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Answer from Harvard Professor

By Jeffrey Harrison

Those of you who read the immediately preceding post know that I wrote and asked a Harvard Prof about an empirically verifiable statement made with respect to a candidate. The statement was that the candidate had 28 call backs within a few days of the recuiting convention. As it turns out, the reference indicates she confused call backs for campus interviews with interviews at the hiring convention. I attribute no bad faith to anyone involved but the whole incident made me smile. Do you realize the difference between 28 call backs and 28 convention interviews? In the first case, it would mean that nearly every school a candidate met with in DC invited the candidate to campus. I am not sure but this could be a record. The second case is probably about average. That is, I expect having 28 interviews in DC would be about normal. In the word of shopping for cars it would be like losing track of whether you were shopping for a 500 series BMW or Ford Escort. I wonder what kind of environment a person lives in to confuse the two. Again, no doubt at all that it happened just as reported but very very big difference. I do not know but my hunch is that Harvard is one of those schools that hire "off menu" -- S.Ct clerks before and outside of the conference.

Full post as published by Class Bias in Higher Education on November 26, 2007 (boomark / email).