I applied in the first round to Sloan and had my interview on-campus by a member of the admissions committee on Jan 18th, 2012 and I’ve received my admittance into MIT on February 6th, 2012.
I arrived at the office 15 minutes prior to my interview. On that particular day, there were only two interviews, including mine, at my specific time slot. We exchanged conversation about the weather of Boston, what we each do for a living; stories of how we got to Boston (both of us came from outside of USA for the interview). Our conversation made the waiting much easier. Then it was time for my interview. The interviewer had really read my application thoroughly. She had her questions written out on a piece of paper.
She started by stating the type of interview (behavioral) that MIT conducts. Then she started asking her questions which were mainly about some of the things that I’ve written in my essays that she didn’t understand or needed more information. I had to elaborate on what I’ve written on my essays, after all there are word limit to the essays. Based on my answers, my interviewer asked followed up questions (how did I convince my fellow colleagues to accept some of the ideas that I have written in my essays? What do I mean by a certain sentence in my essays).
Once she had no more questions to ask about my essays, she asked me to provide an example of when my ideas were not accepted (I had talked about the ideas that were accepted in my essays). Then she asked me about if there are anything that’s new on my resume since my application. Then she asked my if there are anything that we haven’t talked about that I really wanted the admissions committee to know. Finally she asked me if I have any questions for her (I asked about a couple of questions – Beside the monetary values, what is the value of a MIT MBA; What MIT does specifically to improve each student’s leadership ability.
Overall the interview took about 50 minutes. It was hard to read what my interviewer was thinking about. While I was talking and answering questions, she took a lot of notes and kept nodding and saying “I see”, “hum”. I think it was very important that the interviewer read your application before the interview. I had an interview with MIT Sloan a couple years back where the interviewer didn’t read my application because the interview was a last minute schedule. She asked basic generic questions like what I do for work, examples of leadership at work, etc.
