UC Berkeley’s Haas MBA R1 / Alumni / Off-campus /(April 9th, 2009)
My Haas interview took place at the end of 2008 in a hotel restaurant with a spanish Haas alumnus and lasted for 1h in english the all time.
Here is how it went:
When I received the notification I got preselected for an interview, I contacted the selected alumnus and we agreed to make the interview in a place convenient for both of us.
He offered me to do the interview in a restaurant of the Paris business district. As it was only 100m from where I worked, I obviously agreed on that.
When I arrived, my interviewer introduced himself. He was a business developer responsible for the EMEA area for a software company I did not know. He was very friendly and very open to discussion and therefore I relaxed a bit. He then asked me to introduce myself and describe my career to date.
Afterwards he asked me the traditional MBA applicants questions:
Why MBA?
Why now?
What are your goals post-MBA?
Why Haas?
He then asked me about challenges I encountered at work. He had prepared the interview well because he asked me some very specific questions.
He also asked about my latest achievement at work and to explain the way I managed people. As I explained that I wanted to focus on Entrepreneurship at Haas, he asked me why I could not start a company without a MBA. He also questionned what were my views on how to set up a business, what kind of people I would need to help me in my projects.
Then he asked about what other schools I applied to and thought it was a coherent set of applications regarding my goals.
Then he asked me whether I had any questions. Therefore I could ask a lot about Entrepreneurship at Haas, Visa issues for Internationals and life at Berkeley.
Afterwards he asked questions about one of the hobbies I mentioned in my file. It was very interesting because one of his friends was doing it professionally and we talked about the challenges we usually meet in this hobby.
The interview finally ended and we said goodbye.
I particularly liked this interview because the interviewer was very experienced and had a lot of hindsight on career and life in general. It was really a pleasure to share ideas with him and get positive feedback from him.
I guess it went well as I finally got in for September 2009! |
