HKS 2018

[Prester John]

They have not updated results in anyone’s portals. A new image will come where the text lay, where you click to view results. The platform is similar to the one used by Columbia and Chicago. Chicago had the clickable link for 2 days before they actually put results in it. 

[hks mpa id]

Thank you!

But what justifies that some having text and some don't?

Edited March 12, 2018 by hks mpa id
error

[Prester John]

They may be in the process of updating the link. That’s what Matt said in one of the posts. Let’s really hope there is a blog post today and the results come by tomorrow or day after 

[hks mpa id]

Yes. For some courses they are updating/ have updated the link as some encountered the portal changed and some don't. For MPA ID none so far got the portal changed which means they haven't updated the link for us.

I also believe they update the link in batches for a particular course. Not selected gets their link updated first, then do the wait list and lastly the selected.

[Prester John]

11 minutes ago, hks mpa id said:

Yes. For some courses they are updating/ have updated the link as some encountered the portal changed and some don't. For MPA ID none so far got the portal changed which means they haven't updated the link for us.

I also believe they update the link in batches for a particular course. Not selected gets their link updated first, then do the wait list and lastly the selected.

Yes that’s possible. Which means we are still a few days away from the results. 

Someone in the forum was hypothesising in the reverse order. That selected ones get the updates first!? Only time will tell!

[hks mpa id]

Updating not-selected first makes sense since they are already rejected by the committee and not much brainstorming goes over their application. Deciding the selected and wait list takes time and is even extended to few days before the results. 

[Prester John]

I believe there is no logic in the process! Let’s see!

[Anonymous_Walrus]

From the time the discussions about the  cosmetic changes on the admissions portal started, I have wondered about the utility of doing it from HKS's point of view. Probably it  makes more sense to do the backend database updates in one shot after the list is ready, and then change the front end to give the required information to candidates after login. The change in frontend of what is displayed to candidates before the results are out beats me. Anyway, now that many have observed such changes, I wonder why it happens. Maybe there are reasons. 

[hks mpa id]

30 minutes ago, Tiru said:

From the time the discussions about the  cosmetic changes on the admissions portal started, I have wondered about the utility of doing it from HKS's point of view. Probably it  makes more sense to do the backend database updates in one shot after the list is ready, and then change the front end to give the required information to candidates after login. The change in frontend of what is displayed to candidates before the results are out beats me. Anyway, now that many have observed such changes, I wonder why it happens. Maybe there are reasons. 

They cant update the backend database in one shot as even as per their blog they decide on the selected candidates till the last moment. They keep on updating the backend on a regular basis which can be figured out by the changes in the front end.

[brown queer]

1 hour ago, hks mpa id said:

Updating not-selected first makes sense since they are already rejected by the committee and not much brainstorming goes over their application. Deciding the selected and wait list takes time and is even extended to few days before the results. 

This makes a lot of sense to me though I don’t want it to...

[Prester John]

New blog post. Result seems so far away!

[mahakal]

1 hour ago, hks mpa id said:

Updating not-selected first makes sense since they are already rejected by the committee and not much brainstorming goes over their application. Deciding the selected and wait list takes time and is even extended to few days before the results. 

 

By that logic, I am certainly out. I applied for MPA/ID and it seems I was amongst the first ones(or perhaps the only one in this program ) to get the change(text above the two tabs removed) in the admission portal. In addition, I also received the contact of the aid counselor at the earlier stage. :))

[Anonymous_Walrus]

9 minutes ago, mahakal said:

By that logic, I am certainly out. I applied for MPA/ID and it seems I was amongst the first ones(or perhaps the only one in this program ) to get the change(text above the two tabs removed) in the admission portal. In addition, I also received the contact of the aid counselor at the earlier stage. :))

metoo. Text above tabs vanished long back and aid counselor allotted earlier. 

[mahakal]

7 minutes ago, Tiru said:

metoo. Text above tabs vanished long back and aid counselor allotted earlier. 

just out of curiosity, were you nominated for the Joint Japan scholarship?

[Anonymous_Walrus]

3 minutes ago, mahakal said:

just out of curiosity, were you nominated for the Joint Japan scholarship?

yes

[BrownPundit]

Ok, as it is becoming increasing difficult to kill time and waiting for this decision is becoming a laborious thing now, so I went ahead and did a statistical study of last year result. As the portal changes is the subject that most of us are obsessing over so let us take a glance at what the stats say from last year before we get into what it means:

Last year portal changed at different times for different applicants just like this year. I have just glanced over the result and the disclaimer is that it was just glancing and data collection did not follow any due diligence protocols so they may not be accurate, but just listing them seems like fun!!!

the good news is that portal changes cannot conclusively say anything about your admission, and the bad news is that it seems like the time of change changes the probability (But again the good news is that the sample size is so small that it does not make sense to conclude anything, but then what the hell we have to kill time )

By going over the last years posts, I found 5 waves or portal changes and here it goes:

1) Those who got the portal change in the very beginning: I found seven people sharing the information, out of them two got admitted, one got waitlisted and one rejected, other three did not answer, so assumption is that they two got dinged. So all is not lost for those who got the stuff changed very early on!

2) Second wave of portal changes: 3 people in total, two got in and one got dinged

3) Third wave: 2 in total, 1 in and other in the wait list

4) Fourth and the most beautiful wave: 4 in total, all got in

5)  Actually this is not the fifth wave of portal changes, because the portal did not change for this wave other than that they got the status update: 3 in total, 1 in the other two dinged.

So as you can see, the probability may vary but based on the data that we have it seems that at no point you can conclusively count yourself out until and unless the harvard people tell you so !!! so keep on hoping, May the force be with you all !

Now, the further research could actually be if these people would have mentioned their porgrams, them we can actually see if there is some trend between changes and the program but well it takes a lot of time to so this research so I wash my hands of it .. perhaps next year someone else may have the time and inclination to do so 

Another reflection that I have is : What is the point of portal changes to begin with! Even if they manually update everything, why do they have to make the text disappear, so based on my experience, I will conclude that there must be a glitch in the system, because otherwise it is just simple plain outright sadistic of the people who coded the program !!! So whenever they enter any data, the front page changes, now the million dollar question is why dont they just remove this glitch? or if it is not a glitch then what is the reason behind it?

Ahh well, this is a question answer to which we will probably never have ... but as I said earlier, May the force be with you all, and good luck  

[econ14]

1 hour ago, Prester John said:

New blog post. Result seems so far away!

Actually, this blog post just brings results a lot closer. Quoting its ending: "Thank you for your patience as we wrap up the process and the next post in this series will cover the final admission category - admitted." Means the key post will be out today or tomorrow.

[tropisk_winter]

Today's blog post says: "information about financial aid is not communicated in an admission letter. A separate email will be sent to each admitted applicant from a financial aid counselor. Details concerning the timing of the email will be included in admission letters."

I'm confused. As we've discussed before, I thought financial aid info was to be released with decisions this year. Does this mean that is not the case? Or am I reading too much into this?

[Prester John]

Today’s post is copy paste from last year except for a few words in the first sentence. I think the point is that the financial info will come separately, from the finaid office. But they are trying to release both around the same time.

[pumpkinturbo]

41 minutes ago, BrownPundit said:

Ok, as it is becoming increasing difficult to kill time and waiting for this decision is becoming a laborious thing now, so I went ahead and did a statistical study of last year result. As the portal changes is the subject that most of us are obsessing over so let us take a glance at what the stats say from last year before we get into what it means:

Last year portal changed at different times for different applicants just like this year. I have just glanced over the result and the disclaimer is that it was just glancing and data collection did not follow any due diligence protocols so they may not be accurate, but just listing them seems like fun!!!

the good news is that portal changes cannot conclusively say anything about your admission, and the bad news is that it seems like the time of change changes the probability (But again the good news is that the sample size is so small that it does not make sense to conclude anything, but then what the hell we have to kill time )

By going over the last years posts, I found 5 waves or portal changes and here it goes:

1) Those who got the portal change in the very beginning: I found seven people sharing the information, out of them two got admitted, one got waitlisted and one rejected, other three did not answer, so assumption is that they two got dinged. So all is not lost for those who got the stuff changed very early on!

2) Second wave of portal changes: 3 people in total, two got in and one got dinged

3) Third wave: 2 in total, 1 in and other in the wait list

4) Fourth and the most beautiful wave: 4 in total, all got in

5)  Actually this is not the fifth wave of portal changes, because the portal did not change for this wave other than that they got the status update: 3 in total, 1 in the other two dinged.

So as you can see, the probability may vary but based on the data that we have it seems that at no point you can conclusively count yourself out until and unless the harvard people tell you so !!! so keep on hoping, May the force be with you all !

Now, the further research could actually be if these people would have mentioned their porgrams, them we can actually see if there is some trend between changes and the program but well it takes a lot of time to so this research so I wash my hands of it .. perhaps next year someone else may have the time and inclination to do so 

Another reflection that I have is : What is the point of portal changes to begin with! Even if they manually update everything, why do they have to make the text disappear, so based on my experience, I will conclude that there must be a glitch in the system, because otherwise it is just simple plain outright sadistic of the people who coded the program !!! So whenever they enter any data, the front page changes, now the million dollar question is why dont they just remove this glitch? or if it is not a glitch then what is the reason behind it?

Ahh well, this is a question answer to which we will probably never have ... but as I said earlier, May the force be with you all, and good luck  

Thanks for this! However, I’m still not convinced that they’re actually entering decisions during all this updating. Matt has posted about how the final step is to transfer all the data from meeting spreadsheets into the portal, and one of his staff looks on while another enters the data. So they could be doing other things. FWIW, each one of these waves of portal changes ended with an admit rate at or above the admit rate for HKS (~20%). 

[lackey]

9 minutes ago, pumpkinturbo said:

Thanks for this! However, I’m still not convinced that they’re actually entering decisions during all this updating. Matt has posted about how the final step is to transfer all the data from meeting spreadsheets into the portal, and one of his staff looks on while another enters the data. So they could be doing other things. FWIW, each one of these waves of portal changes ended with an admit rate at or above the admit rate for HKS (~20%). 

I realllyyyyyyyyy don't buy the calculations based on limited data here (they could be doing it randomly or alphabetically). However, a part of me wouldn't be surprised if our Gradcafe admit rate > the overall one because we're smart and brilliant and self-selecting onto this website?  

[pumpkinturbo]

4 minutes ago, lackey said:

I realllyyyyyyyyy don't buy the calculations based on limited data here (they could be doing it randomly or alphabetically). However, a part of me wouldn't be surprised if our Gradcafe admit rate > the overall one because we're smart and brilliant and self-selecting onto this website?  

I believe we are  

also a reminder that elite schools segment their pool by sector/profile type and whittle down because they want a diverse class. So a lot of the timing could simply have to do with which meeting we were discussed in. They could be entering notes rather than decisions.

[pumpkinturbo]

Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if they make a point NOT to enter decisions until that final day, because a mishap/accidental release could be disastrous. My guess is they keep all the data offline until the meeting when matt reads each name individually.

[lackey]

11 minutes ago, pumpkinturbo said:

Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if they make a point NOT to enter decisions until that final day, because a mishap/accidental release could be disastrous. My guess is they keep all the data offline until the meeting when matt reads each name individually.

That's pretty chilling...are they really reading our names right now? Wow. I hope we're all on the list, or at least most of us.

[Prester John]

1 hour ago, econ14 said:

Actually, this blog post just brings results a lot closer. Quoting its ending: "Thank you for your patience as we wrap up the process and the next post in this series will cover the final admission category - admitted." Means the key post will be out today or tomorrow.

Adding on, last year, the same post came on March 2nd and the results 6 days later on the 8th!