Why 3% of Harvard MBAs Make Ten Times as Much as the Other 97% Combined

by Sid Savara on August 19, 2008

(Update:  be sure to read the follow up to this post, Fact or Fiction? The Truth About The Harvard Written Goal Study)

cohdra_100_29151-150x150 photoThe Harvard MBA program is extremely competitive, and today admits approximately 15% of applicants.  In the 60’s the acceptance rate was about 30%, down to 25% in the 70s, and has fluctuated between 10-15%  ever since.  Students who make it past the application process are typically standouts, and already fairly successful by most traditional definitions - they have an undergraduate degree, typically three to five years of work experience and were considered suitable for acceptance into the Harvard Business School.

The average Harvard MBA graduate starts at $115K with a $20K signing bonus.  Nonetheless, some graduates of the Harvard MBA program end up being MUCH more successful than others in the long run.
(Source: Harvard’s MBA Statistics Page)

So, Why Do 3% of Harvard MBAs Make Ten Times as Much as the Other 97% Combined ?

cross_t1-150x150 photoThe answer is a simple question: “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” In 1979, interviewers asked new graduates from the Harvard’s MBA Program and found that :

  • 84% had no specific goals at all
  • 13% had goals but they were not committed to paper
  • 3% had clear, written goals and plans to accomplish them

In 1989, the interviewers again interviewed the graduates of that class.  You can guess the results:

  • The 13% of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all.
  • Even more staggering - the three percent who had clear, written goals were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent put together.

(Source:  from the book What They Don’t Teach You in the Harvard Business School, by Mark McCormack)

One Final Note - Taking the Time To Write Down Your Goals

img_75691-150x150 photoFinally, I wrote this because I was discussing writing down goals with a friend, who didn’t think it was worth the effort. In our back and forth discussion, I told him all the above, and his response was - “I can’t write down my goals - I have so many, and I don’t have enough time.”

My response? 

If you don’t have time to write down your goals, where are you going to find the time to accomplish them?

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Viewing 11 Comments

    • ^
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    Sid,

    From my research I couldn't find any proof of that actual study being real. You can check out my research on my Yale goals study post. I still agree with the premise.
    • ^
    • v
    Interesting, went and read your blog as well as the Fast Company article. You're right in that even I found the reference in multiple books, but did not come across the actual study. I quoted as close to the source as I could - many books reference that book, which in turn references the study.

    Until you pointed this out, I didn't think this was unusual though. Often these scholarly publications and journals don't provide access to the public to the actual papers unless you pay (even IEEE does it with engineering papers, for example).

    I guess I will try and research this further and write a follow up about the "truthiness" of the specific example =)
    • ^
    • v
    I've read many variation of this "study". It sounds like it should be true, but it's not. There has been no proof of such a study. However, many authors, from Tony Robbins to many others have taken it as faith this study was done and publish it in their book. However, no one has being able to find the original study.
    • ^
    • v
    Very interesting. I will have to look into this further. As you said, it certainly sounds surprising but perhaps plausible - however, now I want to see if I can find the original study.
    • ^
    • v
    To be totally honest, the main reason I think this story is B.S. is that it stated 84% of Harvard MBA grads had no specific goals. I find that really, really, really hard to believe.
    • ^
    • v
    Correlation is not causation. It's not at all clear that having written goals _caused_ them to be successful.
    • ^
    • v
    Adam -

    Thanks for reading, and your comments! You're right, there is no guarantee that writing down goals necessarily caused success. I wrote a followup to this post you may be interested in, where I reference a study done that actually put students into various groups, told one group to write down the goals, and other not to, and compared the results. It's pretty interesting, PDF format, and in the followup article to this located at http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/fact...
    • ^
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    It makes me sick that so many people want to prove this goals study didn't exist. It's like they're implying that we shouldn't set goals and we shouldn't do what the success gurus teach us. It makes me sick that so many people just want to be negative and cynical and to trash success gurus. I despise negative people who just love to trash everything. I've spent a lot of time studying the teachings of success gurus and it has helped me a lot. I make several times more money than I used to and I'm a lot happier. I also don't work for other people anymore, which I hated to do and which was very detrimental to me. I only work for myself and I also have a lot of passive income now. What is the alternative to setting goals? Being an aimless loser.
    • ^
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    Hi Robert, I appreciate you taking the time to give such a complete
    perspective and comment. I agree that setting goals is worthwhile - I
    myself try to write down short term as well as long range goals. However, I
    have had a hard time finding proof that the Harvard goal study existed.
    There's a happy ending however - in my research, I came upon a written goals
    study done recently, and I have provided that PDF and results.

    I am glad to hear you have spent time improving yourself - and have
    succeeded in earning more, and being happier as a result =)
    • ^
    • v
    Sid, Thanks for sharing the results of your research. I am not familiar with references to the study but still believe writing goals down is essential to achieving them. It's not the act of writing them down that creates the result; it's having a reference point and defining just what it is you want to achieve. Otherwise we get distracted by other things and loose track of the original goal.

    I've just found your site today via a twitter search as I was listening to an audio book of "The Secret". So perhaps it was a "Law of Attraction" thing? :-) Anyway, I look forward to reading more of your posts.

    What prompted me to leave a comment however was the reference to Harvard graduate. Have you heard Shawn Achor speak. He was the keynote speaker at a conference I attended earlier this year in Rome of all places. You may have heard about his class at Harvard about happiness. His insights were fascinating. His talk wasn't so much about goals but how to achieve happiness in life; Happiness is the ultimate goal we all want to achieve Harvard grad or not.

    The core of his presentation was finding happiness is having the freedom to pursue the things that interest us most. It is a deceptively simple idea that evades most of the population, perhaps 97% of us!
    • ^
    • v
    Thanks for your comments Jim!

    I agree that writing down goals is essential - I had referenced this study
    in an earlier post, to make that exact point, and a reader called me out on
    it. I felt it was only right to clear their air.

    I have not seen Shawn Achor speak, but I will Google to see if I can find
    one of his presentations - I have heard about the class he teaches at
    Harvard a few times in various articles. That premise (having the freedom
    to pursue the things that interest us most) sounds very Tim Ferris-ish to me
    as well =)
 

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