeremy Shinewald: If you’re shy, I think it’s great to get out there.

Katy Lewis: One of the other things that’s important to realize is the case method creates engagement. So you’re at a school like Harvard with 40% international people, from all over the world. You are actively in the class all day long, talking to them. That’s very different from other methods where you go into a lecture class, a third of the people aren’t there, they cut the class, another group haven’t read the class, they’re looking at their Facebook notes. It’s a very different engagement experience. The other thing you have to do at Harvard, you have to go to class or you get kicked out. You cannot cut class. So if you want a school that’s very immersive, very engaged, where everybody in the school is talking about the same case that day, that’s it. It’s just a different experience.

Jeremy Shinewald: And I want to be balanced, but it’s interesting. John Byrne, friend of the podcast, wrote an article that I think really upset a lot of people—but that’s his job as a journalist—about Stanford students basically saying the school’s just gotten too easy.

Harold Simansky: Stanford has gotten too easy. I have heard that before.

Katy Lewis: I’ve heard it from my clients.

Jeremy Shinewald: They’re not learning enough. And I’m not saying that’s true. I’m just saying that’s a knock against it these days.

Harold Simansky: I had a married couple, he went to Stanford, his wife gets into HBS and Stanford, and he was the one who said, “Send her to HBS.” Here’s the argument that can be made, and I will make it. I went to MIT [Sloan], took courses over at HBS, had HBS professors in my classroom doing the case method. I don’t want to sharpen it too much here, because the case method is wonderful, but some of them come back and say, “Listen, three-factor model, big finance issues, complicated stuff. I don’t care how many smart people you put in the classroom, they ain’t getting there.”

Katy Lewis: Actually, one thing people don’t know about the case method is that for every case, there’s a note. The note is a 30- or 40-page chapter on the theory of whatever it is you’re studying. So if you want the depth, you’re getting it. It’s just, they’re not teaching to it.

Stanford GSB Strengths: Culture, AI, and Biotech 

Harold Simansky: Right. Certainly a different approach, and we don’t have to sharpen the edge too much, but let’s talk about Stanford and what it means to go to Stanford and why that might be the right choice for you.

Katy Lewis: The clients that I work with who really choose Stanford over Harvard are ones who want a new cultural experience. I’ll give you a great example. I had a PE [private equity] client who—all East Coast, prep school, college—was a really interesting person. He was working in luxury and retail. And he was working for a cosmetics makeup company, and he actually went into Saks and asked them to make him up. He really, really wanted to know what it felt like to be a woman going through that process. So he actually told me when he’d gotten into both [schools], he said, “I just really want to go to Stanford because I just don’t get this California thing. I really want to be in a place with a different culture and a sort of blue sky approach.” So I have many clients who actually choose it for that cultural experience, and vice versa.

Jeremy Shinewald: I’m going to push you on this, though. Let’s work to stereotypes. You are really interested in entrepreneurship or VC [venture capital], and you are choosing between the two. And obviously, [you have] Stanford being in Silicon Valley, having a reputation for launching many start-ups. I’m just going to push you on this to play devil’s advocate.

Katy Lewis: I’m happy to do this. Everybody knows that Stanford has the highest number of start-ups within five years of graduating. Go out 15 years, Harvard swamps it. And they swamp it with larger start-ups. Harvard sends 170 people a year from every class directly to Silicon Valley. I happen to live in Silicon Valley. The start-ups are evenly run by Harvard and Stanford graduates. Harvard graduates actually dominate Silicon Valley. In many ways, Harvard built Silicon Valley. Harvard had a research center in Silicon Valley, had the Rock Center [for Entrepreneurship] in Silicon Valley before Stanford ever hit number one as a business school. So Harvard is incredible. It’s also probably the top venture capital school. Now, given that, I do have clients this year who chose Stanford over Harvard for very specific reasons that are location specific. One wants to do a cutting edge—basically, he wants to set up an AI firm in what’s called spirit technology, which is the technology being brought to bear to help people, human flourishing. Whether it’s mental flourishing, physical flourishing, whatever. It’s supposed to be a three billion dollar industry.

Harold Simansky: That sounds very Stanford.

Katy Lewis: He lives in Silicon Valley. He is already a successful AIVC, but he wanted to step back and actually go to Stanford, study this new phenomenon, and really ramp it up. And he felt he needed to do that. So this is location specific. I have another client, a very successful doctor, psychiatrist, who is passionate about revamping how we do mental health, behavioral health, in our culture. Stanford University Medical School is top in behavioral health, better than Harvard. So he chose Stanford. So people choose Stanford for very specific reasons. The other thing, I have several clients in biotech, one who’s doing a biotech start-up with the University of Washington, others who are researching biotech start-ups. They want Stanford because the biotech start-up community is here. However, the larger biotech industry is at Harvard. Harvard is by far the bigger hub for healthcare and biotech, except for these specialties. So it really depends if you want that locational advantage, you choose one school or the other.

Jeremy Shinewald: One thing I find to be interesting is that you’ve got such depth and you know all these stats, and it’s amazing. But I feel like when I’m talking to applicants, and you’re saying your applicants choose Harvard over the GSB. I feel like those who I’ve worked with have gotten to both have almost uniformly chosen the GSB. I’m curious what both of you guys have to say about this, but I feel like the student sentiment is that Stanford carries more prestige these days. That it’s more selective, that it’s a little—and we [gestures to Harold] both live in Boston and love Boston—but that it’s a little cooler and hipper to be in the Valley.

Katy Lewis: Oh, it’s definitely hotter. Stanford is a prodigious marketing machine, Stanford University. The bulk of my clients, when I look back over 13 years, the four or five or six who’ve gotten into both schools, 95% have chosen Harvard. Many of them are my international clients, because Harvard has 90,000 alums worldwide. Stanford has 23,000. Many of them are my joint-program clients who want to do really big things that are public sector oriented. They want to be at the Harvard Kennedy School, they want to be on the East Coast. So my international clients almost always choose Harvard rather than Stanford. The other split according to industry reasons. Right now, AI is very popular at Stanford as well. My AI clients have chosen Stanford. These things ebb and flow, but a lot of it is the response to the marketing.

Harold Simansky: There’s a certain romanticism, I would say. And Katy, God bless Harvard, but Harvard is both physically an island and is very much separated from the university as a whole.

Katy Lewis: Which is a real drawback if you want to do a joint program.

Harold Simansky: As opposed to Stanford, all they talk about is crossing the street.

Katy Lewis: That’s one of Stanford’s real strengths, is its multidisciplinary approach. The other thing that Stanford allows—other than the weather, which is a big draw—it’s easier to go to Stanford. This sounds terrible. My clients who do want to do a start-up while they’re in school or run their VC firm while they’re in school, you can go to Stanford, have a good time, get a top degree, and do that. You cannot do that at Harvard. The workload is a factor.

HBS Versus GSB for Dual Degree Applicants

Jeremy Shinewald: Okay, I’m pushing you even further. What about dual degree applicants? Are there certain dual degrees that you feel like you’re better off doing—I mean, they don’t always offer the same dual degrees—but you’re better off doing X at Stanford or X at Harvard?

Katy Lewis: The people I work with who want to do dual degrees want to solve some of the most complex problems we’re dealing with. That’s why you do a dual degree. You need multiple perspectives because you’re going to deal with a trisector problem. Classic examples: education, healthcare, energy, sustainability, all trisector. Similarly, if you want to do anything that verges on the public sector, a dual degree is incredibly helpful. So when you’re choosing between these schools, it really depends on what your career goal is. If it’s a specific industry career goal, you’re probably indifferent. If you really do have that larger global or public sector objective, the East Coast is better.

It’s very hard, because there is no Harvard Kennedy School on the West Coast. There just isn’t. You can do the Harvard Kennedy School concurrently with Stanford, but all the rest of the schools that do it are on the East Coast. So being in that milieu is a deciding factor. And for my international clients who want to play a public role in their countries, it’s doubly important.

Harold Simansky: On the other side, when it comes to sustainability, energy, there’s something I think really unique about Stanford in the sense of you have the E-IPER [Joint or Dual Master of Science degree in Environment and Resources] and you have the Doerr School [of Sustainability]. You have just the general ethos of the school.

Katy Lewis: Doerr, who is a friend of mine and classmate from Harvard Business School, has put Stanford on the map. But California in general is way ahead in sustainability, alternative energy, period. Berkeley’s very strong in that area as well. So that is definitely a specialty. I’m working with someone right now doing the E-IPER degree. Harvard, however, has a stronger… obviously, the MPP [master in public policy] at the Kennedy School makes a big difference. People are drawn to the biohub of Harvard. I helped a client get into both Harvard and Stanford. He got into a master’s program at each school’s medical school. Harvard would not allow him to do the double degree. So he and I looked at the curriculum and talked Harvard into letting him do it. He’s finished it. I now have another client who’s thinking of doing the same thing, and I’ve put them in touch. But Harvard is slower to do the multidisciplinary things. It’s physically harder to do it. The clocks don’t work, so you lose time. Basically, you arrive late to every class, which I did as a JD/MBA. But it’s changing. Right now, I’d say it really depends on what joint degree you’re looking for.

The Admissions “Lottery” and Signaling Interest

Harold Simansky: I don’t want to overfocus on the fact that people are choosing between Harvard and Stanford. We once looked at the numbers. The number of people who actually are joint accepts, it’s tiny. It’s very tiny. It’s a very small group. Very, very small. When you speak to someone for the first time, does it bubble up in your mind “He’s more of a Harvard; he’s more of a Stanford”?

Katy Lewis: What I learned working at Stanford is these schools have three highly qualified applicants for each spot, period. I used to tell the director of admissions at Stanford that he could just throw darts at the applications. There’s no need to read them. I explain, painfully, to my clients applying to these schools that they may be highly qualified, they may have all the qualities they need. Ultimately, it’s a lottery. And I tell them exactly what that lottery felt like when I worked at Stanford. For every eight applications I read, I could only say we will interview one. That was my quota. So it’d usually be these three people in that group of eight, and I’d go, “Gosh, which one are we going to choose?” And I’d go, “Well, I chose a consultant last time. So this time, I think I’ll go with a banker.” It’s that lottery factor.

Jeremy Shinewald: Living in Boston, you’re going to bump into people in the community. And there’s someone in my community who is an admissions officer at Harvard, and we’ve had fairly candid chats. And she’s like, “Look, I get a stack of files. I read them. Some people resonate with me, they might resonate with someone else.”

Katy Lewis: There’s a subjective law, in fact. You cannot dial your way into these schools. You cannot. And as I said earlier, unless something’s wrong with you, there is no right school for you.

Jeremy Shinewald: It’s as if these are two just totally distinct worlds, that there’s no overlap. There are people who do get into both, and I think they do a very good job—maybe we can talk about this—they do a very good job of controlling for that. It’s not a coincidence that there isn’t a lot of overlap. So how do they figure out how not to have overlapping admits?

Katy Lewis: It’s kind of like recruiting for sports in college. Certainly in the private equity world, and I suspect this goes on in the top consulting firms, these top schools have their contacts at these firms. And they will reach out to those firms, usually in November, Round 1, and they’ll sort of sense, try to get a read on where these high-value applicants, private equity clients, and all high value from these top firms, where they’re likely to go. Generally, you don’t get into both. You don’t get interviewed at both for that reason. This is both a curse and a blessing. If you really want one of the schools, you can signal that to your staffer. If you want to stay more neutral, you have to do a little bit more work. But the schools, neither Harvard nor Stanford, they’re not talking to each other, they’re just trying to find out is this person legitimately interested in my school? Because none of them wants to have the ding to their yield.

Harold Simansky: A number of us consultants, we’ve had that experience. Wonderful people. They come from private equity firm X, Y, or Z. That private equity firm hasn’t sent anyone to Stanford for three or four years. Those folks have always been choosing Harvard. At that point, Stanford says, or Harvard says, “You know what? Forget it. You’ve just made our job easier. Now we don’t have to worry about you guys so much.”

Jeremy Shinewald: I’m curious what you think of this, but let’s say you’re at a Boston-based private equity firm, and your number one choice is Stanford. You kind of have to find a way without being overbearing to message that a little bit to them. Because they might take it for granted.

Katy Lewis: It’s not that hard to message, because what ends up happening, if you look at who goes to Harvard and who goes to Stanford. When I arrived at Harvard Business School, I had gone to Stanford for two years, undergrad, and then gone to Yale. I walked in, and five of my closest friends from Stanford were in my class at Harvard Business School. So people do seek to go to the other coast. So you can explain that, but the best way to signal interest in a school is to genuinely connect with what that school has to offer.

Widening Your Scope Beyond HBS and Stanford GSB

Harold Simansky: There’s no client, no consult that I speak to that doesn’t say, “I really want to go to Harvard or Stanford. I really like the Harvard case method.” We may not be able to answer this question, but what do we say to somebody when it’s like, “Good for you. There’s no way that’s happening.”

Katy Lewis: I’ve actually recommended people to apply to Harvard and Stanford who didn’t think they had a shot at it. And I said, “Why isn’t Harvard on your list?” And they get in. I do have clients who come to me and they say, “I only want Harvard or Stanford.” And the first thing I say is “Don’t do that to me. You really need to open your eyes. You may be a good candidate for these schools, but you should be looking at Wharton, you should be looking at MIT.” And I tell them, actually, I say, “Whenever you look at a business school, pretend it’s the only business school in the world, and identify four or five or six really cool programs or courses that you love. Because I can tell you right now, you could go to any one of the top ten business schools and get a fabulous education.” I have had people who do that, and they end up going to [Chicago] Booth over Harvard. They start really thinking of what they want and what community they want, and they make different decisions. I also tell them, “Look, you’re in an industry, it doesn’t really matter if you go to one of these schools.” If you go into global private equity, go to one of the M7. But if you’re in healthcare, it doesn’t really matter.

Jeremy Shinewald: You know what’s funny? I have a little bit of the opposite of what you’re saying, where you’re pushing people to apply. I mean, I do push people to apply, but I often say, “If you’re only applying to Harvard and Stanford, no matter how good an applicant you are, are you ready not to be in school next year?” Because it’s so competitive. And inevitably, the applicants get their interviews, not everyone gets in. But what’s funny is that I had one applicant who was the best applicant I think I’ve ever seen. I wish I could tell you more about him, but it would just immediately identify him. He had just done something so specific in a niche world like athletics or entrepreneurship or entertainment. This person had a profile but also amazing scores and had done great charitable work. And I said to him, “I never say this, but I would bet that you’re going to get into both. You’re just such a standout.” He actually only got into one. And you know what? His career has been phenomenal, like absolutely phenomenal. Like, no tears for this guy that he only got into one. And again, I’ve certainly helped more than a handful of people who’ve gotten into both. If you’re only applying to those schools, you might be reapplying next year. And if that’s okay with you, it’s okay with me.

Katy Lewis: They often say, too, “I’m going apply to these in Round 1, and if I don’t get in, I’ll do Round 2.” And I say, “Well, get ready for the morale hit.” It’s way better to apply to four or five in Round 1 and then get kind of buoyed up by the interviews you get. I’m obviously working with a lot of people applying to these top schools. I really try to reset their mindset from the beginning to think, this is just a business school. This is not a life or death situation. For example, Warren Buffett applied to Harvard Business School twice, and he did not get in. He did okay.

Harold Simansky: That’s right. Jack Ma applied ten times to Harvard Business School, still a billionaire.

Katy Lewis: Harvard wrote an article ten or so years ago in their alumni magazine saying, “These are the people we wish we’d accepted.” So business schools make mistakes.

Jeremy Shinewald: There are just too many good applicants. I always say to people, “You are the variable.” It’s the tail wagging the dog sometimes. When you have an awesome group of people who are applying, you’re going to have some amazing, successful people.

Katy Lewis: Ultimately, there are many different ways to wherever you want to go.

Harold Simansky: Katy, thank you so much. We really appreciate your time and truly unique insights. There are very few people—probably far less than those who get into Harvard and Stanford—who actually have [your kind of] sense of these programs, what it takes to get in, the differences between them, so we really thank you for your time today.