Stanford GSB MBA Admissions Interviews

My five-part analysis of the application for admission to the Stanford Class of 2015 (2013 entry) begins with Stanford GSB MBA Essay Questions for Class of 2015. The following post focuses on admissions  interviews for Stanford GSB. 


Stanford GSB’s is the hardest MBA admission interview invitation to get on the planet.  If you have been invited, your chance of admission just went from about 6.5% (depends on the year) to 50%.   The odds are much better, now you must close the deal.  While a poor interview is unlikely to result in admission,  the admissions process at Stanford is holistic and a great interview is no absolute guarantee of success.

Stanford GSB MBA admission  interviews, while so hard to get, are not necessarily hard interviews because (1) most of the questions are relatively predictable,  (2) the overall style of the interview is typically  conversational,  and (3) time constraints are either minimal or non-existent.  This is interview about fit as typically determined by an alumni “gatekeeper.” Interviews with admissions or other Stanford staff do happen as well, but this is relatively rare (I will discuss this point below).  Chances are good that this gatekeeper might be in your industry or in some manner have a complementary background for assessing you.  For example, if you might be perceived as lacking a particularly important attribute (professional experience in the field related to your goals or English skills for example), don’t surprised if the alumni is someone who is in a good position to judge this. While I imagine in some places with few alumni, a high level of complementary assessment (e.g., McKinsey applicant interviewed by Boston Consulting Group alumnus) would be less likely, I can say that it is the rule rather the exception if you reside in a location with numerous Stanford alumni.

Interacting with the interviewer
You can typically expect a lively exchange and hopefully a good conversation. If your interview is scheduled for late on a workday or on a weekend or outside of the interviewer’s office, whatever you do, don’t make any plans for it to end on time as Stanford interviews are well known for going long. 

Reported interview length for interviews is official 45 minutes, but can go on for longer than that. It usually consists of 30-40 minutes of questions from the alumni followed by 5-15 minutes of question to the alum, but often the interviews go longer, an hour or more is not uncommon. In my own experience with clients, I would say that if the interview goes for an hour or more, that is a good sign, but a 45 minute interview is not necessarily a bad sign. Interviews that last 75 minutes to 120 minutes are not uncommon.
Whoever you interview with, they are likely to be quite friendly and the style of the interview is conversational. Stanford alumni are provided with very clear guidelines for how to conduct interviews. The alumnus will be provided with a list of questions,  which they utilize.  The extent to which the alumnus does this appears to be highly variable. You may get more of an informal conversation with the occasional behavioral question or you might get something consists of many of the standard interview questions mentioned below.
Just because your interviewer is friendly, it does not mean that you are doing well. Don’t assume a friendly interviewer is not actually a super critical one. Alumni are the gatekeepers and Stanford can afford to reject anyone. Take nothing for granted.

Preparing for the interview
Given the mix of standard interview questions and behavioral  questions, I do suggest you prepare extensively for both kinds of questions.   For my  detailed suggestions on overall interview preparation, please see:
-MBA Application Interview Strategy
-Interview Practice is ABOUT SPEAKING!
-Further Comments on MBA Admissions Interviews 
-General Characteristics of Admissions Officers, Students, and Alumni Interviewers
-Recovering from a bad answer during an MBA admissions interview
-10 Ways to Blow an MBA Admissions Interview
The above posts are my general remarks on MBA admissions interview strategy and apply here.  For  answering behavioral questions, please see MIT Sloan MBA Interviews, which will teach you how to be a STAR (if you don’t know what I am talking about, read the post for sure).


Typical Questions
My colleague, H. Steven Green, has put the following together by reviewing interview reports of Stanford University GSB interviews found at accepted.com and clearadmit.com.
RESUME

• Tell me about your background/walk me through your resume.
• Tell me a bit about yourself
• What extracurricular activity are you most proud of?
• What did you take away from your undergraduate experience?
• What do you like to do outside of work?
• Tell about a time you streamlined operations/made things more efficient? What did you do?  How did you measure its success?
• What metrics did you use?
• Tell me about your international experience.
• What is your favorite place you've traveled?
• What is your company's strategy?  Is it succeeding?

GOALS, REASONS FOR MBA, REASONS FOR STANFORD

• Tell me about a specific time when you realized you needed an MBA.
• Why a Stanford MBA?
• Why do you need an MBA?
• Why now?
• Why Stanford?
• How would you decide between schools if you got into multiple MBA programs?
• What will you bring that is unique to the program?
• How will you contribute to Stanford?
• What are your short-term goals? Long-term goals?
• Where else have you applied? How have those worked out?
• Explain how you are ready for academic rigor.

CHARACTER & CHALLENGES TO YOUR BELIEFS AND VALUES

• Tell me about a time you faced an obstacle and what did you do about it?
• Tell me about a time you faced an ethical situation.
• Tell me about a time you had your beliefs challenged.
• Tell me about a time you had to stand your ground and how did you do it?
• Tell me about a time your values were challenged and you had to consult your moral compass?

DIFFICULT WORK RELATIONSHIPS

• Tell me about someone difficult to work with that was in a position above you and what you learned from it.

CRITICISM AND FEEDBACK FROM OTHERS

• Tell me about a time when others have pointed out a weakness of yours.
• Tell me about the most valuable piece of feedback you’ve ever received. How did it change your relationship with that individual? Why was it important?
• What is a valuable piece of feedback you have received?

FAILURE

• Tell me about a time things didn't go according to plan and you failed? What did you learn from it?
• What did you learn from a failure?
• Tell me about an individual or group failure.
• Tell me about a time when you failed. What did you learn from that event and how have you implemented what you learned from that failure?
• How do you deal with failure?

BOOKS YOU'VE READ

• Name a book that you’ve read recently that was not for work. We then discussed that book.
• What is your favorite book that is not work related?
• What are your 3 favorite books?

INSPIRATION, PASSION

• Tell me about what inspires you.
• Is there anything you've done merely out of passion?
• If money were not an issue, what cause would you pursue most vigorously?
• Tell me about a time you wanted to give up but found the motivation to keep going?
• What is your greatest accomplishment?
• Tell me about a time you had to make a trade-off between two equally attractive opportunities?

TEAMWORK

• Tell me about a time you worked with a difficult team member or manager.
• Tell me about an individual or group failure.
• Tell me about a team experience.
• Have you ever led a team?

LEADERSHIP

• Tell me about a time when you had to lead a team of individuals. What did you learn about yourself? What did you learn about leadership?
• Tell me about a leadership experience.
• Tell me about a time you knew you were an effective leader and how did you know?
• What is your leadership style? Give me an example of how you’ve led that way.
• When have you led peers and how?
• Tell me about a time when a leader fell short and you had to step up and lead.
• Tell me about a time when you’ve been challenged as a leader and what you learned from it.

Demonstrate Fit
You need to be able to explain in-depth why you should be admitted to Stanford, what you can contribute, and what you want to learn. Be willing to openly discuss what soft and hard skills you need to improve/acquire. Show yourself to be open, dynamic, change oriented, and a highly motivated person because the alum will be.

Prepare good questions
Since there is supposed to be time for you to ask questions to the alum, you need to give some significant thought to formulating those. Consider what year the alum graduated and any other background information if you can determine that through Linkedin or other sources of information. Develop four or more questions to ask.

For more about my interview services, please see http://www.adammarkus.com/services/.
-Adam Markus

I am a graduate admissions consultant who works with clients worldwide. If you would like to arrange an initial consultation, please complete my intake form. Please don’t email me any essays, other admissions consultant’s intake forms, your life story, or any long email asking for a written profile assessment. The only profiles I assess are those with people who I offer initial consultations to. Please note that initial consultations are not offered when I have reached full capacity or when I determine that I am not a good fit with an applicant.

-Adam Markus

I am a graduate admissions consultant who works with clients worldwide. If you would like to arrange an initial consultation, please complete my intake form. Please don't email me any essays, other admissions consultant's intake forms, your life story, or any long email asking for a written profile assessment. The only profiles I assess are those with people who I offer initial consultations to. Please note that initial consultations are not offered when I have reached full capacity or when I determine that I am not a good fit with an applicant.

Yale SOM MBA Admission Interviews

This will be a rather brief post on MBA Admissions Interviews for the Yale School of Management MBA Class of 2015.  Based on a client report (I had one client who was admitted there in R1, you can find that client’s testimonial as well) and the sole report in Clear Admit (Accepted had no reports for the Class of 2015 R1), Yale has radically changed its interview style.  Previously it asked a range of standard MBA interview questions plus a few weird ones focusing on college (which made the interview seem kind of immature and childish in tone compared to other schools), but this has completely changed.  The Yale website does not really explain this in any specific way. Actually the only discussion I could even find of the contents of the interview was the following, which is from the October 2012: From the Director of Admissions: Inside the Admissions Process: 

“At the interview, we will ask you questions about your past experiences and decisions, in order to get a better sense of how you act and think. The best way to prepare for an interview is to know your resume, re-read your application essays, and have a good sense of what you have done well—and not so well—in the past, and why.”

There is no indication here that the interview content has greatly changed, but based on the reports I have seen for round one, it has changed greatly.

(By the way, this same blog post mentions the role of interviews in the MBA application process:
“Interviews are by invitation of the Admissions Committee. We invite applicants to interview throughout the round. At the moment, we have extended roughly one-third of the total invitations we plan to offer for the round; more invitations will be coming in the next few weeks. While an interview invitation is certainly a positive sign—it’s not possible to be admitted without one—it should not be viewed as an indication of your final decision. We typically interview roughly 30% of our applicants, and a little more than half of those interviewed are ultimately offered a place in the class.” )

Here is an excerpt from the one R1 report for the Class of 2015 available on Clear Admit:
“It was all behavioral questions–tell me about a time you faced a deadline, tell me about a time you disagreed with your boss, tell me about a time you improved something in your office. It was all over the place and the only question that was straight-forward was "Why SOM." 

While I can’t disclose the specific content of my own client’s R1 report,  it is safe to say that the content was consistent with the above report.

You can assume whether you interview with a second-year student or an admissions officer, they will come in with a list of behavioral questions plus asking you a few standard type questions (Why MBA? Why SOM? What are your goals?  Do you have any questions).  Until I actually have more interview reports to work with and better characterize the specific types of behavioral interview questions that Yale is asking, I recommend reviewing my analysis of MIT Sloan MBA interviews because it provides a complete guide to preparing for behavioral interviews. If you are interested in my interview preparation services, please complete my interview-only intake form.

-Adam Markus

I am a graduate admissions consultant who works with clients worldwide. If you would like to arrange an initial consultation, please complete my intake form. Please don't email me any essays, other admissions consultant's intake forms, your life story, or any long email asking for a written profile assessment. The only profiles I assess are those with people who I offer initial consultations to. Please note that initial consultations are not offered when I have reached full capacity or when I determine that I am not a good fit with an applicant.

Preparing for Wharton Interviews for the Class of 2015

In this post, I discuss how to prepare for Wharton Round 2 Interviews for fall 2013 entry.  This post consolidates my three previous posts on Wharton Interviews for the Class of 2015:

Wharton Group Interview Questions Now Made Public (Round 1, not Round 2)

More details about Wharton MBA Interviews for 2013 entry

Wharton Interviews for the Class of 2015

There are two parts to the Wharton interview, the team-based interview and one-to-one interview.  Each part can be prepared for. I am assuming anyone who is reading this post has actually been invited for a Wharton interview and has reviewed the official information regarding it.


TEAM-BASED DISCUSSION
I will not disclose the contents of the specific team-based question that Wharton has Round 2 interviewees to prepare for because it is not available on the web as of the time of this posting. I do know the question, but it is my policy not provide such information unless I have obtained it from a public source.

Since I don’t have a school and don’t teach classes with multiple applicants at one time, I cannot provide a mock team discussion. However, based on working with clients who have been doing group interviews for Wharton R1, and IMD (IMD is the school best known for group interviews),  I do have some suggestions as well as methods to prepare clients.

Here are some basic group interview strategies to keep in mind:

1. Be someone who makes clear and effective points in the conversation, but does not dominate the conversation.

2. Don’t be rude to others. Rude jerks are the easiest people to get rid of when evaluating participants in a team based discussion. Stanford Professor Bob Sutton’s No Asshole Rule surely applies here:  CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT IF YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE.

3. Listen closely enough to others in order to say something that builds on or reacts against what other people are saying. Refer to what others are saying in order to build consensus.

4. Try to provide constructive communication that moves the discussion forward to a positive conclusion. Make an effort to include others in the conversation.

5. Don’t be afraid to make a less than perfect point. If you do that too much, you will never get enough speaking time and perceived as shy and ineffective in team situations. That will get you dinged.

6. Synthesize and summarize the team’s conversation in order to move the conversation forward.

7.  Use hedging language and other forms of consensus building language. Try to avoid being dismissive of the views of others.

8. If you are having difficulty understanding someone because of their accent or because of your poor English listening skills, still engage in non-verbal demonstrations that you understand what they are saying.  Non-verbal communication will surely be observed, so if you look confused or frustrated that could be used against you.

9. Smile and show eye contact with other people.

10.  Make sure that you don’t slouch in your seat, but are sitting tall and look like a positive and engaged person.

11. Be willing to serve as the group in a functional role: timekeeper, note taker, or facilitator.  Making a contribution is of bottom line importance.

How I prepare my clients for the team discussion: The main thing I can do is go over the question and make sure my client’s prepared opening comments are effective.  The nice part of the Wharton team discussion is that you do have the question ahead of time and know what possible variations you will encounter.  For Round 2 interviews you essentially need to prepare three separate answers based on the three possible variations you will encounter. I would review each answer by listening to my client’s opening answers.  I assess each opening answer on the following basis:

1. Does the suggested answer address the topic directly?

2. Is the suggested answer one that other group members and the interviewer can easily understand?

3.  Can the answer be communicated very briefly? Given time limits you will need to communicate it very briefly.

4.  Is the answer interesting/original/creative?

5. Are there any negative aspects to the proposed answer?

I can’t effectively prepare someone for the actual dynamics of a group conversation, but by at least making sure my client’s opening is solid, I know they will at least be well positioned to start strong.

SHORT INDIVIDUAL DISCUSSION (ONE-TO-ONE POST TEAM-BASED DISCUSSION INTERVIEW)
Based on what my Round One clients reported to me and the public reports on Clear Admit, the 15-minute one-to-one interview is likely to consist of 4-6 questions, which I have divided  into the following two categories.

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE  TEAM BASED INTERVIEW
It appears that all applicants were asked both of the questions below.  Be prepared to provide your feedback on the team-based interview.  Assume that this is a test of your self-awareness of group dynamics, an opportunity to explain the role you took in the group, and a chance, hopefully to correct any misperceptions of yourself on the part of the interviewer. 
1) How do you think the team-based interview went?
2) Was your behavior typical of how you work in a team? / Was your behavior in the Team-Based Discussion representative of the way you typically act in group settings?
How I prepare my clients for this part of the interview: I can’t really do that because it is based on what actually happened in the interview.  The only thing I can do is make sure that my client realizes that they will be asked such questions and that they should be mindful of the role that they performed in the group. For example,  if the interviewer perceives you, as say, overly reserved or overly aggressive, you need to be ready to discuss that issue.

TYPICAL INTERVIEW QUESTIONS (Assume 2-4 such questions)
This is the standard part of the interview. If you are doing more Standard interviews, it will be easy to prepare for this part.  For advice on more standard interviews, please see my  MBA Application Interview Strategy. I highly recommend reviewing your resume and Wharton essays as part of your preparations.  You should surely be able to explain why Wharton in particular is the ideal place for you to study.  You  should have 1-2 questions available. If you are interviewing off-campus, you should have questions ready for an admissions officer. If you are interviewing on-campus, you had better be prepared to have questions ready for both an admissions offer and a 2nd year student.
Do you want to highlight anything in your application?
Introduce yourself
Discuss your career progress
Tell me about a time when you worked in a group in which everyone did not agree and how did your team resolve the situation?
What is your post-MBA goal?
Why MBA?
Why Wharton?
Do you have any questions for me?
Anything you want to add?

How I prepare my clients for the individual interview: I would typically ask my clients these questions in a mock interview.  It would not be completely realistic because I would go over all the above questions just to make sure that my client was covered for all the above topics. If we were preparing for more standard interviews (Booth, Columbia, Kellogg, Haas, etc.), it might not really be necessary to go over this part of the interview for Wharton.


For more about my interview services, please see http://www.adammarkus.com/services/.

-Adam Markus

I am a graduate admissions consultant who works with clients worldwide. If you would like to arrange an initial consultation, please complete my intake form. Please don't email me any essays, other admissions consultant's intake forms, your life story, or any long email asking for a written profile assessment. The only profiles I assess are those with people who I offer initial consultations to. Please note that initial consultations are not offered when I have reached full capacity or when I determine that I am not a good fit with an applicant.