I arrived about 15 minutes early and chatted with some of the other interviewees. Everyone was very nice and friendly. We were called into three different rooms in groups of 5 or so, and my group was called last.
We were read the prompt, told our time constraint, and then asked to start. Everyone shared their idea, and then I summarized the key deliverables we were trying to work towards and offered to play the role of timekeeper and offered a general structure for how the time should go. We settled very quickly on our topic, and then spent some time discussing the method of delivery. I think that we did a really good job of incorporating each other’s ideas, and building off everyone. My key role was to try and place some of the more divergent ideas into a larger framework, ask clarifying questions, and then synthesize. At the end, we decided to present and split up sections of the presentation amongst ourselves. We then asked the students to stand on one side of the room, who had previously been sitting behind us in opposite corners of the room, and we stood on the other side.
Afterwards, we had an individual interview where we were asked to reflect on our experience. For five minutes, the interviewer asked me questions such as –
– Did your behavior reflect how you normally are?
– What is something that your group could have done better?
– What do you want to say to the admissions committee based on this experience?
– Do you have any updates to your application?
And then we spent an additional five minutes on any questions I had.
Overall, a very interesting and positive experience. I’m not sure how it would be for someone who was less comfortable jumping into the fray, and I think its also highly dependent on group composition.
