Met a ’09 alumni in his city of work. After a very early morning long drive from home to the airport, a flight delayed by over 2 hours, my condition at time of meeting him was far from being presentable. But he seemed to understand that and didn’t mind my appearance. We met an hour in advance from what we had decided on. After a customary handshake and hi-how-are-you, we settled down on a public bench under the shade of a tree in a not so crowded market area. This wasn’t an interview. It was more of a 24-minute conversation.
The questions such as
- Why MBA
- Why Booth
- GMAT score
- What beyond work
- Was I a topper during under-graduation
- Which other schools have I applied to
were interspersed somewhere in the dialogue. He wasn’t convinced with the ‘Why Booth’ part but he found my answer ‘interesting’. Neither was I convinced with what his explanation on that was.
How I prepared
I had decided to be natural and not to rehearse. I spent an hour at the airport jotting down an outline of my resume, my essays and the ‘3 Whys’. This was my ONLY investment in preparing for the interview ever since I got my interview call on 3rd Nov.
The decision can go either ways and the outcome wouldn’t have changed in any way even if I had invested more time preparing.
So after spending 15k, traveling 1.5k km by air either ways, and a nearly 15 min talk, I will now have to wait for around 15 days for the result!
