Q) How should I answer the ‘biggest risk taken’ MBA Admissions interview question?
Q) How much time should I spend talking about my family in Interviews when the question is “Tell me about yourself”?
Q) Last year – I couldn’t convert two interviews. This admission season, I fumbled through an interview that obviously didn’t lead to a win. I have an interview next week with an M7 School and to say that I am nervous is an understatement. How should I control my nerves?
1) Use a Good Camera
We have picked three video cameras for the MBA Application Video recording/interviews. Borrow it from your friend if you don’t have one:
We rarely have the time or attention span to sit and read 2-hour a day for a week to complete a standard 250-300 page book. The admission team realizes that to succeed in an MBA program, you must be a voracious reader. On average, a top MBA candidate reads close to 25000 words per day – close to 50 pages of a standard book. During the test season, it would climb up to 50000 to 75000 words per day or 100 to 125 pages per day.
You might have written, re-written and edited the creases out of the failure essay. So when the admission team asks you again about failure, it might not come in a straightforward manner. Most Alumnus would rephrase the question to - what would be the biggest mistake you have made. Don’t get fooled by the wording. We all make mistakes, every day. That is part of learning. The question is not that.
It doesn’t matter whether you believe the interview would be conversational or formal, around 75% of the interviewer will switch from friendly to part confrontational in a role that we have all known as the Devil’s advocate. The interviewer might believe in your achievements, goals or even ambition to change the culture, but they want to see how you respond to skepticism.
Often, after the initial introduction, MBA candidates tend to relax and slouch in the chair. Consciously make sure that you don’t do this. It not only reflects your attitude towards the interview but would also impact how you sound.
When you have done the research and learned about the admission Manager’s passion, achievements or position on Global issues, write down an outline on what you will cover in the first 2 minutes of the interview. Agreeability leaves a far better impression over challenging the admission manager’s worldview. Find common ground and start the conversation or ask questions on topics that you both agree.
Business Schools might have obsessively evaluated your motivation to do an MBA, but don’t forget schools, and admissions team have motivations too. Selecting the best candidate is a goal not the motivation behind the evaluation. When an MBA Admission Interviewer - an Alumnus, takes time away from their schedule to meet you and discuss your plans, she is not getting paid by the hour as a consultant. For MBA Admission team, the interaction is much more focused. They cannot give excuses like “I was busy last week”. It’s their job.
Find out what motivates an MBA Admission Interviewer
There’s no substitute for preparation when it comes to feeling more relaxed and comfortable in the interview. Many applicants underestimate how much preparation it actually takes to have polished and compelling answers. When you feel confident in your answers, this helps to lower your nervousness. Another reason applicants get a case of the nerves before and during the interview is because there are elements of the interview that they can’t prepare for.
Build in plenty of time to arrive on time, which means 10-15 minutes before your in-person interview or to be settled in a quiet place to conduct a phone interview. Remember that interviewers get annoyed with bad connections during phone interviews. For phone interviews, make sure you know who is calling whom and that you know when the interview time is, especially if the interviewer is in a different time zone.
When Booth’s Admission team started asking this question consistently over the past years, candidates were wondering whether they should cite the $275,000 (highest post-MBA salary for 2013-14) post-MBA salary as success or give some profound statements like “the purpose of life is the life of purpose.” It is too deep, and MBA Admission interviewer will give that dreaded blank look.
Save the Robin Sharma quote for some other time.
Find out how to answer "How Do you Define Success?" (MBA Admission Interview Question)
As part of the HBS MBA Admission Interview process, you will have to fill up a post-interview reflection in the ‘Application Status’ page, within 24 hours of the interview. We hope you have crushed the interview, but here are five points worth considering for your post-interview reflection.
When MBA Admission interviewer asks this question, a candidate’s natural tendency is to answer the question from the narrow scope of creation, but if you pay close attention, the interviewer is looking for evidence of self-expression.
The definition of Creativity has become so intertwined with Original Thought that no matter how much you try to redefine it, the definition persists in the common psyche of our society. So don’t redefine it, relish the definition by offering evidence that you came up with an original thought, or in the context of your work – an original solution.
Here is how to answer: Are you Creative (For MBA Admission Interview)
Before answering this question, you should know the other commonly asked MBA Admission Interview Questions. Based on the distribution of questions – professional or personal, you should plan for this question. We recommend that you include a personal account; something inspiring that led you to develop your principal personality trait. It can be persistence, communication, or leadership.
Find out how to answer the Most Difficult Obstacle Question
For someone from a consulting background, the greatest professional achievement is when the consultant brings organizational changes that generate substantial cash flow, gives the client a competitive edge, and sparks a cycle of innovation. For investment bankers, raising millions of funds through cold calling, and for a technologist - creating a stable, secure system that serves millions of users are examples of greatest accomplishments.
Here is how you answer the question
After the initial pleasantries, 90% of the MBA Admission interviewer will start with this question – “Walk me through your resume.” A safe way to start the interview is to list your background chronologically from school, college, work, and MBA plan.
The risk-taking candidate will focus on one attribute that defines him; something that the interviewer can learn.
Tips to answer the "Walk me through the Resume Question"
F1GMAT's Winning MBA Essay guide will teach you how to transform your essay into a life journey with trials and tribulations that will move the admission team.
+ Over 245 Sample Essays (Read Previews of F1GMAT's Winning MBA Essay Guide Sample Essays here)
F1GMAT's Essay Guides
Harvard MBA Essay Guide (20 Sample Essays)
Example #1: Persistence Narrative
Background Information: The applicant – a design and music talent, shares her journey through several setbacks. She attributes curiosity to her growth.
Curiosity: Philosophy
Curiosity (Explained): Curiosity as a philosophy is tough to translate into a narrative unless you are from the creative industry or your contributions had an influence on a solution or an initiative.
MBA Essay Strategy: I wanted to capture the humanity of the applicant and her influence in music instead of just highlighting how she overcame multiple roadblocks to gain attention as a designer.
Theme: Persistence
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Life Starts at NO (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)
Example #2: International Community Building
Background Information: The applicant, a Machine Learning (ML) entrepreneur specializing in healthcare diagnostics, shares how his curiosity to learn other ML algorithms’ evolution in diagnosing Alzheimer’s, cancer, and heart disease transformed his platform into a global community.
MBA Essay Strategy: I wanted to show the applicant’s contributions in diagnostic from 2020 to 2024 by citing two events. Such examples build credibility instead of engagements that were recent. The evolution of the platform from an AI development community to a community for discussing the application of AI in diagnostics is captured through a ‘curiosity’ angle.
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Growth through Collaboration (AI in Healthcare) (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)
Example #3: Culture
Background Information: The applicant, an Entrepreneur from India narrates his first entrepreneurial experience – facilitating exchange of stamps in the late 1990s.
Theme: Culture
MBA Essay Strategy: Instead of addressing the biases in the investor community that could turn preachy, I wanted to focus on the applicant and his entrepreneurial journey by citing two entrepreneurial experiences – a platform(club) for stamp collection and his Grocery delivery App.
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – The American Dream (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)
Example #4: Addiction
Background Information: The applicant – a beneficiary of the foster home system, captures the sacrifice his adopted grandparents made to save him from a path of addiction. Paying it back through early intervention among teenagers and community engagement is the curiosity narrative.
Theme: Addiction
MBA Essay Strategy: My strategy is to capture a gratitude narrative in the first one-third of the essay to demonstrate motivation for starting the venture and dedicate the latter part of the essay to the unique solution
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Drug Addiction and Gaming (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)
Example #5: Scarcity
Background Information: The applicant, an education major, recognizes that 70% of all students in Kenya don’t have a computer. The curiosity that drives him to pivot from one solution to another is the growth narrative.
Theme: Innovation
MBA Essay Strategy: Often, innovation is captured with a ‘hero’ narrative where the applicant is the sole originator of an idea. I wanted to break that cliché and include a person from whom the applicant learned to use a concept called ‘scaffolding.’
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Scarcity (Growth-Oriented HBS Essay Example)
Example #6: FinTech
Background Information: The applicant captures a vulnerable moment of a beneficiary to compare his journey of side hustle before a technology giant noticed his talent. Although cryptocurrency is not a flavor for the year, capture niches where innovation is still happening.
Theme: Education, Child Welfare
MBA Essay Strategy: Empathizing with a techno solution is tough without a strong backstory around the beneficiary. For the essay, I wanted to clearly establish the beneficiary – Rami, before the applicant narrates the similarities to his journey and finally shares the solution that emerged from his curiosity.
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – FinTech as a Tool for Good (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)
Example #7: Learning from the best
Background Information: The applicant – a Remote Engineer in the Oil and Gas industry, reflects on a value that has helped her learn from the best regardless of her geographical limitations.
Theme: Learning
MBA Essay Strategy: The effectiveness of the case-study method depends on the assumption that peers in a Harvard MBA class will help elevate your learning experience. For the essay, I have highlighted the applicant’s recognition of this value proposition with three examples.
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Learning from the Best (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)
Example #8: Military & Search for IMPACT
Background Information: The most common narrative for US military applicants is to quote 9/11 and the reaction your immediate family had while watching the events unfold. The horrifying moment is captured as a motivation to join the Military. On digging deeper, most applicants would share that their motivations were diverse.
Theme: Career Choice
MBA Essay Strategy: I wanted to quickly highlight that the applicant had the choice of entering any industry. One achievement to demonstrate his curiosity that I shared in the first half is the invention of a game. Since the game is mentioned in the resume and verifiable through search, I didn’t quote the name. By clearly highlighting the person’s curiosity and career options, the family legacy is used as a factor in joining the military.
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Career Choice after a Military Career (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)
Leadership-Focused Essay: What experiences have shaped who you are, how you invest in others, and what kind of leader you want to become? (up to 250 words)
Example #9: Small Business Values
Background Information: The applicant - a second-generation Asian American, is familiar with the values of fiscal conservatism, building relationships, and understanding the daily struggles of the community through his family’s department store.
Theme: Customer-Centric
MBA Essay Strategy: The applicant’s role in developing an App for the store is highlighted in the essay at a crucial part of the narrative so that the essay is not all about his father. I have also humanized the journey – by sharing how upset the father was when the revenues fell by 40%. The essay is about the transformation in the applicant’s value from a person chasing productivity and optimization technique to someone who is truly thinking about the customers.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Small Business Values (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)
Example #10: Breaking Away from Family Business
Background Information: A unique challenge that applicants whose parents are public figures or CXOs of businesses or entrepreneurs are the pressure to live up to the parent’s standards or milestones. For the leadership narrative, the burden of legacy is established before the narrative addresses his leadership principles.
Theme: Authenticity
MBA Essay Strategy: For the essay, I want to capture an entrepreneur’s journey to rise above his entrepreneur father’s image. But I didn’t want to make the entire essay about this complex dynamics. The narrative is around the applicant’s focus on customers and surrounding with teams who keeps him grounded.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Breaking Away from Family Business(Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)
Example #11: Creativity and Communication
Background Information: When the overall percentage of users with internet access is 62% in South Africa and the inequality accentuated by the rural and urban divide, the applicant endured the lack of digital infrastructure, and spending close to 22% of the family income on gaining relevant information on schools, global exams, and financial assistance.
Theme: Creativity, Communication
MBA Essay Strategy: The strategy is to share why the applicant values no distraction in a child’s home for optimum education experience. Then I highlight the many roadblocks the applicant’s non-profit faced in receiving fee waiver for their cooperative run ISP.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Non-Profit (Telecom) (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)
Example #12: Mental Health
Background Information: The applicant like most didn’t pay much attention to the mental health epidemic until tragedy hit home.
Theme: Communication, Innovation
MBA Essay Strategy: A question we frequently get from applicants is whether they should cite tragedy in the family as a motivation for a venture or a non-profit initiative. As long as you don’t linger too much on the tragedy and offer a balanced narrative, there are no restrictions on leveraging unique stories from your life.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Mental Health (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)
Example #13: Trauma, Healing & Finding Authentic Self
Background Information: The applicant narrates the absurdity of war in the narrative about the duties in Kabul, and the trauma. Instead of wallowing in on the horror, the applicant takes what makes military applicants strong and guides unprivileged children build life and leadership skills.
Theme: Resilience
MBA Essay Strategy: Capturing PTSD in an essay, the healing process, and the cues that helped the applicant are too sacred to be shared in a Harvard MBA application essay. However, with the right motivation and narrative arcs, you can capture the essence of your journey without sharing the darkest secrets. That is what I did by merging two stories – the horrors of the war with a non-profit engagement.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Military & PTSD (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)
Example #14: Addiction, Setback and Leadership Mantra
Background Information: In this narrative, the applicant captures Peru’s Silver mining boom of 2006. The growth experienced in her father’s business shifted the family’s economic status to a new stratosphere. Through the changing economic and family dynamics, the applicant finds her voice in a unique way, initially to record her unheard voice but later as one of the youngest subject matter experts in mining and commodities.
Theme: Failure
MBA Essay Strategy: For the essay, the strategy is to show how life’s unpredictability is a blessing. By narrating two setback events, the essay demonstrates the applicant’s resilience and her acknowledgment of people who made a comeback possible.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Addiction, Setback and Leadership Mantra (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)
Example #15: War, Immigration and Starting Over Again
Background Information: Despite a raging war in Syria, the family of the applicant was unblemished by the chaos. The strategic government assets near the applicant’s house would have made the region an easy target, but it was not. The calmness of her journey is shattered in one event. From the privileges of a cocooned life, the applicant is forced to think about survival, her sister’s future, and her future in the US. The second half of the narrative captures the change that was forced on her.
Theme: Gratitude, Resilience
MBA Essay Strategy: I consciously chose not to start the essay with a dialogue or trauma. Two lines are allocated to set up the narrative before the trauma event.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – War, Immigration and Starting Over Again (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)
Harvard MBA Business-Minded Essay: Please reflect on how your experiences have influenced your career choices and aspirations and the impact you will have on the businesses, organizations, and communities you plan to serve. (up to 300 words)
Example #16: Creative or Finance
Background Information: The applicant starts the narrative with the origin of her talents. The unbridled enthusiasm receives a reality check when in high school, the applicant’s father has a conversation with her about academics. While the applicant picked up her quant skills, she was reaching over 50,000 loyal fans, and her videos captured 1 million views.
Theme: Passion, Talent
MBA Essay Strategy: Capturing vulnerability is the toughest part for Harvard MBA applicants. For this essay example, I have captured the applicant’s uncertainty about career choice throughout the essay. Here the goal is to show vulnerability in the career choice essay while for leadership and growth essay, I could capture one example each from creative and PE industry respectively to balance the narrative. So don’t follow this example without a strategy.
Read: Harvard MBA Business-Minded Essay – Creative or Finance (Business-Minded HBS MBA Essay Example)
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