Hi folks,
I wanted to take the opportunity of the Clear Admit wiki to share a little bit of my interview experience for Columbia. The questions are pretty straightforward, the interviewer follows a template that is given to him/her by the school:
- Tell me about yourself
- Could you tell me why you need an MBA at this point in your career ?
- How could Columbia contribute to achieving your goals ?
- What would be your most important contribution to Columbia ?
- How have you selected your MBA programs?
- Have you applied to other schools ?
- How do you interact into teams ?
- How would you describe yourself as a leader ?
- Are there any issues that you were not able to cover in the application that you would like to bring to the attention of the Ad Com?
- Do you have any questions for me regarding Columbia ?
My advice/tips:
- Prepare, prepare, prepare. This is an important piece of your application, as important as all the other pieces like gmat or letters of reference. Do mock-up interviews with a coach, a friend, your wife/husband, whoever but the more you know the answers to these questions, the more you will be successful on D-Day.
- Keep your answers short and up to the point, while at the same time conveying passion and enthusiasm. You should have three to four distinctive reasons for choosing Columbia, no more, and they should be stated in order of importance to you.
- Pick one example that describes your argument, this will make it stronger. Most of the stuff is already in your written application, so you can state again the entrepreneurship example for the teamwork question, so on and so forth.
- Be natural, don’t come as cocky, more like a confident guy/girl who still has a lot to learn: you’re curious, open-minded, tolerant.
- Reach out to three or four potential interviewers at the same time, as some may not answer back on time.. or not at all. This increases your chances on getting an answer quickly and get done with it.
The interview should last btw 45 mn to an hour.
