Published: April 28, 2014
Cambridge / Judge MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 2 / Adcom / On-Campus
The whole admission process at Cambridge is far more pleasant than at other schools. The admissions staff are great and, rather than being treated like a number, they seem to know all the applicants and their stories without hesitating. Similarly, I really enjoyed the interview process. It is more about showing you the school than grilling you.
Before the interview day, they ask you to join a secret Facebook group of current students and people who have been accepted from previous rounds, where people introduce themselves etc. It was a bit cringe-worthy at times, but good to see who else was in the running. Cambridge sets up a dinner at one of the colleges for Sunday night and somebody organised informal drinks prior to that through the Facebook group.
The dinner was really good, with current students at each table, and it was a really comfortable way to get to know people. Afterwards, we went for a quick drink in the college bar. Everybody stays in Cambridge on the Sunday night, as it is an early start on Monday. First up on Monday is the interview, where one of the faculty talks to you about your application. My interviewer was pretty quiet, but kept asking questions to keep things moving. My GMAT score was good, but heavily swayed towards verbal, so he asked about my proficiency with numbers and whether I would be able to keep up with what is a very fast moving and academically-challenging programme. There was no difficult quant question, as some had suggested. Once he was happy with that, he dug a little deeper into the periphery of my essay questions. There weren’t any questions around why I wanted to go to Cambridge, but I slipped a bit of that in at the end through my questions to him. I didn’t really hit it off with my interviewer and it didn’t feel like the interview went brilliantly, but it was a perfectly pleasant experience.
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