Rejected Harvard applicants say school's reaction to Web page "hack" excessive
By Jay Lindsay, Associated Press Writer | March 8, 2005
BOSTON --His decision came late at night, with his laptop propped in front of him in bed. Instructions on a Web site promised business school applicants an early online look at whether they'd been accepted. Intrigued, he began typing.
A minute later he'd accessed the Harvard Business School's admission site, though all he saw was a blank page.
That split-second decision cost the 28-year-old New Yorker a chance to attend Harvard Business School this year. On Monday, Harvard became the second school, after Carnegie Mellon, to announce its blanket rejection of any applicant who used a method detailed in a BusinessWeek Online forum to try to get an early glimpse at admissions decisions in top business schools.
On Tuesday, some of the 119 applicants denied Harvard admission because they visited the site said the school overreacted, and disputed that accessing a public Web page with their own identification numbers was either a "hack" or "unethical," as Harvard Business School Dean Kim Clark said in a statement.
The applicant said he spent months completing Harvard's rigorous application process.