(Interview date 1/6/2012) I received my interview call pretty early on and had about 3 weeks to prepare. However, I was extremely busy putting together 3 R2 applications and really only had 7-8 hours the day before the interview to prepare for it. Here is how I prepared in such a time crunch:
1) I looked at Clear admit wiki for a set of questions and as most have recommended, I prepared 5-6 stories that were not part of my written application and mapped out which questions each of these stories can fit in.
2) I also read my application thoroughly and read through this guide from Scribd : http://www.scribd.com/doc/36140501/MIT-Sloan-MBA
That is all I could in a 7 hour window, I was little nervous going into the interview as I hadn’t prepared as much as I wanted to. I reached to the center about half hour early and met another applicant waiting for the interview. We hit it off right away and talked for 1/2 hour which eased off the tension and the nervousness. I had given my transcripts during check in to the front desk guy. My interviewer was a assistant admissions director and had a pretty good experience in interviewing – she was about 2-3 minutes late. She took me to her office where we sat down and she started with saying that it would be a 30 minutes interview and she would ask some clarifying questions from my application as well as try to get some additional information. She had my application open on her ipad.
Here are the questions in almost the same order as they were asked:
- Tell me some highlights/any changes from your resume (I talked about additional things that I was doing at my office outside of my client work; including mentoring and helping in generating additional sales)
- Tell me how you have helped this mentee – what specific advice did you give her (follow up question to my answer of the first question. I talked about various discussions that I have had with my mentee)
- Tell me about a time when you had to assert yourself where people may not have been receptive of your idea (this was also a follow up to my answer of the second question where I had mentioned that I am helping my mentee become more assertive. I used an example from one of my projects)
- She asked details of another project that I had listed on my resume and asked for a very specific role that I had in that project.(It was a major project and only 3 of us worked upon it. I highlighted 3 specific things that I contributed to the project.)
- She opened up one of my essays and iterated a specific line. She asked me to expand upon that and detail out what happened. She kept prodding into how I felt, what I did, how did others take it. I am not sure if I directly answered her question or was too diplomatic.
- She asked about couple of personal or professional goals that I have set for myself to make me a better person (I talked about 2 personal goals – I related to the things that I had mentioned in few of my answers)
- She asked me what specifically made me decide to apply to Sloan (I am an MIT alum. In addition, I had 3 specific reasons that I listed out with details)
- With all the travel, how have you been engaged in a community in your hometown or somewhere else where you travel? (I travel for work all the time and I spoke about being the social event coordinator at my client site where I organize events.)
- She then asked about my recent disappointment where I believed I had failed or didn’t do justice to my responsibilities (I spoke about a community consulting project that I had worked on. I had not been able to highlight this in my application)
- She asked about what is something that I wish she had asked (I told her about my proudest moment in last couple of years. We ended up sharing a common hobby and trait here and ended up talking about it for 10 minutes.)
- She then asked me if I had any questions for her (I asked couple of questions related to Sloan, for which you cannot find an answer on Sloan website. She was very excited about it and we ended up talking for additional 5-10 minutes on this.)
She ended the interview with the note that if I think of anything else that I want her to add onto her overall interview comments, that I can email her those details anytime. She gave me her business card. Overall, it was really good talking to her – we established a very good rapport. The interview lasted for 50 minutes instead of 30 minutes as she had stated. I was able to use most of my stories. Good luck and be yourself – try to establish a connection with your interviewer.
