Chicago MBA Round 2 / Alum / Off-Campus (February 19th, 2010)
The interview took place in a coffee shop. I reached 30 minutes before time and took time to settle down and got myself a coffee. I was dressed in business formals and waited till the alum arrived. He was a 2007 graduate. He had a copy of my resume with him. He got himself a coffee and we sat down to talk. He explained that the interview would go in as just another input to the whole application process and is just a way to verify what I wrote in the essays. He started asking questions then for about an hour and after that I asked him a few questions. The questions were all familiar b-school interview questions. He maintained good eye contact throughout and was NOT taking down any notes. It was a very long interview (1.5 hours)!
It was a pleasant experience and there was no stress at all. The interviewer was really helpful and gave a lot of insights about the school and the curriculum. He also had a lot of advice to give regarding the choice of career. He offered to talk later as well if I needed any help. I was very impressed with his eagerness to help.
Learning Points: Coffee shops can be tricky places for interview as they can get very noisy. Make sure you choose the quietest corner possible. Also, the alum was under the impression that I was a round 3 applicant which I found out pretty late in the interview but I immediately corrected him.
Questions:
Walk me through your resume and he asked follow-up questions about a few specific projects I had done.
Why MBA? Why now?
Leadership experience, Failure experience
How will you use these experiences at Booth.
You will not meet most of you classmates after the two years at school. How will you make sure you learn the most from this distinguished set of people? How will YOU make sure they learn from you? He later said that he was trying to basically ask: Why would you be a good fit at Booth?
He picked up two extra curricular activities listed on my resume and asked me to explain.
He asked me to pick up one substantial accomplishment that I am proud of. I picked a community service project.
Anything else that the Adcom should know.
Questions |
