I met with an alum at his office. Total time was about 45 minutes including time for my questions. The interview was somewhat free form and tailored to aspects of my resume and aspects of my responses so it’s hard to type up a neat list here. He started off by asking how I learned of Chicago and what attracted me to the program and probed for very specific answers. For example, when I stated that I felt a greater connection to students I met at Chicago, he wanted to know very specifically the conditions under which I observed students at other schools, all the schools I had visited, and what I perceived to be the reasons for connecting most to students at Chicago, more about how the Chicago approach was similari to my undergrad (as I had mentioned), etc. This portion of the conversation took up the most time, as it delved into many sub-questions. Rather than asking why I wanted an MBA, he asked why I wanted an MBA when I already had the CFA designation (he has the designation himself). Given that I plan to continue on my existing career path (finance), he wanted to know if I could continue to feel passionate about this line of work. My responses all tended to elicit more questions which I found to be a much more interesting and enjoyable interview than covering the standard question list that I was prepared for. I felt he really was after what made me tick and what I was excited about and how committed I was to Chicago. The draw back is that I found I had a little more trouble forming concise answers since some of the questions were so unstandard and sometimes referred back to early college or even pre-college experiences.
He did want to know how I planned to get involved with the school if admitted (a standard Q) and his final question was whether I would accept an offer if admitted. (But of course!! Easiest question of the day 😉
All in all, it was an enjoyable experience though I kept torturing myself over the next 24 hours by thinking about how I could have answered such and such question better.
