My interviewer was a friendly French lady who had graduated one or two years ago and now worked for Goldman Sachs in London. The interview was very standard.
Questions asked:
1. Walk me through your resume
2. Why MBA
3. What are your short-term and long-term plans
4. Why Wharton
5. Tell me about a leadership experience
6. Tell me about an activity outside of work
7. How do you plan to get involved in the Wharton community
8. Describe a weakness in your application
9. Is there anything else you would like to discuss
10. Questions for the interviewer
Most of the time she kept looking down on her paper as she scribbled lots of notes (or perhaps she was just doodling), which made it hard to connect with her and make the interview conversational, so the interview was very Q&A-style.
The few moments she did look up was during my story on ‘leadership experience’ and when she was scribbling all my notes on Why Wharton she looked up when I mentioned the Global Immersion Program and the Global Consulting Practicum. I don’t know whether she was impressed by my knowledge of the program, or was in disbelief of a cheap sales argument of why I wanted to go to Wharton.
Questions I asked her were “is there any advice you would give an international student to maximize the Wharton experience”, and I asked something specifically about the Europa club, which I am interested in joining. I mentioned I had seen her name in a Europa newsletter, so we chatted a little bit about that.
By talking about things the interviewer and I had in common, I felt she did open up a bit, which made the interview 40 minutes instead of 30 minutes, and I felt I could connect a bit with her and at least make the interview stand out a tiny bit.
The nice thing about getting asked these standard questions is that you can rehearse them ad nauseam in different styles, so that you can articulate your answers well, and focus on making your response as dynamic as possible and not too scripted. No question caught me by surprise, so at least I will have shown a good confidence factor. At the end she said I had been very articulate, which could have been a sincere comment, or simply a nice way of saying I sounded scripted. The downside of standard questions is that she must hear the same answers over and over and over again. I believe she had 6-7 interviews per day, 2 days per week, for a couple of weeks straight. Her body language hinted that this wasn’t the most exciting thing she had ever done in her life. The fact that my interview was at 4pm, not the most energetic time of day for most people, and directly after 6 other boring interviews, may not have been helpful either.
Courtesy of MBA Dutchie
One thing I did notice is that, even though hub interviews are conducted by people who are technically adcom members, they are by no means part of the decision-making process, which was one of the reasons I opted for a hub interview. She merely sends in her report, which gets included in your file, and the entire file is then reviewed after which you get a decision. The upside of having someone close to the admissions process can also be a downside, because I suspect these people get bored more easily (they have heard the same stories over and over again), which might raise their standards of what qualifies as ‘good’.
I ended up being rejected at Wharton, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the interview did not win me too many points. I got accepted at Kellogg, where I interviewed with a guy who was very passionate about Kellogg and where the interview was a rare event and a welcome interruption in his busy schedule. I have no doubt that this guy has ‘gone to bat’ for me and submitted a very positive interview report, whereas with Wharton, I doubt whether the interviewer thought I stood out among her 50+ other interview candidates.
That said, there are also reports of alums who are either not so thrilled about taking time out of their schedule for you, or feel they should give you Gestapo-like interrogations, or handle things unprofessionally. Your mileage may vary.
Status: Rejected.
