myice

HBS sent me an email with a location and time in New York City, where I lived. The atmosphere was quite formal and respectful. I wore a suit and tie. I only saw one other interview candidate while there who was quite serious, so we both just sat in silence before our time. Brit Dewey, the admissions director, came out and took me to a small room for the interview. She had thoroughly reviewed my application beforehand. Her questions were about certain parts of my application. She asked me to elaborate on things that I had written or on certain experiences from my recommendations. I had a few minutes for questions of my own. The interview lasted a little over a half hour.

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myice

Round 2 / Hub office Off-campus / Adcom (Published March 17th, 2010)

Interview lasted 30 min. Questions were broad (see below). I never got interrupted, no specific follow-up.

Can you tell me more on your academic experience. I see you have studied at university X and did an exchange to university Y. Can you tell me a bit more on those choices and the challenges you faced?
Why did you then choose to work in consulting and why firm Z in particular?
Can you tell me more about EC activity X?
Since last year, you got promoted. How did your leadership style evolve to deserve that promotion?
How are you different from all the other consultants?
In class, what type of profiles are you looking to meet? From who would you like to learn something?
What is your career vision? What are the steps you plan on taking to get there? What are the challenges you will face? How will an HBS MBA help you?
You seem very busy, you have a lot of EC activities. If you had more time, what would you do more?
How do you keep yourself informed? What do you read?
You are a re-applicant. Is there anything you would like to tell me about how you have evolved since last year?
I asked one question and then was walked out of the office...

myice

Round 1 / Hub office Off-campus / Adcom (Published January 13th, 2010)

The interview covered pretty much my entire life in the 30 mins. My adcom interviewer grilled me on details of every experience she asked me to talk about. We spoke at length on an internship experience more than three years ago - this surprised me.

My interviewer was also very interested about my college experience in the US. I had based a few essays on this, so she wanted me to support that I think.

We spent a few minutes talking about my career vision and I was able to reinforce what I had already written about in the application.

She would change the topic under discussion almost every few minutes which made the interview fairly stressful.

I've been waitlisted after the interview.

myice

Round 1 / On-campus / Adcom (Published December 11, 2009)

My interview was on campus. We started on time and after a little small talk about the weather and her intro blurb, we started with the lead-off question, "Describe your career progression, and talk about the most important things you learned about yourself along the way".

Then a lot of questions regarding my current full-time job:

Why did you choose to join this company?
What was different about your previous job compared to this one?
What was the most surprising aspect about this company when you first joined?
What has been your greatest challenge since joining?
Tell me about a project that you’ve worked recently where you exhibited leadership.
How has this job impacted your career goals?
Other general questions:

What motivates you to get out of bed every morning?
Who is a leader that you admire and why?
What will you do if you don't get into business school?
What’s a question that you thought I was going to ask you but didn’t?
She did not ask me for questions because she had told me before we started that the interview was meant to get to know me and that she won't aim to leave time for questions. We ended on time and she asked me if there was anything else I wanted to add. Then we exchanged thanks and she walked me out.

myice

Round 1 / On-campus / Adcom (Published November 23, 2009)

I scheduled my interview at 4:30pm on a Monday thinking that I could visit classes in the morning, review notes a bit, and then interview. However, in the rush to schedule a slot (the invitation letter explains that slots fill up within minutes of publishing the slots), I didn't realize that my target date was a day that didn't offer any class visits. I recommend people to have a #1, #2, and #3 time/date as they wait for the slots to be published and to conduct thorough research on what days are good (i.e. which days offer class visits).

The decision to interview so late in the afternoon on-campus turned out to be a great one because I arrived on campus around 11am and received an interviewing welcome packet from Dillon House. That means, I knew way ahead of time who was interviewing me. Researching my interviewer turned out to be extremely valuable because I found out that he was a Naval Academy graduate and a communications officer with the Marines. As a West Point graduate and a communications officer with the Army, I thought that this information was important in shaping some of my response strategies. I had prepared for the interview anticipating a civilian adcom member with no military experience meaning I'd have to "civilianize" my vocabulary and explain experiences in a watered-down manner. I also found out that he was very involved with community service activities so I was able to know that this area would be particularly important for him. Bottom line: try to schedule an afternoon interview if possible so that you have some time to learn about your interviewer (I think this would only work for those who scheduled an interview on-campus).

The interview started off as soon as I got into his office. He asked, "How was your day? How did you spend it?" I didn't realize that the interview had started so I gave him the typical, "Great! How was yours?" I quickly figured that this was the first question so I told him that I had spent the day touring the campus, but wasn't able to sit in on a class. I told him that I had visited this time last year and he started asking me about that visit, went into the Case Method. The entire time, he was furiously scribbling notes onto his yellow notepad. There was definitely no scripted or standard set of questions. Every question, for the most part, fed off of my response to the previous question. There were some times where he showed that he had thoroughly read through my application and had prepared some questions. For example, he said, "On your resume, you noted that you were ranked #1 against your peers in most of your positions. Why do you think you did so well?" Strange question and I thought a bit harder than your typical one. He also noted my second boss by name and asked what she would say would be my strengths and weaknesses.

As soon as I got the interview invitation, I scoured the internet for past HBS questions as well as general b-school questions. I made note cards and wrote general bullet points on the back of each. There was a total of about 115 cards and I prepared by reviewing these and having friends/current HBS students ask me questions based on those cards. I would say that 90% of the questions I was asked by my interviewer were ones that I had already prepared for. The 10% were extremely tailored to my particular situation/background and there was no way I could have anticipated those. However, I know that my preparation definitely helped.

At this point, I don't know whether I've been admitted or not, but I do feel fairly good about the interview. I urge everyone to prepare, but to seriously keep in mind that you don't want to sound like you're regurgitating canned responses during the actual interview. Preparation should help you organize themes and individual experiences to have them at your disposal so that you can refer to them during the questioning. Preparation should not be like preparing for a speech where you know exactly what you're going to say and in what order.

Final point, preparation should give you confidence that you know your stuff and mock-interviews should put you somewhat at ease during the actual interview b/c the experience wouldn't be alien. It's much easier said than done to remain calm and composed. I was very nervous but I don't think I showed it. Just remember to stick to the points you want to bring across, repeat the question in your head before opening your mouth (so that you don't forget what you were asked), and SMILE!

Good luck everyone!

myice

Round 2 / On-Campus / Adcom (Published March 16th, 2009)

I had my interview with an admissions officer on-campus. She was very friendly and took a minute to explain what I should expect, that the interview is not a make or break thing in the admissions process. We then quickly dived into the interview.

She started with a very broad question about my high school experience. How was it? Tell me how it happened? (one of my essays was about my high school experience).
Then she started asking me questions about my first job out of college: What were you thinking when you went into X? Next several questions were very specific to this job. (What do you think about their training program? Who do you admire in that industry? What's the company's position compared to its competitors? Where is the industry heading?)
Then she switched to talk about my current job. (Tell me about your typical day? What worries you about the company? What's its long term strategy?)
Lastly, she asked me if there was anything I wanted her to ask me with time for 2 questions.
It was exactly 30 minutes and felt very short because she had a ton of follow-up questions to ask me. She often cut me off to ask the next question, but she seemed genuinely interested in hearing from me and was very polite. My advice is to be ready to talk about ANYTHING on your resume and your entire application, not just your essays. Overall, I enjoyed it. We'll see what happens.

myice

Round 1 / Off-campus / Adcom (Published March 11th, 2009)

I had an interview for R1 with an admissions board officer for Harvard Business School. The interview was held in an office which had been rented for the interviews in a very convenient location in London.

The admissions board officer was a young woman who was very welcoming and at once made me feel at ease. She was very straight forward and informed me that the interview would be 30 minutes in length - she would interview me for 27 minutes and I would have the chance to ask questions in the last 3 minutes. The interview proceeded exactly in that manner. The nature of the questions were very specific (no general why business school, why Harvard types of questions) and it was clear that the admissions officer had gone through my application in detail. It was very important to have reviewed my application before hand and to have been able to substantiate all the examples and details which I had provided. The question themes that stood out during the interview were for leadership, teamwork, ability to take initiative, problem solving and being able to stand out amongst others.

In terms of specific questions that I recall these are some:

As you know there are many people applying from a finance background, why should we consider you vs. other candidates?
In essay 1, you mention you lead a team of people while working in India, please describe how you were able to execute this and what aspects you found difficult.
Why did you choose to major in X at your undergrad university?
Why have you chosen to you leave your job at this time?
Is there anything else that you haven't mentioned in your application that you would like to share at this time?
What are your plans before business school?
Who would you want to sit next to in your first year at HBS?
Also, I found it useful to insert anecdotes I knew about the school while answering more general questions to demonstrate I had done my research.

myice

Round 2 / On-campus / Adcom (Published March 10th, 2009)

I had my interview on-campus with a representative from the adcom and it was *nothing* like what I learned online or from alumni. The interview was very personal and very stress-free.

The interviewer asked me nothing about why HBS or why MBA or why now or even why me. My background is in education and in nonprofit, so we mainly focused on my reasons for taking that path.

Apart from those questions were ones such as:

name a business leader you admire (non-government).
if you could have lunch with anyone in the world who would it be?
what would be your dream job?
The interview was 30-minutes on the dot. There was no time for questions. As I was exiting she asked how I liked my stay in the area, and I had a chance to talk about how much I loved a class I visited a few days ago.

I am happy with how the interview went, but I obviously do not know what that means or how it will play into what I hear come April 2. Good luck to everyone reading this!

myice

Round 2 / Off-campus / Alum (Published March 6th, 2009)

I had my interview in Europe and it was completely different from what I expected and learnt on internet.

I have received few questions and they were all extremely articulated (2-3 sentences per question), open ended and somewhat vague.

I haven't received any follow-up question, no additional examples to provide, no details about my work, no current situations (at work or in the world). We were mainly talking about things mentioned in my application and, I suppose, by my recommenders. It sounded like a conversation among two computers: nor stressful niether friendly, just professional.

My questions were (synthesis):

walk me through your education, why HBS MBA
confront the two working places you experienced
another work experience
cultural clashes and cultural fit
what can you contribute to HBS case method discussion
you and the alumni network in the long run
Then a few questions from my side, two burning ones, which made us exceed the allocated time.

Most of the questions were standard, so I had prepared about what to answer, for the others I tried to answer at my best and rambled a bit in search of content.

Frankly, I don't know how it went, because the interviewer limited any body communication feedback. I missed the answer on the last one, talking only about what I would take from the network and didn't mention what I would contribute. A big mistake I invite you not to do.

Hopefully, other part of the application will cover that part better.

A note on thank you notes: it is hard to have an email to write a personal thank you email. My guess would be that HBS doesn't welcome them. If in particular cases you feel the inerviewer had exceeded the normal politeness, than you can write to the adcom in general.