Just finished my Wharton interview. I did the interview with an alumnus in my local city in Virginia. Overall, the interviewer was very nice and quite talkative. He made a lot of comments when I was talking about my career goal of going back to China in the financial services industry. He also offered me advices to be open with other career choices if I get in the school. The interview lasted for about 45 minutes, probably 15 minutes was him talking. The guy was very comfortable to talk with, very impressive, I wish I can leave such an impression to the people I talk to in the future. I guess a top MBA experience will help tremendously on that front.

Here are the questions, hope they will be helpful to other applicants here,

1. Career progression, why you made the choices? How you got here and where you are going?
2. What are the biggest challenges you see in realizing your career goal? ( I talked about my career goal of going back to China and work in the financial service industry towards the end of the first question, that's why he asked this question. I talked some general challenges faced by the industry and some personal challenges )
3. Why MBA, why Wharton?
4. What made you successful? ( he spent about 40 seconds asking the question, his original question was sth like "you've had a great career success so far, there are a lot of other folks how also had really impressive career achievements, blahblah, what do you think that made you stand out from the pool? )
5. Give me an example of making an important decision in your career/life. What kind of risk you took.
6. Talk about a disappointment in your life, how you handled it?
7. What do you do for fun

When I answered question 6, I felt he was asking more about a disappointment in my life, not necessary in my career. But I didn't prepare such an example, , so I still talked about a failure in my work and what I learned from it. I guess I didn't do very well on this particular one because after I finished, he said something like "let me push for the other direction again", then he asked question 7. I guess he wanted to see the other side of me. this could be a lesson learned.

Another experience I want share is don't be afraid to ask the interviewer to clarify the question. In my question 5, the interviewer spent 3 minutes asking the question, to be honest, I was a bit lost ( he probably realized his rambling too, ). After he finished, I clarified the question by rephrasing it back to him before I started to answer it. That helped a lot.

I am so glad that I am done with this process ( rewarding, but painful too ). Hopefully I don't have to repeat it again next year.

Hope everybody the best luck!