09年 HBS MBA Interview 面试精华汇总

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A taste of HBS interview questions:

 

Prepare at least three questions for the interviewer in case being asked to.

 

Work/career related:

 

1.     Tell me about your career. Why you made choices along your career ­ starting with what choices you had graduation.

2.     When you find your first job, what are the criteria you used and why you ended up choosing the company you are working for now?

3.     Why you chose your undergraduate major? Why Finance?

4.     Tell me about a time you had a conflict with a client and how you resolved it.

5.     Tell me about a time when you dealt with a difficult person at work/client. What did you do?

6.     Tell me about a time when you were challenged at work.

7.     What did you find most challenging dealing with your clients? What’s their problem?

8.     Describe a time you had to implement a change and make your team follow you.

9.     Can you describe to me what you do pretending I’m a lay person?

10.  Why are you good at what you do?

11.  What would be your dream job (if you had no considerations for money etc.)? What would you be doing if you had not taken your current job.

12.  On short-term/ long-term goals. What do you think would be the challenge in reaching your goal?

13.  On a scale of 1 to 10, compared to your peers, rank yourself in analytical ability. In drive? In confidence? In general, being better than people?

14.  What kind of position do you see yourself in 15 years from now?

15.  Looking back today, what is the one career decision that you think was wrong.

16.  How do you maintain your passion in a place that lacks accountability?

17.  Which company did I admire most and why

18.  Ideally what would you like to achieve in your career.

19.  What would I do with my professional career if MBA's did not exist.

min356478

many  thanks !!!

乱草花儿

 great, thanks

lilyblue_zl

踏破铁鞋啊 终于找到了

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hbs shanghai interview share有点忘记了，俺有些紧张当时：

tell me more about your extracurricular. ( i was confused then because i had detailed them in my essay. )
why choose my major
what makes my college special to me
why not work first but apply directly
why hbs
about my intern
my passion
my favorate book
one person that i admire
what is most important to me
what i am proud of
what makes me special
is there any question that you think i should ask but i have not
do you have any questions for me

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刚面试完HBS晚上约的9点，大约进行了半小时，非常准时开始，时间也恰好半小时结束。

由于是电话面试，只能从面试官声音及声调来判定情形。她人挺随和，问题都是根据材料来的，比较随机，会根据你的回答进行一些追问。

就我个人而言，今天的问题基本属于无法准备型的，我都是现场发挥。希望大家在准备时要对这种情况有准备。

一年多的考试、申请终于在2007年12月3日晚9点半结束。不管最后HBS的结果如何，我都算是解放了。

祝大家好运！

myice

分享个BW上关于HBS去年中国ADMIT情况花边

STATS BELOW:  HBS ENTERING CLASS THIS YEAR KIDS FROM MAINLAND CHINA. IT CONFIRMS MY OWN SENSE OF THINGS, ESP. THE FACT THAT MAINLAND ADMITS ALMOST ALWAYS COME FROM BRAND NAME CONSUMER GOODS COMPANIES, OR TOP CONSULTING FIRMS--I AM  NOT SURE ABOUT FURTHER REMARKS WHICH SUGGEST THAT BANKERS AND PE KIDS ARE LESS WELCOME, BUT IT IS POSSBILE THAT AT THE TIME PE AND IB'S DID NOT RECRUIT FROM TOP CHINESE COLLEGES. [AND MAYBE CONSULTING FIRMS DID???]

THIS NOTE FR. A FRIEND:

Very interesting to learn from one friend who get into HBS from Mainland China the following admission pool, see if this is helpful to you:
 
8 students from mainland China. 3 from P&G, 2 from L'oreal, 1 from LEK, 1 from Mckinsey. Most of them have 3 years working experience.
 
Also, many of my friends (top tier consulting + private equity) are waitlisted and dinged.

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Had HBS interview yesterday
Just had my HBS interview yesterday with an alum. I had no time to prepare for this one, as I worked till 11pm on the day before, and was very busy yesterday whole day at work. But I did do the following:
1) re-read my HBS application and reference letters (if you have access)
2) Quickly look up the alum's background - you can normally guess his company name through his email address
3) Anticipate questions and write down key points - I don't like to write out the whole answer as I might forget how to say the exactly
I think the benefit of having an alum interview is that: 1. you will have less competition. The alum will probably interview only 1 or 2 candidates while the adcoms have to do dozens. 2. you have more time and more relaxed. No other interviews are scheduled back to back. But of course, adcom might have more say on the admission than an alum.

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HBS On Campus Interview
I had my HBS interview on campus yesterday. It was scarily friendly. The adcom smiled and wrote a lot on her yellow pad throughout my 35 mins interview. No cold face and hard questions, even no leadership and career goals questions. So now I am very confused. Anyway, here are the questions - very specific to my experience so I will generalize here.
- why this U.S. college?
- how did you get your internship at this bank? How did you get to Wall Street?
- She asked me to summarize my job in plain and easy-to-understand 3 sentences to someone who has no Wall St experience. A lot of follow-up questions here. I was surprised how much she wanted to know the details.
- Why transfer to your current group? What is the biggest challenge?
- What's your biggest weakness?
- How will you contribute to HBS?
- Anything else you want to cover that's not in your application? I used this opportunity to talk about a unique leadership experience.
- Anything else? (it's already over 30 mins and she wants more??) so I summarized how I have grown as a leader over the years and how I was looking to further develop my leadership qualities at HBS.
- At this point I remember I have another leadership story I haven't touched on so I asked if it's ok to tell her another one. She said yes and I did.
That's it. I can finally get serious at work, catch up with my friends, eat hot pots and go for happy hours now! Good luck to everyone!

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HBS on-campus interview and Ohio Fisher telephone interview experience.
I just finished HBS on-campus interview today and share with you guys my experience.
I got to the Admissions Office at around 10am and was given a package. Then I and other 4 applicants were brought by a student to a classroom and attended a class. I had a look at the case method by myself and I thought it was good. The atmosphere was vivid and the discussion was heated. (A pretty girl wore a bunny hat and ate bananas in class.) The professor played a guiding role and the students talked for roughly 70% of time.
After class, I took the interview for about 30 minutes. The interviewer didn’t have a list of questions. He only looked at my resume and asked me questions. The interview was a casual friendly conversation, not challenging or pressing as I imagined before. I summarized his questions in following three aspects:
Leadership
How do you think about leadership? How do you implement your idea of leadership? What do you do if you have differences with your teammates or superiors? What’s your long-term career plan back to China?
Contribution
How will you take use of your experience to contribute to HBS? How will you use your lawyer’s perspective in your MBA study? How can you actively participate and contribute to the case study method?
Difficulties
How will you deal with the MBA study since you don’t have a business background? How will you deal with numbers since you didn’t learn advanced mathematics in university?
I started my interview at 12pm and didn’t catch the student lunch. I took the information session in the afternoon. A second year student repeated all the main points same with those on HBS website.
All the questions were closely related with what I said. For example, he asked about my lawyer’s perspective because I said my undergraduate major was law. When I tried to connect my work experience with the case study method, he asked for some details. He also seemed to be interested in my undergraduate extracurricular activities and asked me to prove my leadership potentials from these activities.
My feelings and tips: HBS just wanted to use the interview to know the applicant better. So it is better to pay close attention to yourself and be familiar with your application materials. He didn’t ask why MBA or why HBS? He focused on how I could perform if enrolled. I think it is not necessary to remember some details of HBS and show off how you are familiar with this school. I think it is really important to focus on yourself and find the points where you match with and contribute to the HBS. Moreover, since the first characteristics they emphasize is leadership, it will be useful to stress your achievement in this regard. You needn’t have some leader’s title, but just tell something in which you play a leading role. If you don’t have business background, be prepared to say something that this will not negatively influence your future MBA study.