Writing this report as I have benefited from reading the other reports, hope it’s of some help.
I applied in Round 2 and arranged interviews with two contacts provided by AdCom via email; they responded promptly and I booked my ticket to fly to another city (1 is not based locally). At this point I had been through an interview with another school so I didn’t prepare much except familiarising my essays.
Two interviews did not differ in nature so I’ll summarise them into one. Both interviewers did their MBA in 200x and are now partners of private equity firms. Both are friendly, but prefer answers relating to professional life.
Questions I was asked
– Standard ones: Why MBA? Why INSEAD? What are your plans for the future? Tell me about your life and work. Why should we pick you for INSEAD?
– Others: What international events do you follow? How often do you take initiative? Strengths and weaknesses/ significant achievements. How do you handle stress?
I did very well in one and fairly consistent in the other. My view on the alumnus interviews are below:
– The interviewers assess fit for the school in between questions and are good at reading what has not been said. Work on sincerity.
– Questions are not hard and if you give an average answer they will move on, but if you give an excellent answer they can relate to personally, the the conversation becomes even more open ended.
– There are times to ask questions and I personally did not use it as a chance to impress them, but instead asked more practical questions about my areas of interest (i.e. how women progress in consultancy/IBD firms, how they become partners of PE firms, etc).
– If you feel that it’s worth your time and you learned something regardless of the final decision, then it’s worth it and the chances are you will get in.
Hope this helps.
