2002 & 2005

Many schools have reported an increase in applicant numbers this year. Naturally, this has led some to believe that this was an unbelievably tough year to get into business school. Something to note here that the increase in applications is only in comparision to last year (which probably was the easiest year to get admission in the last 10 years) and nobody knows yet how much the increase is. Another thing to factor in that the increase has been widely observed for international applicants, it may or may not be true for domestic applicants.

It is therefore quite possible that the "difficulty factor" has only been restored to previous normal levels from an apparently easy 2005. Now I dont mean to take anything away from people who applied and succeeded in 2005 or make assumptions about those who applied and didnt succeed. Applications are very subjective and anything could happen, such is the nature of the game. But it begs the question of why? and was this the same at other schools as well?

Here are the numbers for HBS (source: Sandy on BW) I have changed graduation year to their respective application years.

Year of Application--No. of Applicants
2000--8124
2001--8893
2002--10382
2003--8526
2004--7130
2005--6552
2006--????

The above data is for HBS and we dont even know for a fact if 2006 numbers have actually gone up. But 2 numbers come out clearly - a) what the heck did one have to do to get admitted in 2002? and b) 2005 indeed looks like an easy year in comparision although numbers dont reveal everything. A difference of almost 4000 applications to a top business program is a lot by any standard, it almost doubles the acceptance rate for HBS.

2001 was a bad year for the economy so that probably explains the spike in 2002 numbers. At the same time, 2005 was not as bad as 2001-2002 but it wasnt kicking ass either so these numbers cannot be influenced by the economy alone. Whatever it is, it does make one (atleast me) think "what if I had applied last year," albeit only for a brief moment.