Loading…
Loading…
Permits AI, requires disclosure
Harvard Business School permits applicants to use AI tools and is one of the few top programs with a formal disclosure requirement. The 2026-27 application asks a yes/no question about whether you used AI, and a yes answer opens a statement of up to 75 words describing how and where. Using AI is not disqualifying at HBS. Presenting AI output as your own work is.
This is our plain-English reading of HBS's published materials, not the school's own words. Read the official source before you rely on it.
AI can help you think, structure, and check your work, but the school wants to know it was in the room. The disclosure question is binary, and the follow-up statement is short by design: 75 words is enough to name the tools you used and the role they played, and not enough to bury anything.
Two expectations sit underneath the checkbox. First, whatever you submit should be your own work in substance and in voice. Second, you are responsible for anything an AI helped produce, so factual claims a tool suggested still have to be true. A brainstorming session that sharpened your own draft is comfortably inside the policy. A tool that wrote your paragraphs is not, disclosed or otherwise.
HBS states its position inside the live application rather than on a public page; confirm there. · Sourced Jul 14, 2026
Wherever a school asks for a disclosure, the statement itself should be yours. Our free compliance check audits how you used AI against HBS's rules and shows what your own statement needs to cover; it never writes it for you.
Run the free AI-policy compliance check →The full field, side by side, lives on the MBA AI-policy hub. HBS's current essay prompts are on the prompt tracker.
Yes. The application asks directly whether you used AI, and answering it falsely is a misrepresentation risk that dwarfs anything a disclosure could cost you. If a tool helped at any stage, check yes and describe the role in the statement.
HBS built the question because it expects many applicants to answer yes. A disclosure that describes bounded, thoughtful use (brainstorming, critique, grammar) reads as integrity. What hurts is an essay that reads machine-written, whatever the checkbox says.
The question asks about your use of AI in preparing the application, not just the essay. If AI shaped your resume bullets or short answers, consider including that in the statement rather than reading the question narrowly.
No. Disclosure does not convert someone else's writing into yours. HBS still expects the submitted work to be your own; the statement exists so you can be honest about assistance, not to license ghostwriting.
School policies change between and within cycles. This page reflects HBS's public materials as of the sourced date above; always confirm against the live application before you rely on it.