Round 3 / Alumnus / Off-campus (Published April 16th, 2010)
My interview was conducted by a 2007 graduate at his office in the evening. Very conversational and comfortable. He didn't really take any notes but was focused on the discussion. Lasted about an hour and a half.
Walk me through your resume. (this was the majority of the discussion)
Why do you want to go to business school?
What do you see yourself doing coming out of business school?
What other programs are you interested in at Haas? (beyond the ones I had mentioned that fit with my career plan)
Tell me about a time you were able to do something creative/not by the book. (military background)
Tell me about a time you... something about wanting to go in a different direction than a supervisor.
What kind of leader are you?
Do you have any questions for me?
RESULT: Admitted April 21st 2010
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Round 2 / Alumni / Off-campus (Published February 28th, 2010)
I applied round 2 in December 2009. Early in February I received an invite to Super Saturday in March. I had already visited Berkeley and could not take the time to visit again (from New York City) so I asked for off-campus interview instead. I was paired with a 2009 grad living and working in Brooklyn for a start up (something I'm interested in doing - we were paired because of our similar interests and goals).
We emailed to schedule it, and she asked me to suggest a coffee shop that was convenient to both of us. We met an evening after work - I went 15 minutes early to prepare and get a seat but she was already there so we started right after I got some tea. She was very friendly and nice though somewhat formal in her questioning. She definitely had a script and went by it - there wasn't much chit chat between my answers.
Questions were:
Walk me through your resume & your career to date
Tell me about your current role
Tell me about your experiencing managing people - are you managing direct reports now? What about cross functional teams like operations, finance, etc.?
Tell me about a time you experienced conflict with someone on your team & how did you resolve it?
What are your long and short term goals? Follow up - what kind of business do you want to start?
Why business school?
What will success look like for you? How do you define success?
Tell me about a time when you had an idea and you were swimming against the tide - what did you do to get your idea/plan across?
Why Haas?
If you were admitted, what's unique about you that you could contribute to Haas? What about outside the classroom?
Tell me something that's not on your resume
Any questions for me?
Took about 1/2 hour. Pretty standard stuff. A few seemed very vague and threw me a bit (like defining success... in business? life?) but she seemed to want me to interpret them however I wanted. Once we got to my questions for her, she relaxed considerably and opened up about her experiences at Haas. We spent the next half hour chatting and she was very helpful in giving me tips about classes, programs, etc. Definitely felt like the chemistry increased at that point and both of us could just be ourselves and get to know each other. Overall seemed to go well - fingers crossed!
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