The Darden MBA Admissions Interview

Steve Green has taken on the unique challenge of providing advice for Darden's "one question" interview. Darden has been doing it this way for years.  Steve's graduate work in political science was conducted at the University of Virginia, so he is someone particularly familiar with the culture of Mr. Jefferson's University. (If you don't know what I am talking about, you should!) Information about Steve's interview counseling services can be found here. Steve and I have been working together since 2001. Many of my clients do interview preparation with him for Darden and all other top MBA programs. A full-time professor, Steve exclusively focuses on MBA interview preparation. 

Remember that UVA takes its honor code seriously, so this is not an interview to practice truth stretching, but one to engage deeply in truth telling. As in any interview, it is all in the way you interprete yourself. 
-Adam

The Darden MBA Admissions Interview

Have you ever felt constrained by the standard Q&A format of an MBA interview? Have you ever wished you could be given the time to tell an interviewer your life story?  If you answered “yes” to either of these questions, then the Darden admissions interview may be for you.

According to publicly available reports, Darden bundles a half-dozen interview questions into one covering statement that directs interviewees to tell their story.

• In a nutshell, Darden’s single question is “Tell me about yourself.”

In at least one case, this extended version of the same question was asked:  

“I am here for you to tell me your story. Just tell me about yourself. In the process you can cover college, anything before college if relevant, your resume, why MBA and why Darden.”

According to the public reports you should expect:

• to be given 20-30 minutes for your story (though the whole interview itself may last longer should you talk for a long time and follow up questions are saved until the end of your monologue.)
• to be interrupted sometimes with follow-up questions.
• to be interviewed by a current student, possibly with an adcom member present (unless, of course, you have arranged on an off-campus interview with an alumnus.)
• the interview to be blind (i.e. the interviewer will not have seen your resume.)
• a relaxed atmosphere:  Darden interviewers seem genuinely interested in hearing applicants’ personal histories, from what I’ve seen in reports.
• to be given the chance to ask questions about Darden to the interviewer.

Based on what the reports say, Darden really seems to want to get to know the person “behind” the application- the person who wrote the application essays and earned the test scores that inspired Darden to extend an interview invitation.  

Considering that most interviewers are students, and the fact that they are allowing interviewees the freedom to talk so much about their lives, suggests they consider this the best way to select for people who would be the most interesting future classmates.  

You don’t need to have a unique, “made for Hollywood” life story.  

You do need to be able to talk about your life in the most interesting way possible, with special attention, of course, to what has led you to want an MBA from Darden.  Obviously, this interview format places a premium on excellent communication skills. Also, given the role of the honor code at UVA, if your story comes across as too good to be true, you will be in trouble.

How should you prepare for the Darden interview?  

The good news is you already have prepared for it!  Through the writing of many MBA admissions essays (presumably you have applied to more schools than just Darden) you have already told a lot of your life story, albeit in a piecemeal manner.  By now, it is highly likely that you have written about: both personal and professional accomplishments; your strengths and weaknesses; setbacks, and what you learned from them; why you want an MBA and what are your career goals.  If you have already had an admissions interview, then you may have taken someone through your resume, as well.

To tell your story you should…

Cover all these topics but ground them in the personal experiences that shaped your values and created the strengths that have led to your success.  

Advice for how to structure your story:

The guidelines below assume a chronological answer to the Darden question.  At least one successful report describes just such an answer that began in the interviewee’s childhood.  The public reports suggest Darden wants people to discuss their whole lives, and the most logical, though not the only, way is chronologically.  The advantage of this format is it allows you to show your development over time, with the story culminating in why you want a Darden MBA.  However, you do not necessarily need to follow a strict chronology.  If you want to bring a lot of attention to your career goals, for example, and believe they define who you are now more than anything else, you could begin with them.  Even in that case, though, you’ll need to take the listener “back in time” a bit to show how you came to reach these goals.

1. Begin your monologue by saying clearly who you are.  State up to 3 key points about yourself, including your guiding value(s) and core strengths. These strengths should not be limited to one field, e.g. finance, but the skill that allows you to succeed in particular fields, e.g. analytical thinking.  
2. Explain the experiences that forged these values and strengths.  Darden allows you to describe events in your childhood and/or teenage years, as these are the periods in our lives when many of our core values, and even, in some instances, the foundations for our core strengths, are formed.  However, don’t devote more time than necessary to talking about your pre-college years.
3. Develop your story arc with these core values and strengths. Illustrate how they were enhanced and even challenged by experiences in college and how, as an adult, you have applied them in your professional and personal life.   
4. Illustrate your story arc with accomplishments that are on your resume. Emphasize turning points and setbacks, from which you learned something important that defines who you are now.
5. Describe the experience(s) that gave form to your career goals and convinced you needed an MBA. This experience, by definition, would be a turning point in your life.  Discuss what about it made you realize you cannot achieve your career goal with out an MBA.
6. Explain how you discovered that the Darden MBA is the best choice for you.

Remember:  

• Your audience wants to know whether or not you would make an interesting classmate.  Avoid jargon, and do not sound boastful or give the impression you have never made mistakes.
• Your interviewer may interrupt your story with follow-up questions about particular points in it.  Do not be unnerved if this happens.  Take it as a positive sign of interest in your story.  After all, it is only natural to want more details about someone’s experiences.  According to reports it is common, and, frankly, it probably makes the session more interesting for everyone involved.   

Look at the Darden interview as an opportunity.  

Most of us love to talk about ourselves, if given the chance.  But, unless and until you become as famous as Bill Gates or J.K. Rowling, your detailed, personal story probably will never be the main interest of an audience of strangers.  So, Darden gives you a rare chance to show someone just how fascinating you are. Make the interviewer believe in you!

For questions regarding this post, please contact me at h.steven.green@gmail.com. To learn more about my MBA admissions interview counseling services, please click here.
- H. Steven ("Steve") Green

Back on Blog: Late round applications, HBS '75, and student loans

BACK ON BLOG
The last couple of months have been fun. I have had the chance to work with some really great clients in China, Japan, South Korea, Turkey, Taiwan, the EU, and the US, but I have missed writing my blog. As of today, I am back on. The rest of January and February will be mostly about updating and adding new MBA interview posts, but here are some random things that I wanted to mention.

LATE ROUND APPLICATIONS
I am frequently asked about 3rd and 4th round applications, my general response is always this: If you want to go for Fall 2009 and the school is still taking applications, apply. Yes, the chances are not as good as applying in 1st or 2nd round, but it can't be helped. The reason schools have such late rounds is because they need them to fill their class. One can wait to apply for a later intake, but if you want to go earlier, with the exception of INSEAD, reapplication is viable at top programs, so the only thing you risk is rejection. Of course, if you don't apply, you will never know. Clearly, given the reduced odds, one would ideally want to apply to a safety school(s) and/or multiple programs.

By the way, when assessing what schools are really viable for late rounds, I think it is especially useful to look at their yield (percentage of accepted applicants who attend) because this really does indicate the relative likelihood that the school actually needs its later rounds to fill the class. Darden, for instance, had a 49% yield in 2008, which indicates to me that applying for the March 4th deadline is not insane. A. Compare that to HBS which has a yield of 91% and you can see why third round at HBS is significantly less likely than Darden. Still in 2008, one of my clients was accepted to HBS in the 3rd round.

Speaking of HBS, I am happy to celebrate the retirement of GEORGE BUSH, HBS '75. I should say from the outset that I don't necessarily think a school should be blamed for the actions of one student, but given the HBS mission to train leaders, I think it is fair enough to raise this issue. For an absolutely damning perspective on this, I strongly recommend “A Damage Assessment: The First MBA Presidency and the Business Academy.” Whether HBS bears any responsibility for George Bush, I can't help feeling that the systematic failures of not only his administration, but of major financial institutions, as well as regulators (SEC re Madoff), point to a coming crisis in business education. If Enron resulted in the introduction of ethics education into the business curriculum, what sort of changes are necessary in light of the fact that some of the primary employers of graduates from top MBA programs are now in a state of crisis? Expect to see big curriculum changes over the next couple of years.

Regarding the financial crisis, international applicants who intend to study in the US, should read Alison Damast's "Loan Crisis Hits the MBA World" in BusinessWeek. The end of CitiAssist loans is proving to be as big an issue that I imagined it would be when I initially blogged about it last October. Damast's article makes for sober reading:

Replacing the loan programs has not proved easy. In the last two months, business schools from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School to Cornell's Johnson School have been scrambling to find alternatives for students, most with limited success so far. Of the schools that used to have the CitiAssist loan program—including Harvard Business School, the Wharton School, University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, the Chicago Booth School of Business, Columbia Business School and other leading schools—only MIT's Sloan School of Management has announced a replacement lender. A number of schools said they are hoping to work out new programs by the spring, but did not disclose any further details. Most schools require students to put down a deposit by early April or May, leaving schools with just a few months to find a solution.

Hopefully actual solutions will be in place, but given the decrease in endowments, most schools are likely to be unable to bootstrap their own solutions for funding international students. The article mentions that in addition to MIT, Stanford GSB also has a loan solution in place for international students. If no solution to the loss of international student loan programs is found, I expect that it will be significantly easier to obtain admission for Fall 2010 for international applicants.

While international students will be able to get loans if they attend Stanford GSB, even this wealthy school is being impacted by the financial crisis. Stanford GSB has just announced that it is eliminating 49 jobs, 12% of its non-faculty workforce: Stanford University’s endowment fund, which includes $1 billion for the business school , may fall 20 to 30 percent for the current fiscal year, according to school officials. If Stanford is taking this kind of hit, expect a number of other schools to reduce their headcount as well. Personally, I would start with the finance faculty. Just kidding, well maybe not. Anyway, if there are less finance jobs, I guess you probably don't need as many finance professors. Of course, maybe some of these profs can start teaching risk management and compliance courses.

By the way, if you want to get really depressed, I suggest reading this.

Questions? Write comments, but do not send me emails asking me to advise you on your application strategy unless you are interested in my consulting services. Please see my FAQ regarding the types of questions I will respond to. Before emailing me questions about your chances for admission or personal profile, please see my recent post on "Why I don't analyze profiles without consulting with the applicant." If you are interested in my graduate admission consulting services, please click here.
-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス

ビジネススクール カウンセリング コンサルティング MBA留学

U. of Virginia Darden 1st Year MBA Student Interview

Naomi Uchida, a first year MBA student at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business and my former client, was kind enough to answer my questions. Naomi has her bachelors from New York University. She subsequently worked for a Japanese bank in New York City and then a real estate investment firm in Tokyo prior to joining Darden's Class of 2009.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adam: Darden is often referred to as the boot camp of MBA programs for its intensity. Looking at your first year schedule, I can kind of see why. So how hard has it been?

Naomi: I learned very quickly that they were not joking when they said Darden is a boot camp. First of all there is the workload. We have 3 cases a day, which means 3 cases we need to prepare for on our own prior to our learning team. Apart from the cases we need to squeeze in recruiting briefings and guest speakers in our afternoons. In the early evenings we get together in our learning team and go over the cases again. The next morning these cases get discussed in the classroom, which is an intensive and engaging environment where we get cold-called and our ideas that we worked through with our respective learning teams get challenged day in and day out. You have to be willing to work hard, because Darden will not be a 2-year vacation from your job. But I have found it to be a constant battle between sleep, getting cases done, recruiting events, and squeezing in time for yourself (workouts, social events).

Adam: Can you explain the role of the Case Method at Darden?

Naomi: Darden trains us to think and act like managers. In a case method classroom, everyone is prepared, ready to jump right into the case when class begins. We argue with each other about certain key aspects of the case, and defend our positions to our classmates who often have opposing ideas. The professors' role is to be the moderator, not the lecturer. The case method is what defines Darden, and what gives this program the intensity that is often spoken of. I have learned to explain myself very well, since they teach us that the process is more important than getting the right answer.

Adam: What was your Learning Team like?

Naomi: I am very fortunate to have ended up with an incredible group of people in my learning team. There are 6 of us: 2 international students, 2 women, and all of us have different professional backgrounds. During the first 3 quarters at Darden, we met almost every night at 7:30pm before a school day ( which typically was Sunday through Thursday). We would have done our cases on our own by then, and be ready to discuss the cases. Since we have different strengths and weaknesses, I felt that we really depended on each other at times for knowledge in certain areas such as accounting, operations, and marketing.

This is a big time commitment for all First Years. Beginning in Quarter 2 the Darden program gets even more intense, and we were spending 3 hours every night in our learning team. However, I came away feeling that I have a special bond with these 5 people, and we tried to get together once in a while in Quarter 4 for dinner.

Adam: Would you mind explaining the role of the Honor Code?

Naomi: It is because of the honor code that we have the privilege of being able to do certain things at Darden. For instance, we can leave our laptops anywhere at school and know that it will be right where we left it. It is the reason why our exams are take-home, open notes and open-book. By signing the honor code prior to beginning each exam, we pledge that the work will be our own, and that we have not exceeded the time limit (typically 5 hours).

Adam: Do you actually have any time for clubs? If so, which ones are you active in?

Naomi: To be completely honest I have not had much time for clubs for the first 3 quarters. In Quarter 4, I got elected as the Vice President of Events for the International Business Society so I have been organizing the remainder of this year's events for the club and planning next year's events (guest speakers, international food festival, etc).

Adam: Are there any common characteristics you find amongst your classmates?

Naomi: We are a very diverse crowd, but one consistent characteristic I found was that everyone is willing to help each other out. We are graded on a forced curve as First Years at Darden which puts us all in competition with each other so that we do not end up in the bottom of the forced curve. Despite that, students lead the review sessions we have prior to exams and offer the limited time that they have to give tutoring lessons to those who are struggling with the course material.

Adam: Since you did your Bachelors at NYU, I was wondering what it was like for you to now be studying in a relatively small college town.

Naomi: Living in a college town is a lot of fun. The town is defined by UVA (for e.g., the local restaurants are closed during home football games). You do not have the advantage of anonymity --whether you are at the grocery store or the driving range, you will always find someone from school there. It certainly is a world of a difference from my life at NYU--at NYU I recall going to classes, occasionally having lunch at the student center, and going home directly after classes. At Darden I am completely immersed in school, and almost everything I do has to do with Darden or UVA. I attend home football games, represent Darden and volunteer in Charlottesville, go to a professor's home for dinner….these activities also gave me a lot of opportunity to get to know my classmates.

Adam: What are your favorite MBA related blogs?

Naomi: I cannot say I have accessed MBA blogs lately (meaning after coming to Darden) to tell you the truth. But here's an interesting article written by a classmate of mine--it really sums up the life of a Darden First Year.

Adam: Anything else you would like to tell us?

Naomi: Darden is tough, and you will most likely miss your job/hometown/friends/pets when you first get here. But once your routine becomes a well-oiled machine, you realize you are surrounded by an incredible group of classmates, professors and staff who are always willing to help you. The case method, honor code, learning teams are all key components of the Darden program. However, it is the people that make the program great.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I want to thank Naomi for taking the time to answer my questions. Japanese who are considering application to Darden should most certainly visit the Japanese language Darden MBA Blog.

Question? Comments? Email me at adammarkus@gmail.com
-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス

ビジネススクール カウンセリング コンサルティング MBA留学 ダーデン