Harvard Rejects Those Who Saw Admissions Mar 9, 11:39 AM (ET) By JAY LINDSAY BOSTON (AP) - 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 like him an early online peek 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 the school this year. And he wasn't the only one to get turned down for doing what he did - using a method detailed in a BusinessWeek online forum to try to get an early glimpse at admissions decisions in top business schools. In a blanket rejection issued Monday, Harvard dashed the hopes of 119 applicants. MIT followed suit Tuesday, rejecting 32 applicants. Carnegie Mellon was the first to act, delivering the bad news to its "hacker" applicants last week. The New York applicant said he spent months completing Harvard's rigorous application process. He and two others who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity said they did not consider their actions to be unethical. Admissions sites of at least six schools were accessed by applicants for about 10 hours March 2 after a hacker posted instructions on the online forum. Some applicants saw blank pages and others viewed rejection letters before access was denied. The instructions told people to log onto their admissions Web page and find their identification numbers in source material that was available on the site. By plugging those numbers into another Web page address, they were directed to a page where their admissions decision would be found. MIT's Sloan School of Management Dean Richard Schmalensee likened the hacking to an applicant using the keys to the admissions office to enter at night and see how his or her application fared. "It seemed to us you would have to have pretty bad judgment or pretty bad ethics not to know you were doing something wrong," Schmalensee said. "If you don't realize you shouldn't do that, something's off." Stanford hasn't made a decision and urged applicants to explain their actions. Dartmouth said it would meet Friday with ethics professors, deans and admissions officials as part of its ongoing investigation. Duke said only one applicant attempted to get into its site and failed, and that applicant's case was still under consideration. Lee Metheny, chief executive and president of ApplyYourself, a Fairfax, Va.-based online application and notification program company used by all the schools, said those who accessed the restricted pages did so knowing they were unauthorized. "These students had a choice. They could have waited until the published date of their decision. They chose to exercise these steps," Metheny said. Sanford Kreisberg of Cambridge Essay Service, which helps students apply to elite U.S. business schools, said the applicants made a stupid mistake, but added Harvard was guilty of "ethics grandstanding." He said that while the business world is getting battered by stories of ethical failures - such as fraud or excessive salaries - Harvard can make a point by taking on an easy target. "They can swat it hard and preen," he said. But MIT's Schmalensee said the decision was about more than posturing. "Our mission statement talks about principled, innovative leaders," Schmalensee said, "and we take the principled part seriously." ---- As an aside, if a relative or friend went looking to see if an applicant got in, they would have screwed the pooch for the applicant.
i think that's kinda dumb. if they f***ed up on the website in a way that easily allows hackers to get in, then they should straight up hire the guy who figured it all out and get him to replace the current website maker. also, it doesn't feel like a crime to access secure information on the web, i understand why it would be, but things just seem "fantastical" in some sort of way. if i read that i could access the information i had been waiting oh so long to see, i would, just out of excitement and the fact that i still wouldn't be sure or not until i received the letter - it just doesn't seem real until it's official.
Exactly. It is Harvard's mistake and not the applicants. Not only that, but how do they know the Applicant was the one who hacked in. Maybe it was someone else. It all seems iffy to me. I wonder if the applicants have a legal case. It doesn't seem unethical to me. Borderline. But not unethical in my opinion. Maybe questionable decision making at the most. It's more like, here is a diary about you, I"ve left it on the table wide open, you're whole future is in it, but don't read it. Of course you take a look.
It does feel like they may have gotten robbed - considering it took some ingenuity to hack into the program. Conversely, though, the kids shouldn't have done it, and by finding out a month early all they did was something stupid. If Harvard is trying to make decisions based on a kids ability to make a simple cost/benefit decision in a situation like this, well these kids are morons.
So you're saying if you are taking a personality test type thing, maybe an interview in person to get into one of these schools, and the question was posed: "You can find out whether or not you get into our school a month early by hacking into a website, would you do it" that your answer would be "Sure!" I see how really its not that big of a deal, but Harvard can do what they want, and these kids shouldn't feel cheated. They got screwed, but that can happen when you make a mistake, especially an easily avoidable one.
i can almost guarantee, that with the number who never got accepted, there was probably one "brother" out there who went out of his way just to check if his sibling got in....yeh, i'd say that's a ****ty situation.
If you guys knew how pervasive computerized cheating was at top schools, you wouldn't feel sorry for these guys. What they did was scholasticly dishonest, BEFORE they were even admitted. Seeing as going to a B-School at Sloan, Haavaad, and CMU are fast-tracks to a six-figure job, they should have assessed their risks a little better. I'm saying this as a law school applicant who is having to make sacrifices of his own for the sake of ethics. For instance, after last weekend I have decided that it is no longer worth it for me to drink in public. This decision was made because I was pulled over and given a sobriety test on a routine speeding stop. I admitted to having ONE BEER two hours previously. I passed the test, but if I had been arrested and charged with DWI, I would have been screwed. Remember, it's MBA's like this that come into your company and decide if you get to keep your job or get laid off. Do you want cheaters making this decision?
The applicants merely read directions and did what the instructions told them to do in order to view the admissions decisions. That took no ingenuity whatsoever.
1. The guys who got pwned by Harvard are not 'kids.' It's the business school, so they all have their BA's and are at least 22 years old (the New Yorker they mention is 28). Saying they're kids makes it sound like it was youthful indiscretion or foolish chicanery. These are grown men (and women, I suppose). 2. They need Harvard much more than Harvard needs them. Of the applicants who have the skills to do the work Harvard demands, maybe 10% actually get in. As an applicant to Harvard, you have no leverage at all. If you provide them with a handy excuse to weed you out from the pack, you've done them a favor. I'm sure there are people who've been denied for more trivial things -- they're short on guys from Michigan, or the interviewer found an applicant's jokes funny. 3. If they would have otherwise been getting an acceptance from Harvard Business School, they'll probably have little trouble getting into another top-flight program.
They were wrong. But...still harsh. They peeked. Didn't change anything. Didn't get info that wasn't going to be sent to them soon. Didn't 'gain' anything. Not quite on par with hacking in for malicious purposes or personal gain. More like holding the envelope up to the light when they were supposed to wait to open it...dumb. dumb. dumb. Curiosity. Killed the cat, suppose. Stupid. But clearly wrong. So...while harsh...I'm Ok with it. An ethical code for business school. Cool concept. I hope it catches on.
harvard's been getting bad pub recently. i agree with JuanValdez's views in that these applicants have not been done a grave injustice. people who can get into HBS are already successful in business anyway. it all depends on how easily they accessed the information. if they looked really hard into how to find out then they should be rejected. if they just came across it then i can see how they would think "why not?"
Ethics are no longer just for the classroom!!! I think it sends a pretty cool message to ALL MBA students and bet that it will be a subject of much conservation among MBAs. This can not be such a bad thing. As an aside, HBS is going to get sued. You wait. You see. There is no way that they can say for sure who actually hacked the admissions site. They might be able to trace it back to an applicant's home PC, but they would then have to prove that the applicant was the only person capable of using the PC to hack their site.
It's not hacking in the cpu sense, only the in the Harvard "don't look" sense. View>Source Code is not hacking. It's smart navigating. Harvard should of had a better system than that of the untold honor system.
I doubt it. Harvard doesn't owe them entry to their school. As long as they don't discriminate based on protected criteria (race, sex, religion, etc), they can turn away who they like (uhh... don't like, whichever).
