The following U. Chicago Booth interview questions and report were submitted to Clear Admit by a Round 1 applicant. Good luck to them!
I interviewed in the morning slot. On the plus side, I was able to relax later in the day during the lunch/tour/class parts of the visit. However, I think I did better in the interviews where I had a late afternoon time slot and I was a little less nervous (although it does sort of ruin the other events beforehand). It’s definitely a trade-off worth considering.
Anyway, I arrived about 30 minutes early and was the first one in the holding area. Eventually, a couple other students came in and everyone made small talk to try to be polite despite the nerves. Oddly, everyone I spoke with was really young (~3-4 years work experience), but I think that was atypical. A few first year students came in to talk with us, ostensibly to put us at ease, but it didn’t really work. They aren’t really part of the decision-making process, so most people kind of ignored them.
My interviewer called my name and led me down a dark hallway to a small room where we sat around a small circular table. She gave a very quick overview and asked the following questions (that I remember):
• Tell me about yourself.
• Tell me about a time you led a group.
• Tell me about a time when you worked at ____ and you tried to counteract the hierarchical structure there (with 2-3 follow ups drilling down on specifics)
• What would you have done differently?
• Asked to explain specifically about a bullet on my résumé in my work experience (again with follow ups)
• Why do you want an MBA?
• Why now?
• What specifically are your 5-year and 10-year plans, how are they different? What are the steps involved in the future and what steps have you already taken to get yourself there?
• What clubs that relate to what you want to study and do post-mba do you plan on participating in?
• About 15 min for questions
I wasn’t prepared for several of these, particularly the behavioral question follow ups and the crazy amount of detail she wanted on my 5 year plan. That said, right from the beginning it was nowhere near as friendly or conversational of an interview as I have read elsewhere on this site. I heard that from quite a few of the other people who interviewed that same day, but it seems highly dependent on who you interview with. For instance, I spoke with another student later who is an admissions fellow and he said his interviews are the opposite of what I experienced. My only piece of advice is be prepared for both.
Afterwards, I had some time and sat around until the tour started, which was not particularly helpful as we mostly kept to the hallways. The building is very cool. We had pizza for lunch and there were 3-4 current students who came in and talked to the large group of interviewees. It was a little hard to talk to them since there were so few (as point of contrast, Wharton had around one student for every 3 interviewees).
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