Interview was with a second-year student. She was nice, but all business. I felt it a bit difficult to connect with her, which made the interview feel a little more one-sided than I would have liked (and made me nervous). However, I don’t feel that any of her questions were particularly difficult or meant to trip me up in any way. One piece of advice: listen to the entire question before you start formulating your answer. Many of her questions were multi-part or asked for something different than what I expected after I heard the beginning of the question.
Here is what I remember of her questions:
- Walk me through your resume?
- Why MBA, why now?
- What are your goals for your time at Wharton and what will be your goals for the time immediately following and into the future?
- How have your achievements and work experience shaped your goals?
- What do you think will be the most difficult part of your time at Wharton?
- What do you think will be your best take-away from Wharton?
- What role will you take on in your learning team?
- If your co-workers came into this room and you weren’t here, what would they tell me are your strengths?
- What would they say are your weaknesses or development points?
- Tell me about some leadership experiences in your career?
- What do you think sets you apart from other applicants?
- What in your background shows that you’d be prepared for the quantitative work at Wharton?
- Are there any parts of your application that you are concerned that the Adcom might view as a weakness?
- What do you do for fun?
There were no tough philosophical questions, like “who is a leader you admire” or anything like that. The only time it went into that zone was when I took it that direction by discussing my specific long-term goals, and she probed into my opinions about my industry. Also, the student tended to ask follow-up questions to my answers like “can you give me an example” or “how did you go about implementing that idea”, etc., so be prepared to be asked for specifics.
