Had my on-campus interview at Wharton at the end of February. On the day of interview, I strongly suggest that you visit a class or allow time to talk to students before the interview as it will probably notch up a bit your enthusiasm about Wharton.
I sat in the waiting area with other interviewees, when a second-year student called my name and asked me to follow him to an office nearby. The amazing thing about Wharton is that first and second year students stop by the waiting area before the interview and they try to get you relaxed and warm you up for the interview.
Funny enough I had met my interviewer during my last year’s visit at Wharton even though I doubt he recalled it. He asked me to sit down and started off with the usual chit-chat (how’s your visit so far, how did you get here etc). Then after glancing over my resume he asked about my undergraduate experience. I tried to keep it short (1.5-2 min) as I wanted to spend more time later on Why MBA, Why Wharton. Then he proceeded to ask me about my career choices (I’ve worked for 4 different companies in 6 years). He followed up with 1-2 more questions on the subject. My questions were slightly different from the usual – walk me through your resume, Why MBA, Why Wharton etc?
More or less, these are the questions that I was asked.
- What can you tell me about your undergraduate experience?
- Tell me about your career choices?
- Why did you leave company X for company Y?
- Why did company Y offer you such a position with dramatic increase in responsibilities?
- How would your subordinates describe your leadership style?
- How would an MBA help you with the long term career goal? (no short term career goal question, so I had to weave that into my response)
- Why would an MBA make sense now?
- What is your plan if you are not admitted to an MBA program this year? (my answer: continue to follow my long term plan through alternative means i.e. networking, stick to a specific plan on how to achieve it, be creative)
- How has your leadership style evolved?
- If I were to ask your boss about a weakness of yours, what would be his answer? (note: not what do you think is your weakness)
- Is there smth in your application that you would like to address, which you did not have a chance to do in the application?
- Do you have any questions for me? (I asked him a housing question about Center City, which he seemed glad to answer as we went back and forth chatting about it for almost 5 minutes)
Overall, I had a pleasant interview experience. The interviewer was a very personable and intelligent person as he did not seem to ask many off the book questions. Instead, he asked questions that tended to probe more about my personality and career/life choices.
At the end, I succinctly told him that I was very excited about Wharton and that could not wait to attend such a great school, and left it at that. He handed me a business card, but I did not feel compelled to reciprocate. The waiting continues until March 16.
