MBA Admissions Interview

The easiest trick that MBA admissions interviewer plays on applicants is the conversational nature of the interview. The guards are dropped and the meticulously planned talking points we prepared are all thrown out of the window. 

Some schools know this game and quickly switch gears from friendly to poking questions. And those who are not prepared tend to be shocked at how the ‘nice’ interviewer turns aggressive and probing.

When I advised a client to tone down the ‘me against the world’ narrative, she looked at me with puzzlement. A lot of the time, we face intense scrutiny and stress in our lives, and it seems that we are the only ones who have faced challenges. Applicants tend to adopt the vocabulary and narrative of those who have truly suffered and start using it in essays and interview scripts. The trouble is that many of your peers also use the same strategy.

I have yet to see a mock interview where the tone of the interview was bad, and the client could convert the interview to a Win. But I have asked deeper questions about developments in the client’s industries that were met with silence and, many times, errors in perception. Interestingly, such gaps didn’t affect their results. Interviewers are aware that applicants are often pigeonholed into a niche function and there are no incentives to look beyond their narrow focus.

I must admit that I am not good at small talk. When one is deeply aware of consulting time that could be utilized for the good of a reader or client, one tends to look at small talk as a waste of time. But so many interesting opportunities and insights came from those ‘casual’ conversations with partners, clients, and readers that had nothing to do with the deliverable.

I had a reader who planned a call with me and forgot to attend the session. He was such a person of integrity that after he got admitted to a top school, he kept promoting F1GMAT to compensate for that 1 missed appointment. That is not the case for many applicants. Many assume that the interviewer can adapt to their flexible timing.

In an interview, always assume that the interviewer is taking time out – most likely an unpaid hour to interview you and see if you fit in with the school’s culture. The person has the power to make or break your future.

The research about schools is obvious in the essay narrative. The Current Student with the Year will be mentioned in the essay, and a couple of ‘features’ of the school – experiential learning, student engagement, or collaboration with a potential employer to show why an MBA from ‘THE’ school is essential are also added. Schools have seen this in plenty, but then you mentioned something ‘extremely’ specific that a one-time event attendee or LinkedIn networker would find hard to decipher.

Anyone who has attempted the 250–300-word essays or edited the recommendation letter with such word limits knows the challenge of confining oneself to the 1-minute answer.

There is always a risk of turning your MBA Application resume, essays, and interview answers into a technical narrative. When the interviewer is from your industry, take the risk. For anyone else, your depth and tendency to go technical should be curbed. But even with such warning, there are scenarios where specific narratives and examples work over generic boilerplate answers or entries.

Round 1 interviews are tricky for anyone experiencing the interview process for the first time. Unlike job interviews where the functional role is defined and the expectations are set with job description, in MBA admissions, the questions are all about you - how you approached a crisis, how you pivoted, how you faced an ethical dilemma, the values that matter to you, the future that you foresee in your industry and why the school is your #1 choice.