Brandon Royal - MBA Admissions: Interviews and Extracurriculars

2011 by Brandon Royal

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Published by:

Maven Publishing
4520 Manilla Road
Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2G 4B7
www.mavenpublishing.com

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GPO Box 440
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ISBN 978-1-897393-88-8 eBook

This eBook contains Chapter 7: Interviews and Chapter 8: Presenting Your Extracurriculars , as excerpted from the parent eBook Secrets to Getting into Business School . This work is also available in the Adobe PDF file format.

Technical Credits:

Cover Design: George Foster, Fairfield, Iowa, USA

Editing: Rosa Cays, Tempe, Arizona, USA

GMAT is a registered trademark of the Graduate Management Admission Council, which neither sponsors nor endorses this product.

Contents

Introduction

Twelve things to do for your business school interviews

Interview policies at leading business schools

Introduction

Two tips for presenting extracurriculars

Sample presentations

Chapter 8
Interviews

Poised, confident, knowing.
Motto of the perfectly prepared
interview candidate

Introduction

Interviews can be a potential variable in the MBA application process. Interviews are, depending on the school, either required for admissions, encouraged but not required, or simply not part of the normal admissions process. That said, virtually all top business schools in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia require interviews in order for candidates to be accepted. See exhibit 8.4.

Why do schools interview? This is similar to the questions: Would you hire a person on the basis of his or her rsum alone? Would you agree to marry another person on the sole basis of biographical information? Sometimes the reason given for interviewing is, To (try to) avoid false positives and false negatives. A false positive translates to, We accepted you (positive), but when you arrived at the school and we met you, youre not the person we thought you were. A false negative translates to, We rejected you (negative), but you turned out to be the businessman or businesswoman of the century. Both of these mistakes are embarrassing for a business school.

In cases where the interview is required, most schools follow the policy of offering interviews to a pre-selected number of applicants based on an initial review of their application packages. Schools will then make a final review of an applicants application package along with interview results and make final selections. To illustrate the process with some very simple numbers, a competitive business school will reject 50 percent of the applicants based on an initial review of their applications and offer interviews to the remaining 50 percent of the applicants. The school will then accept approximately half those applicants who interview, with a resulting acceptance rate hovering around 25 percent. For schools that have acceptance rates below 25 percent, these schools will either offer interviews to fewer students or accept a corresponding smaller percentage of those students who have completed interviews. Following a policy of making initial cuts allows business schools to interview virtually everyone who is admitted since only selected applicants are granted interviews. The substantial number of applications received at top-tier business schools is a major reason behind the current popularity of this policy. Nowadays, it is virtually impossible for schools to allow every prospective applicant a chance to interview.

Do not forget to schedule your interview well in advance (in the case that the interview is optional and you wish to interview) by contacting the admissions office of your selected schools, especially if you are working overseas. Waiting until the last minute will only help delay your application. Also, as a general strategy, try to interview first at schools that are not your first or second choice best schools second, lesser schools first as you will invariably get better at interviewing through practice. Remember to send thank-you letters to your interviewers.

Should I interview?

Given the option, the decision to interview pivots on whether you feel you can favorably advance your overall chance for admission. If you do not feel you can present yourself as a stronger applicant compared with the application package you have sent or are sending to a school, then it may be best not to interview. In this case, sit at home and let your application do the work for you. If you feel, however, that your paper application is weaker than you the person behind that application and you can articulate this, then by all means get out and get an interview and make an additional application to the school you are applying to.

Where do interviews take place?

Interviews, when required or encouraged by a school, may take place on campus, off-campus, or even over the phone. Off-campus interviews are carried out by alumni of each respective business school who live and work in that city. This is also true of interviews in international locales, where the interviewer is not only an alumni of the school in question, but also a member of the local business community. Occasionally, over-the-phone interviews are given particularly when it is impossible to schedule actual in-person interviews.

How are interviews structured?

Interviews may follow either a structured or an unstructured format. Business schools may have strict guidelines for interviewers to follow during the interview, as is the case when the admissions office makes a strong effort to obtain information that can be used to compare one candidate to another. Exhibit 8.1 is modeled on an actual interview evaluation form used by a top school. It requires their interviewers to fill out an interview form by rating the interviewee from 1 (low) to 5 (high) over five categories including personal presentation, maturity, motivation, self-confidence, and communication skills. Regardless of the structure of the interview, the ultimate question from the perspective of an alumni interviewer is, Would I like this person to have the same degree from the same school as I do?

Four interviewing points that are always worth adhering to include:

• Do be on time for your interview.
• Do dress conservatively.
• Do not tell jokes (but its okay to laugh at them).
• Do not get opinionated (remember the interviewer is always right).

Twelve Things to Do for Your Business School Interviews

What twelve things do you need to do to prepare for your business school interviews? Different schools look for different things, and individual interviewers may use different interviewing techniques. In general though, you, as an interviewee, need to have a good handle on what your career goals are, why you want an MBA, and why the particular business school you are interviewing for is a good match for you.

1. Review the schools website.
2. If you know who your interviewer will be, learn as much about them as you can.
3. Be able to defend every line of your rsum in the event an interviewer asks about it.
4. Be able to articulate to your career goals and career vision.
5. Be prepared to define and/or contrast the terms leadership and management.
6. Be able to articulate the advantages and disadvantages of the case-study method versus the lecture method.
7. Practice with mock interview questions.
8. Relax and be yourself.