London Business School MBA Admissions Interviews

I have gone for years without writing a post on London Business School MBA Admissions Interviews. I don’t have a specific excuse for this since I have helped many applicants prepare for this interview and have no lack of information about it.

My post on LBS application essays for the Class of 2016 can be found here. 

Beyond my 16 comprehensive service clients admitted since Fall 2008 entry (I began my own consulting service in September 2007) , I have worked with additional clients only on interviews. and more still from 2001-2007 when I was working for a top test prep company's consulting service.  The advice below is thus based on working with clients on LBS interviews for over ten years.

It is important to remember that your interviewer, an alumnus, will have read your application file.  London Business School relies on its alumni to do a thorough job vetting applicants.  Based on numerous reports I have read from my own clients, this interview, while it can often be very friendly, is not to be taken lightly.  A bad interview (as reported by the applicant soon after the interview)  is, at least from what I can observe, a really good indicator of rejection.  While good interviews (again as reported by the applicant immediately after the interview) can surely result in waitlisting, at least amongst my own clients, such interviews typically result in admission.

It is especially important that applicants be prepared to explain why LBS is their top choice and to demonstrate some knowledge about the program.   As should have been clear from preparing your essays, LBS expects applicants to be very well informed about the program.  If you have not visited and/or talked with current students, and/or alumni I would highly recommend doing so. By the way, talking with MiF (Masters in Finance) and/or LBS Sloan Fellows is not an ideal substitute for talking with MBAs, though it is better than nothing.  Beyond classes and clubs, know what some of the key activities on campus are.  Reading my Q&A with a Member of the LBS MBA Class of 2012 can give you some could insights into the MBA program. 

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 perspective on MBA admissions interview strategy and apply here.


Typical Questions
My colleague, H. Steven Green, has put the following together by reviewing interview reports of London Business School interviews found at accepted.com and clearadmit.com. These questions are completely consistent with the kind that my clients have been asked.

1. Can you walk me through your resume?
2. What do you currently do?
3. Why did you choose to work at your firm?
4. Is your job really necessary?  Does your firm actually achieve its mission?
5. Expect questions based on resume content and essay content.

GOALS, WHY LBS

1. Why do you wake up in the morning?
2. What are you short-term career goals?  Long term? Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
3. You already have great finance experience to achieve your goals. Why do you need an MBA?
4. Imagine world without an MBA. What would you do? (I understood as what I would do to achieve my professional goals?) If you can achieve your goals without an MBA why do you want to get an MBA?
5. What triggered you to start thinking about an MBA?
6. What are your criteria for selecting b-schools? Where did you apply? Why is LBS your choice among these programs?
7. Why LBS? How LBS differentiates from the other school you applied to?
8. Do you have any back up plan in case your goals are not achievable?
9. Could you describe your extracurriculars?
10. How will you contribute to the school?

BEHAVIOR & SELF-ASSESSMENT

1. Expect questions about your family.
2. What part of your childhood has influenced your life?
3. When was the last time you took a risk?
4. What type of personality do you have?
5. How would your colleagues describe you?
6. What will be your personal development after arriving at LBS?
7. What is the toughest decision you made in your life?
8. What are your strong points?
9. What is your most significant achievement?
10. What are your weaknesses from the point of your friend? Do you agree with him/her? What other weaknesses do you have?
11. What are the key things for success? Or what is success for you?
12. Expect questions based on things written in your recommendation letters.

SELF-ASSESSMENT: INTERNATIONALISM

1. Tell me about your culture, please.  What part of your culture will help you at LBS? What part of your culture could hinder you at LBS?
2. What did you learn from your international experience?
3. Please give me an example of a multi-cultural experience you had.

LEADERSHIP

1. Tell me your definition of leadership. What kind of leadership have you experienced?
2. Are you a leader? Why so?
3. What is the difference between a born leader and a manager? Who do you admire as a leader?
4. What characteristics should a successful business leader have?
5. Tell me about 2 examples of when you resolved conflicts as a leader.
6. How do you manage your team?

CONTRIBUTIONS

1. How will you contribute to LBS?
2. How would you contribute in a group that does not require your background and prior experience in the majority of its cases?

STUDY GROUP / TEAMS

1. How would you contribute to your study group at LBS from professional point of view?
2. Imagine that some people in your study group are not contributing enough and your talk to them didn’t help.  What would you do next?  How would you handle it?  How would you feel?

VALUES

1. What would you do if you had $10 million?
2. What would you do if you had unlimited money?
3. What is going wrong in the world today? Why? What should be done about it?
4. What did you learn in your international experience?
5. What are you most proud of? Why?

BRAIN POWER

1. How did the financial crisis happen?
2. What is the biggest threat to your firm? What's your strategy? How would you change the strategy?

One unique part of the LBS interview is the need to make short presentation on a random topic. The point is simply to be coherent. The content matters less than your ability to simply sound intelligent.  Whatever the question, take a clear position. You will not likely be quizzed about it. The point is simply to show your ability to think quickly and communicate effectively, just like you will need to do at LBS.

See here for information about my interview preparation 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.

Wharton MBA Interviews: New Team Based Discussion Topic for Round Two

While the format and structure for Wharton Class of 2016 interviews are the same for Round Two, Wharton has changed the Team-Based Discussion topic.  Since the new topic is not online and applicants are supposed to keep it confidential, I will not discuss it here.  Please see Preparing for Wharton Interviews for the Class of 2016 and When to start MBA interview practice? How to prepare? for advice on preparing for your interview.

For R1 2014 entry, I had three Wharton and one Wharton Lauder clients admitted.  Information about my interview preparation services can be found here.

-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.

IMD 2015: Apply for R1 using the old questions or later rounds using the new questions?

Please see IMD MBA Admissions Essays for January 2015 Admission (R2-R5) for my full analysis of IMD MBA application.

IMD’s sudden introduction of new essay topics that will replace the present MBA application essay questions for January 2015 admission  has suddenly got applicants asking me whether to apply now for Round 1 or use the new questions for later rounds. Since R1 has been extended an extra days (If you still prefer to apply using the existing essays and application, an extra 10 days will be granted, giving you until Monday, February 10^th, 2014 midnight (Swiss time) to su bmit your application.), it may make sense to get in the application by the 10th for R1.

If you prefer the old questions and can finish your application in time, I see no specific reason to wait assuming you are submitting an application that you really consider to be your best work.  I don’t recommend submitting a bad set of essays because you don’t like the new questions.  Also, I see no inherent advantage in terms of chance of admission to apply to IMD in R1 as R2 would be just as fine.  It really is just a question of whether you will be ready to submit a good application by the 10th of February.

The new essay set is indeed different. For those who have not come close to finishing the old IMD essays or who have written similar essays (INSEAD),  just focus on the new questions, which I have already analyzed.

-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.

IMD's MBA Essay Questions for January 2015 Admission

Please see IMD MBA Admissions Essays for January 2015 Admission (R2-R5) for my full analysis of IMD MBA application.


I will provide a fully revised post on IMD's MBA application essays for January 2015 admission, but I wanted to simply provide a quick analysis of the new questions that were released on February 2, 2014. My old IMD 2015 post, which contains much information about the program, can be found here.



1.       Describe yourself in two hundred words or less.
This question is straightforward, but keep in mind the third question.  They relate to each other. This question is about who you are now, while 3.  is about who you will become.
Think of this as a your "elevator pitch" to IMD.  Given the limited space I suggest you think very carefully about what to include. I suggest trying to focus more an analytical description of yourself rather than a life story.


2.       Give an example of a time when you were confronted with an unrecoverable event. How did it affect you and what were your greatest learnings?
(300 words)

An unrecoverable event could I think refer to any of the following:
-A total complete failure with no upside. For instance losing a client who you will never get back, getting rejected from an academic program, losing a job, making a terrible investment decision,  being responsible for destroying a friendship or relationship with someone else, being the source of damage or harm to others.
- The death of someone would also be such an event.
-Losing something personally valuable to you.

They are looking to see how you deal with the worst in life.  They want insights into your resilience and self-awareness.  Don’t write about some trivial bullshit here, real pain, tragedy, and failures are just what the doctor ordered.   A key limitation is real learning.

3.       On your 75^th birthday someone close to you presents your laudatio. (It can be a friend, colleague, family member etc.) Please describe in detail what they would say about you and your life.
(300 words)

I think it is particularly "interesting" to use the word “laudatio” when it will be perfectly meaningless to many applicants unless they have studied Latin.  At least, based on my search of both the British and American English Oxford dictionaries, it is not even a Latin word that has been incorporated into English.  Hence only those with a background in Latin will even have an idea of what this is.  If you try Google, you will not find a actual description of laudatio in English very easily. The first English listing a found was for ”Laudatio Turiae”, where “Laudatio” refers to an epitaph, which is a fine word in English.  But what is actually meant in Essay Question Three  is an encomium, a lovely Greek word found in English.  A laudatio or encomium is a “formal expression of high praise; eulogy.”  While we usually associate eulogies with speeches made for the dead, it can also be used as speech in praise of someone, typically old. 

Therefore, to restate this question in English and in a way that will be, hopefully, easy for anyone to understand, I give you the following:

On your 75th birthday someone of your choosing makes a speech in praise of your life from their perspective. 

Hence this question is asking you to imagine your future.  IMD wants to test your ambition and long-term vision.  What kind of life do you want to lead?  What will your future look like? This is quite a departure for an MBA program that has not emphasized long-term vision before.

-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.

IMD New Essay Questions for 2015 Admission! Just released on Feb 2, 2014

My initial analysis of the new IMD questions can be found here.

Like anyone who has signed-up as an applicant on the IMD website, I just received the following email:
“You are receiving this e-mail because at some point in the last 12 months, you accessed, started, or worked on an IMD MBA application.

At IMD we always strive to improve our quality, which requires making continuous changes. We are applying this spirit to the application process and would like to inform you that on February 14^th, 2014, between 10am and noon, Swiss time, we will roll out a new application. Going forward, the seven essay questions which were used for the February 1st, 2014 deadline will be reduced to three different questions. Please see below:

1.       Describe yourself in two hundred words or less.
2.       Give an example of a time when you were confronted with an unrecoverable event. How did it affect you and what were your greatest learnings?
(300 words)
3.       On your 75^th birthday someone close to you presents your laudatio. (It can be a friend, colleague, family member etc.) Please describe in detail what they would say about you and your life.
(300 words)

In addition to the change of essays, there will be some minor changes to the application itself.  Therefore, if you are planning to apply in April or later in the year, we strongly suggest  you save a copy of what you have been working on up to this point, as you might be able to use some of the information for the new essays.  (Save either a pdf, or copy paste into a Word document.)”

If you still prefer to apply using the existing essays and application, an extra 10 days will be granted, giving you until Monday, February 10^th, 2014 midnight (Swiss time) to submit your application."

I will analyze these questions with 24 hours.

-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.