Harvard Business School

For those of you on the fence about b-school.

According to Bloomberg, the money you're blowing on a trip to Ibiza now will pay off with a higher salary later.

Tech is luring young MBAs at levels not seen since you know what.

He'd also find it hard to associate with someone working at one.

She doesn't need to go to b-school (her sense of business is "innate"), but it's on her to do list nevertheless.

Also, the "Ex PE [private equity] robots who just want to make money and die."

And who the Marriott School of Business needs to screw to make the Top 25.

You gotta spend money to make money.

After years of receiving scripted answers to questions from would-be business school students re: why they want to go to Harvard/Wharton/Stanford/Sloan or what they think of a company's earnings potential or where they see themselves in five to ten years or what they ate for breakfast, admissions officers have lately been taking a new tack in an attempt to see the "real" side of applicants. Hoping to get a little "unrehearsed honesty" and insight into who these people really are, prospective students are being asked to submit "reflections" ("a short, off-the-cut note that must be submitted within 24 hours of an admissions interview") and take part in "team-based discussions," for which they're told to "relax, be genuine," not worry about giving the "right" answer, and just say what they really think, rather than what a coach told them to say they think. Unfortunately, Harvard and Wharton officials apparently have no idea who they're dealing with here. You can't make future b-school students relax and be genuine! You can't! You won't!

US News has regaled us with its annual ranking of the top business schools. I know you need a safe space to get huffy about perceived slights (be it your MBA program being lower than you believe is accurate or by having to suffer the indignity of an inferior institution being too close on the list), so let it out here and now.

On November 6, 2012, as the results of the presidential election rolled in, a member of the Harvard Business School Class of 2010 considered ending it all. "The thought crossed my mind to jump off my penthouse apartment balcony," he wrote his fellow classmates yesterday. Sure, he had a lot to live for: friends, family, the earthly delights afforded to him by living in Southern California ("surfing, mountains, 78 degree sunshine, and hot babes everywhere"), as well as a new company and all that came with it (relationships with celebrities that straddle the line between "friend and service provider," as well as invites to "the VMAs and private concerts in Vegas"). But he also had a lot of reasons to be good and angry at the world, including but not limited to: the state of California being "filled with so many hippie liberals" he just might snap and in doing so "choke out a street bum," people who "sit around with their hand out and expect to be fed," and, most vexingly, the reelection of Barack Obama. And while he did not in fact end up leaping from his penthouse balcony apartment that night, make no mistake, he was and is exceedingly pissed about the direction this country is going, which is south on the Pacific Coast Highway right straight to hell. And whereas the endless stream of bums and hobos and hippies he encounters each and every day the second he steps out of his penthouse apartment probably would take the easy way out, because that's what they do, he's better than that. So instead, he went to bed, got up, sat down at his computer and channeled his anger into something productive: a list of suggestions for how we can get America back on track and in four years, rest it from the hands of the commie holding it hostage, like forcing candidates to use bullet points and telling people who don't believe in capitalism to pack their shit because in 20 minutes a van is coming to ship their non-contributing zero asses off to a country where it's not actually a "privilege" to live. First, though, some life updates, because it really has been too long.

For its 25th reunion last year, the members of Harvard Business School's class of 1986 were asked to fill out an 85 question survey to give their former classmates a picture of where life has taken them since the gang parted ways. In addition to standard queries like "how much money are you making" (median annual net income: $350,000, median personal net worth: $6 million), "did you start a business" (36 percent said yes), "was choosing to attend Harvard Business School the best decision you've ever made" (48 percent responded that it was "one of the best decisions of my life," 1 percent boldly claimed "it was not a particularly productive use of my time or money"), and how many times have you been laid-off and/or fired (4 percent have been "involuntarily dismissed" three times, 13 percent twice, and 47 percent once) the questionnaire writers dug quite a bit deeper to find out that: A quarter of them are wanton little shoe whores. One in four own 25 or more pairs of shoes (58% of the women and 15% of the men). A third of them are actual whores.* A third of the class (33%) admitted to having slept with someone whose last name they didn’t know (37% for men, 17% for women). Ninety-seven percent of them are getting laid on the reg. Just 3% of the alums say they want more sex. The highest priorities? Time (31%), health (18%), and peace of mind (13%). (Poets&Quants, which obtained the results of the survey, interpreted the above as being indication that "sex isn’t a very high priority for the Class of 1986" though couldn't it just as easily be indication that they're getting enough already, figuring asking for 6 times/day instead of 5 would be greedy?) A quarter are on a boat. 25% own a boat. As many as three percent may have wed a mail-order bride. Some 18% dated someone they met online, but only 3% of the class married the person they met on the Internet or by some “other commercial means.” Three percent are that guy. What did the class find to be the most valuable part of getting an MBA from Harvard?...Some 3% said it was “something to drop into cocktail party conversations.” And approximately three-quarters of these people, aged 53-55, are bald-faced liars. Slightly more than one in four alums have gained 11 to 20 pounds since they wore their cap and gown. Some 15% put on 21 to 30 pounds, while 5% tip the scales with weight gains of 31 to 50 pounds. More than a little suspect. Love, Sex & Money: A Revealing Class Portrait of The Lives of Harvard MBAs [Poets And Quants] *We kid the Class of '86. Though hopefully for next year someone will have the balls to actually ask if you knew their name, period, if you could pick them out of a line up, and so on and so forth.