Our archive of over 2,000 MBA admissions interview questions includes self-reported accounts from applicants. Please use the dropdown menu to view filter reports by school.
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Published: November 22, 2009
Harvard MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 1 / On-campus / Adcom
I scheduled my interview at 4:30pm on a Monday thinking that I could visit classes in the morning, review notes a bit, and then interview. However, in the rush to schedule a slot (the invitation letter explains that slots fill up within minutes of publishing the slots), I didn’t realize that my target date was a day that didn’t offer any class visits. I recommend people to have a #1, #2, and #3 time/date as they wait for the slots to be published and to conduct thorough research on what days are good (i.e. which days offer class visits). The
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Published: November 19, 2009
Chicago Booth MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 1 / 2nd year student / On-campus
Interview was pretty straightforward…only lasted for 20 minutes and then 10 minutes for questions. Walk me through your resume Why MBA and Why now? Why Chicago Booth? What clubs would you like to participate at Chicago Booth? Short term and long term goals Why are you interested in ‘X’ industry? What is your leadership style? What are you most proud of? What qualities would you look for in your future job? What would you do if MBA doesn’t work out? Why should Booth pick you? Is there anything else that you would like to share?
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Published: November 19, 2009
Stanford GSB MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 1 / Off-Campus
I interviewed with a Stanford alumnae. We met at her office; the interview lasted about an hour. She was in business casual, but I wore a jacket and dress. Tell me about your background/walk me through your resume Why MBA? Why now? Why Stanford? Tell me about a time you faced an obstacle and what did you do about it? Tell about a time you streamlined operations/made things more efficient? What did you do? How did you measure its success? What metrics did you use? Tell me about a time you worked with a difficult team member or manager. Tell
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Published: November 18, 2009
Ross MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 1 / Off-campus / Alumnus
Courtesy of Indian86 I had an [blind] alum interview for Ross in India this November’09. He was very cool person, and he told how the interview would proceed. About 50 minutes for the interview, and 10 minutes for me to ask him questions List of interview questions Walk me through your resume in about 6 minutes? (Had some cross questions such as why I left company X, why I joined Y. Why left X only in 1 year) International exposure – working with counterparts in country X? What did I learn from them? Their charachterstics, etc Other cross questions from
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Published: November 17, 2009
Kellogg MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 1 / Alumnus / Off-campus
Courtesy of A dreamer’s journey to b-school The interviewer, called X, was an alumni of the school. X and I scheduled to meet on a weekday evening. As always my sweet husband , my b-school journey supporter, accompanied me. I reached around 20 mins early and waited outside the rendezvous point. X came in 5 mins early from the meeting time and we quickly grabbed some coffee and sat down on a table. I noticed that X had already highlighted certain portions in my resume. I’m was thinking, is he going to ask all these questions from
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Published: November 12, 2009
Kellogg MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 1 / Alum / Off-campus
Courtesy of My B-School Adventure I submitted my part 1 sometime in late September and followed up with part 2 on the deadline on October 14th. I was perplexed that I hadn’t received an invite from the admissions committee until someone mentioned on the BW Forum that his invite was buried in spam. Sure enough, Kellogg sent me an interview assignment a 4 days after I submitted part 1. We scheduled the interview for Oct 26 at 6pm at a coffee shop. Before arriving on a final time, my interviewer rescheduled a couple of times. I’m guessing
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Published: November 8, 2009
Tepper MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 1 / Phone interview / Adcom
Round 1 / Phone interview / Adcom (Published November 16, 2009 as shared in Magologue – A Young gal’s dreamroll) Interview lasted for 45 minutes. First 30 minutes, I answered the questions of interviewer and next 15 minutes interviewer answered my questions about Tepper and MBA program Questions: Tell me about yourself. Include your academic and professional background. Why does an MBA make sense to you at this point of time Why Tepper is the right school for you ? Tell me about the steps you have taken to research about Tepper Tepper values leadership. Tell me about
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Published: November 7, 2009
Chicago Booth MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 1 / Alumnus / Off-campus
Originally shared in My journey to an MBA class of 2012 Blog. It went pretty well. It was with an alumn in a city outside the US (I am an international applicant). The guy was very straight forward and nice. He introduced himself, told me his career pre-mba and post-mba. Then we started with the questions: walk me through resume why so much community work? (i did a lot of community activities!) tell me the course you like the most during undergrad when did you have a chance to apply that knowledge some accomplishment at work tell
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Published: November 3, 2009
Kellogg MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 1 / Alumnus / Off-campus
The interview took place off campus at a small interview room at his office. It was at 8PM and lasted until 10PM. The experience, overall, was not astoundingly positive. The interviewer arrived 15 minutes late and offered no apologies. He admitted that he had not read my resume, and did not know my name. He sat down and started the interview with what I consider a very odd blanket request – “So…tell me whatever it is that brought you to do whatever it is you do.” The rest of the interview was very unstructured, and not really conversational as he
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INSEAD MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 1 / January 2010 intake / 2nd interview / Off-campus
This interview took place in a coffee shop towards the end of the day, and was the same day as my first interview. I had deliberately scheduled both interviews as late as possible during the interview period to maximise my preparation time. (I was fortunate that there was an information session for my city during the period so I could use it as a reason to postpone the interviews, as otherwise both interviewers would have been happy to interview me with only a few days notice.) I felt the first interview went very well and felt confident I would perform
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INSEAD MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 1 / January 2010 intake / 1st interview / Off-campus
The interview took place in the office. I had sent the interviewer my entire application (it is possible to send just the first 6 pages, but I wasn’t able to split the pdf file) to review beforehand. The interview was organised via email and telephone. I would advise researching your interviewer if possible (via sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook etc.) as it is quite rare that no information can be found. Also, it seems as though INSEAD tries to pair you with interviewers from a similar background to your chosen post-MBA path (although it may just be that a high
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INSEAD MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 1 / January 2010 intake / 1st interview / Off-Campus / Alumni
The interview took place in a Parisian “Café” with an alumnus. The date and place were agreed via email exchanges. Both of us were right on time and we sat at a quiet table. She apparently had read my complete application form, including my essays, which I had decided to send to her. Indeed, I was convinced my essays were strong and since she was willing to have them (although you are not obliged as per INSEAD’s intructions) this could only help strengthen her perception of the quality of my application. The interview, from beginning to end, was conducted in
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INSEAD MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 1 / January 2010 intake / 2nd interview / Off-Campus / Alumni
The interview took place at the alumnus’ office in Paris. We had an appointment in the morning and I arrived slightly ahead of schedule. To arrange this appointment, we had exchanged emails and finally phone calls. The interview started on time. I had done my research on the WEB and find out that he was a partner at a big consultancy firm, responsible for the practice on energy sector. I therefore had prepared myself intensively, meeting with friends who were working in this sector to polish my knowhow on this topic, since I had mentioned in my application form that
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INSEAD MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 1 / January 2010 Intake / 2nd Interview/ Off-Campus / Alumni
My 2nd interview was 2 days after my first one, which was incidentally on a Wednesday. This didn’t really leave me with too much time to ruminate over my bizarre 1st interview. I decided not to prepare for this one and instead go in with a relaxed attitude. The 2nd interview was at a coffee joint at 10 AM. I had taken a half-day leave from office that day. My interviewer this time was the Marketing Director of a well-known technology company. He arrived in a t-shirt and jeans (this is why I said suits are overkill) and his demeanor
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INSEAD MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 1 / January 2010 Intake / 1st Interview/ Off-Campus / Alumni
I received my interwiers’ details nearly a week after the pre-selction mail. Both were pretty young (mid-30s) and were in impressive positions. One was a VP at a VC company and the other was a Marketing Director of a technology company. My first interview was with the VP of a VC company and it was at his office. The interview was scheduled for 3 PM. I arrived 10 minutes ahead of schedule and his secretary showed me to a meeting room. And here things started going downhill. He made me wait till 3.30 PM before he came in. I kept
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Published: April 16, 2009
INSEAD MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 1 / September Intake / Off-campus / Alumni
My second interview for INSEAD took place at the end of 2008 in a hotel bar in a very nice location of Paris with an alumni. Here is how it went: I arrived on time but my interviewer was nowhere to be seen and I had to wait for him for about 1 hour! You can imagine my stress level rising during this 1 hour of hell. But I have to say that I sort of knew in advance that it would have been half-assed. Indeed the day before, I had called my interviewer to remind him the date and
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Published: April 15, 2009
NYU / Stern MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 2 / On-campus / Adcom
Overall the interview was very conversational and I probably over-prepared using the questions on this site and others. My interviewer was friendly and was definitely familiar with my application and my profile. How did you choose to attend [undergrad A]? Walk me through your background, how did you end up at [company A) after college? He made a reference to my post MBA goal, asked me to elaborate on specifically what I want to do. Talked about the state of the economy, importance of students/applicants being flexible in their career endeavors. If your goal doesn’t work out, what is your
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INSEAD MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 1 / September Intake / Off-campus / Alumni
The first INSEAD interview took place with an alumnus at the end of 2008 in the alumnus office. He was working as strategy consultant for Technology-oriented consulting company. Half of the interview was in English, the other half in French. The general atmosphere of the interview was friendly. My interviewer asked some difficult questions but did it in a nice way so you do not feel uncomfortable when answering them. It took place very early in the morning as he only had out-of-office availabilities. If you face this, really make sure you have a good night sleep beforehand! We went
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UCLA / Anderson MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 1 / Alum / Off-campus
Originally shared by The Parisian MBA My UCLA interview took place at the end of 2008 in a hotel bar with a french UCLA alumnus and lasted for 1h15, 30min in english and the rest in french. Here is how it went: When I received the notification I got preselected for an interview, I contacted the selected alumnus and we agreed to make the interview in a place convenient for both of us. As he let me decide the place, I chose a hotel bar in my street where I often saw business people having discussions. When
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Berkeley / Haas MBA Interview Report: Round 1 / Alumni / Off-campus
Round 1 / Alumni / Off-campus / First Shared by The Parisian MBA My Haas interview took place at the end of 2008 in a hotel restaurant with a spanish Haas alumnus and lasted for 1h in english the all time. Here is how it went: When I received the notification I got preselected for an interview, I contacted the selected alumnus and we agreed to make the interview in a place convenient for both of us. He offered me to do the interview in a restaurant of the Paris business district. As it was only 100m
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MIT / Sloan MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 2 / Off-campus / Adcom / Accepted!!!
I was notified of my interview fairly late and only had a few days to prepare. I was *extremely* nervous due to everything I was reading about MIT interviews and how insanely difficult they are. I was expecting a barrage of questions and then probing on everything I said… but the questions really weren’t too bad, and his style was laid back. We talked a lot about my nonprof stuff which probably took up a good 10 min (and helped me calm down too). The interviewer was very, very casual and genuinely interested in what I had to say. We
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UCLA / Anderson MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 3 / Student / On-campus
I interviewed today with a FEMBA student at UCLA campus. The only question I was not ready for was: Describe a situation where you had to make an ethical decision. Also, when you check in for the interview, they give you a pink card. On the front side of the card, you fill out your information. The back of the card is to be filled by the person who interviews you and contains detailed questions on what they liked about you. If you have time, you may want to review the evaluation questions. It may help you take better control
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Published: March 26, 2009
Berkeley / Haas MBA Interview Report: Round 1 / Off-campus / Alum
Probably one of my best interviews till date, and everyone I spoke to confirmed that it sounded really good. The interview questions were ones that could have thrown me off-balance, but my interviewer was awesome – Smiling all the time, so I was so relaxed I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I interviewed off-campus with an alum. I arrived about 1/2 hour early, and since my interviewer also walked in around the same time, we decided to start earlier. My interviewer was alum from the 2006 batch. I tried to find out some background info about him before the interview, but
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Published: March 24, 2009
Kellogg MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 2 / Alumnus / Off-campus
Interview took place in January 2009 in the office of a male alumnus who is a senior executive at a major Australian bank. The interview was scheduled for one hour but ended up extending a full two hours. The tone was relaxed and casual but certainly even keeled – never too serious yet never overly friendly. There was a very distinct lack of structure – we began by talking about work/life in general and slowly transitioned to the school itself. It was an hour before we actually addressed any of the official questions yet by this time the following topics
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Published: March 24, 2009
Berkeley / Haas MBA Interview Report: Round 2 / On-campus / Second-year Student
These were my interview questions. I interviewed with a student on campus for Round2 (and waitlisted): Walk me through your resume. What are your career goals? Why Haas? Tell me about this experience [X] which you listed in your resume. What did you learn? What do you do in your spare time? What book are you currently reading? Why did you choose it? What is one thing in your application that you did not mention that you would like the admissions committee to know? What do people like about you?
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