Harvard Business School (HBS) was founded in 1908 as a bold experiment in professional education. #Harvard Business School diploma, Harvard Business School certificate. More than a century later, it remains the world’s most influential business school, defined by its case method, its research output, and a global alumni network of over 90,000 graduates across 170 countries.
Its enduring mission, articulated by founding dean Edwin Gay, was to train people “to make a decent profit—decently” . Today, that purpose is expressed more simply: HBS educates leaders who make a difference in the world.
HBS opened in the fall of 1908 with 15 faculty members and 84 students, only eight of whom would graduate the following year . The school’s early years were an exercise in improvisation. Faculty borrowed classrooms from Harvard College and debated what to teach and how to teach it.
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The turning point came in 1920, when Dean Wallace Donham adopted the case method—an approach inspired by law school pedagogy but adapted for business. The idea was to build a library of business cases that would serve as precedents for managerial decisions.
That model did not work as a repository, but the case method itself proved transformative as a teaching tool. Between 1920 and 1947, nearly 19,000 case studies were written at HBS, and from 1945 to 1960 the school helped establish 20 business schools around the world, spreading the method globally.
The two-year, full-time MBA remains HBS’s flagship program. For the Class of 2027, HBS received 9,409 applications and enrolled 943 students, an acceptance rate of roughly 10–11%. #HBS diploma, #HBS degree, #HBS certificate.
The cohort is 44% women and 37% international, representing 62 countries and 57 languages. The median GMAT score for the current format is 685, while the median GRE verbal and quantitative scores are both 164. Students arrive with an average of nearly five years of work experience, drawn primarily from consulting, venture capital and private equity, and technology. The average undergraduate GPA for the preceding class was 3.76.
