Top 5 MBA Interview Questions
Interviews, interviews, interviews … it’s all anyone seems to be talking about these days, and with good reason. Harvard Business School, Michigan Ross and Chicago Booth have already sent out their Round 1 interview invitations. Stanford GSB starts rolling out invites this week and UPenn/Wharton is also scheduled to release all its invites this week.
Instead of driving yourself crazy with worry, why not buckle down and perfect your answers to the questions you are most likely to be asked? To help you prepare, we’ve scoured the Clear Admit Interview Guides and Interview Archive to compile our very own Top Five MBA Interview Questions list of the questions that most often make their way into MBA admissions interviews at leading schools.
While these refer primarily to questions asked as part of blind interviews, they can certainly also come up as part of non-blind interviews. In those cases, you’ll want to be prepared to go deeper into some of the specific experiences you shared in your application (check out Clear Admit’s quick refresher on the difference between blind and non-blind interviews).
For detailed insights into each school’s interview process, the questions they ask, and how to tackle those questions, access Clear Admit’s Interview Guides.
Top Five MBA Interview Questions
Walk me through your résumé.
The real trick with answering this open-ended question is to gauge how much detail is too much. Imposing a structure can help. “It’s best to err on the side of brevity,” says Alex Brown, who asked this very question of many hopeful Wharton applicants during his time working in admissions at the Philadelphia school. “Think of this résumé walk-through as simply laying the groundwork for deeper discussion of your background and accomplishments.” A good idea is to develop a two- to three-minute run-through, beginning with where you grew up and went to college, what you studied and perhaps something you enjoy outside of work. Then move into a concise overview of your work experience, beginning with your first job and continuing to present day, making sure to explain why you made the choices you did and what you learned in each major role. “This kind of high-level overview gives your interviewer the perfect opportunity to ask for more detail about specific points if she wants it,” Brown says. If you have a gap of three or more months due to unemployment or some other cause, you should be prepared to address it, Brown warns, although in a short résumé question as part of the interview, it may not come up.
What are your career goals?
With any luck, you will already have a well-honed response to this question, developed and refined as part of the process of writing your application essays. “If you are looking to shift industry or function, this is your chance to explain your reasoning and that you have carefully thought through what may be involved in successfully making the transition,” Brown says. Keep in mind why the adcom is asking this question, Brown suggests. “They want to know how focused you are on the MBA and whether you are in a position to take advantage of the resources business school offers or at risk of getting overwhelmed,” he says. Present a very clear post-MBA goal, Brown recommends. “Schools prefer to admit students who can explain exactly what kind of job they want to pursue beyond graduation and articulate how it will set them up to obtain their long-term career objectives,” he says. Schools are also looking, with this question, to see if your goals make sense and are feasible in light of your past experiences; are you able to articulate a clear path and plan?
Why X school?
Here, schools want to see if you have really done your research on their program and whether you are a good fit with their culture. So, do your research. “I recommend a three-pronged approach to make a truly compelling case for your interest in a given school,” Brown says. Start with academics, he says, naming specific courses and professors that you are interested in. “Remember, your interviewer wants to see that you have really researched the school.” Second, mention specific clubs, conferences and other special programs that will help position you for your career goals. “Even better, show how you would contribute to the school community, such as by organizing an event to share specific knowledge you bring with your future classmates,” Brown suggests. Third, show that you have a good understanding of the school’s community, culture, class size and location and have thought about how these fit with your personality, goals and background. “If you have visited campus or talked with current students or alumni—definitely say so, lead with this.” Brown stresses. “Beyond showing that you’ve invested time in getting to know the school, this also helps your interviewer have a mental picture of you on campus.” he says.
Give us an example of a time you took a leadership role.
The way interviewers ask this question can vary—sometimes you’ll be asked directly about your most notable leadership experience and other times you’ll be invited to describe your general leadership style. “It’s important to keep a few basic principles about leadership in mind,” Brown says. “A leader is someone who has a strong vision or point of view and is able to see things others are not,” he continues. A leader must also have excellent communication skills. Choose an example that demonstrates these points. An ideal leadership example will describe a time when you negotiated with and persuaded key stakeholders, such as clients or a supervisor, to buy into your vision and then delegated the work and managed colleagues or juniors. “If you encountered obstacles along the way, share how you dealt with them,” Brown says. “If possible, you should also show success through quantified results,” he adds. As important as a successful outcome is demonstrating how you drew on the help of others where necessary. “No one is successful on their own,” Brown says. Show that you understand that strong leadership means teamwork and playing well with others, he says.
Tell us about a time you failed.
As tempting as it may be to say that you’ve never failed at anything…that is not what that adcom is looking for here. “In fact, this is a favorite question for those who appear to be ‘rock stars’ on paper,” Brown says. But rock stars make mistakes, and having an example in your back pocket of a time things did not go according to plan can show humility as well as your capacity to learn and grow. “The best answer to this type of question ends with a more recent experience where you took the lesson you learned from the failure and put it into play, affecting a better outcome.” he says.
These five questions certainly don’t cover everything your interviewer is likely to ask you, but they do touch upon some of the things you’re most likely to be called upon to share as part of your MBA admissions interview. You can take some of the anxiety out of the interview process by giving each one some thought, drawing on some relevant experiences from your past, and practicing the responses you would give. Don’t practice too much so that you appear overly rehearsed—since it’s important to seem both authentic and genuine—but prepare enough so that you’ll be ready to truly put your best self forward.
This article has been republished with permissions from Clear Admit.
HBS Says Cancer Researchers Can Learn Analytics Lessons From Under Armour and Wayfair
Harvard Business School recently published an article that illuminates the lessons precision oncologists and other cancer researchers can glean from the tactics cutting-edge direct-to-consumer (DTC) companies like Uber, Wayfair, Under Armour and Peloton use to “persuade customers to provide and share their data.”
Hot MBA Jobs: Marketing Director
For that rare breed of extroverted interpersonal ninja who’s able to see the micro amidst the macro, take the temperature of any given cultural moment and articulate complex information to diverse audiences, you just might be a natural marketing director.
Hot MBA Jobs: Investment Banker
Investment banking and MBAs have always had an interesting love affair; they’re on, they’re off, they’re hot, they’re cold. Truth be told, in recent years, fewer MBAs are going into investment banking and investment banks are hiring fewer MBAs. Instead, MBAs are choosing a broad range of career paths including entrepreneurship, and investment banks are hiring Masters in Finance students and graduates. Continue reading…
Hot MBA Jobs – Nonprofit Fundraiser
It goes without saying—everybody likes making money. But while everyone loves some extra change in their bank accounts, some really get a sense of accomplishment working directly for a cause or nonprofit corporation.
Forté Foundation Launches New Men as Allies Initiative
Reaching gender equity on business school campuses is far from just a women’s issue, which is precisely why the Forté Foundation is calling on men to get involved. Drawing on successful programs already underway on campuses spanning from Harvard Business School (HBS) to Stanford Graduate School of Business, Forté today announced its new Men as Allies Initiative. It is designed to invite and encourage male students to get involved in a growing movement toward gender equity in business school classrooms and the broader business world.
The idea for the new initiative grew out of a session with sponsors at Forté’s annual conference focused on HBS’s Manbassadors ally group, according to Forté Executive Director Elissa Sangster. Forté is a non-profit consortium of leading corporations and top business schools committed to helping women lead fulfilling careers in business. “We started talking with our sponsors about how Forté could support similar initiatives at our member schools’ campuses,” she says. “We began to brainstorm about what we could provide so it didn’t end up that every time someone wanted to do this they had to call the Manbassadors and ask them the same questions over again.”
Forté recognized at least ten top business school campuses that already have male ally programs in place. HBS, Kellogg’s Northwestern School of Management and Duke’s Fuqua School of Business led the charge, forming their groups in 2013. The following year, UCLA Anderson, Michigan’s Ross School of Business, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and Stanford GSB got with the program. In 2015, Columbia Business School and NYU Stern joined in, and London Business School (LBS) created its own club earlier this year. Calling themselves everything from Manbassadors (Anderson, HBS, LBS, CBS) to WiMEN (Stanford) to the 22’s (Wharton, a reference to the 22 percent gain necessary to close the gender pay gap), the groups work in partnership with women’s business organizations on campus to adopt behaviors that support gender equity in classroom discussion and beyond.
Conducting focus groups with existing groups, Forté began to collect information on what has been successful, what pitfalls and challenges can be avoided and what types of events and activities best serve to open up dialogue. “We also conducted external environmental research, identifying inspirational role models and people leading the charge in the business world,” Sangster says.
The new Forté Men as Allies Initiative is designed to provide potential male allies at schools that don’t already have existing groups with the tools they need to establish their own Manbassador-type groups. As part of the new initiative, Forté has launched a new “Men as Allies” website featuring a toolkit geared toward male students that includes reasons to start a group, steps to follow to do so and information on activities and events that have been successful on other campuses. “Our hope is that as men graduate from MBA programs, they are able to take some of these skills they have been developing and look for ways to engage in the workforce and make that impact even more widespread,” Sangster says.
A Tipping Point
There has been a growing movement in recent years to enhance gender equity in business and society, evidenced by the United Nations’ HeForShe initiative, Catalyst’s Men Advocating Real Change (MARC), and the White House’s Let Girls Learn program. In summer 2015, the 47 business school leaders convened at the White House specifically to address the gender imbalance among MBA classes. In addition to male ally groups, many business schools also feature school-wide initiatives designed to tackle gender equity at the cultural, academic and admissions levels, such as the Gender Equity Initiative (GEI) at UC Berkeley’s Haas School and the HBS Gender Initiative.
“We may have reached a tipping point as more women are pursuing an MBA and more men are interested in supporting gender equity,” Sangster continued. “While we are making great progress, and getting closer to 40 percent women’s enrollment at our member business schools, initiatives like this one that foster inclusiveness, will help us get to gender parity faster.”
Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management and Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business provided generous financial support of Forté’s new initiative, and diversity experts Anne Weisberg and Lisa Levey, among others, contributed to its development.
Sangster points out that there are multiple benefits for men who get involved in gender equity initiatives. “It gives them insight and information and resources to use in developing their own leadership styles and creating their own perspective on what’s important not only to advance women in the workforce but also just to be a well-rounded advocate and manager of talent in their organizations,” she says. “It’s really about fine-tuning their leadership perspective and leadership skills. Business school is a safe place to stretch your muscle in this area and think hard about the kind of leader you want to be and how to become that leader.”
