CMU Tepper Interview Questions & Report: Round 1 / Adcom / Skype

Last Updated Jan 14, 2019 by Clear Admit

The following CMU Tepper interview questions & report were submitted to Clear Admit by a Round 1 applicant.

I had applied for Round 1 and I got the interview call almost on the next day of the deadline. It was a Skype interview with an Admissions Officer. The interview lasted for 30 minutes as was the plan. The interview was supposed to happen over the browser on the Tepper website but it didn’t seem to be working so she Skyped me.

First she set the tone for the interview by mentioning that she has walked through my resume but hasn’t read the rest of my application. So it was a blind interview. Said she’ll ask mostly behavioral questions and would like me to cite examples. She confirmed with me where I’ve worked and how my roles have evolved.

Questions

Why MBA
Situation when I had to work with people from different divisions
Situation when teams in both divisions were at odds and how I handled it
Situation where I had to take an unpopular decision even though she said I don’t seem to have had a formal leadership position (I asked her if an example outside of workplace is fine, she insisted on an example from my professional experience)
Following up the previous question, she asked how I handled it with the teammates and how I took it up with them
Situation where I had to work on a project where I didn’t have much information
Situation when I had to take resort to someone else because they had more knowledge to work on some project
Then after I answered, she asked me what I learnt about myself from this experience
Share experiences about working with people from different cultures and what I’ve learnt from it
Give one reason why would Tepper be a good fit for me
Any questions that I wanted to ask her

Conclusion

It was a very conversational interview and she hardly grilled me on anything. There was nothing surprising as I had prepared for most of these questions based on the previous year interview experiences I had read of Tepper.

I thought my interview went well because I could give answers to every question without fumbling much. There was just one question where I didn’t answer the question as she had expected so she asked me more specifically about the question. Overall, she seemed satisfied with my answers and nodded in agreement during most of my responses.

I expected an admit based on this experience but surprisingly I was rejected. I’m not sure where I went wrong but at least the interview seemed to have gone well. Perhaps, it was my low scores in quantitative subjects in undergraduate college that went against me. Tepper really focuses on quantitative skills because of the analytical nature of the program. Overall, the school seemed a good fit for me based on my research and my interview experience with a very friendly admissions committee who responded promptly to any queries.