Hi. I’m giving back to this forum that helped me a lot. Here are my 2 cents. I received my 2 interviewers’ details a day before the deadline. I contacted them right away. I had to travel to Vancouver (British Columbia) for one and Calgary (Alberta) for the other. One interviewer dropped out in the middle, and the adcom assigned me a new one. One was a director at a Real Estate company and the other one was a CEO of an Energy company. You can read the other interviews to get an idea of how it happens. However, I will emphasize about one important thing, YOURSELF:
1. Be yourself: Many people try to impress the interviewer with lots of big words and lines they read on the New York Times etc … The interviewers can read through that because they meet lots of people and they are pretty good at knowing who is lying. I am an IT professional, and when one of them asked me about how to make a team more efficient, I told him about the experience I had with my teams: What I did, how they responded, how I handled the team etc… I’m not sure whether I managed the team well, but at the end of my explanation I told him that’s why I needed an MBA to help me with my team management skills. Make it personal and link answers as much as you can back to your desire to pursue an MBA.
2. Tell your story: This is a step further from being yourself. Tell him/her what made YOU who you are. In my case: I was born in a poor/third world country, I have seen war and poverty, I have used an AK47 (no joke… I didn’t kill anybody though, so relax), I didn’t go to school for 2 years because I had to work and save some money for my undergrad abroad (no loans were available), I had to learn English before doing my undergrad, and I worked as a student to pay the bill. After undergrad, I worked for an IT consulting firm then moved to Canada and worked for one of the biggest insurance company as a System Analyst (IT Professional).
3. Stick to your story: As you can deduce from my story I worked twice as hard to get where I am, trust me it wasn’t easy. My future goal is to help with development in poor countries, give other people the opportunity to go to school without so much hustle because many of them just quit, it’s too hard. I said in the essays that I want to work in management consulting (MC) because I’ll gain lots of experience. My interviewer asked why MC instead of an IT company? I want to focus on bring information to people in poor country and he thought MC wasn’t smart move. I told him that if I need to run my own company someday I’ll need management skills, and MC firms offer great leadership/management trainings opportunities and they have IT consulting divisions too where I can work. He agreed with me. Don’t change your ideas just because you got shot down, explain further.
4. Do your research: the three points above bring us to the last point, doing your research. Know as much as you can about yourself (Past, Present, Future and why the MBA will help you get where you want to go), about the school (Why that particular school: I told my interviewers I can get an MBA online, but I wanted INSEAD because of the multicultural experience and its alumni network), and about the post-school industry. Do your research, read and learn as much as you can.
So this is me and this is what i told adcom. What are you?
Result: Admitted.
Good luck!
