While many institutes of higher learning reward creative thinking and initiative, Harvard Business School said on Tuesday it is rejecting applications from 119 would-be students who it says hacked into a Web site to learn if they were accepted at the Ivy League university ahead of the official notification.

Reuters reports today. “Harvard said 119 applicants had hacked into Virginia-based ApplyYourself, a company that manages Web pages used by students to apply to roughly 300 different universities.

“We know that 119 applicants hacked into the system — and we know their names,” said Jim Aisner, a spokesman for Harvard Business School.

Aisner declined to comment on how many of the 119 applicants would have been accepted at the school had they not broken into the ApplyYourself Web site. “
No doubt they would have failed “Ethical Behavior on the Internet” anyway.