I interviewed on campus for Harvard Business School’s MBA program. There were a number of activities on campus (taking a class, panel of students, etc.), but unfortunately I was working for most of the day and did not get to participate (hoping that doesn’t count against me!).
After checking in, was seated in a room with plenty of refreshments (cookies, food, tea, coffee, soda, etc.) before being called upstairs with a group of three other students to sit in a waiting area for a couple minutes. Other students were clearly as nervous as I was, but we chatted and they seemed friendly!
We were pulled into separate rooms in order to do our interviews. Mine was with a member of the adcom and differed quite a bit from what I was told to expect on the internet – while many people told me to expect rapid-fire questions about smaller bullet points on my resume, the first 2/3 of my interview were larger questions about my industry, developments in my industry, and my thoughts on the future of my industry based on some things I had mentioned in my essays. For context, I work in a creative field, but my interviewer had clearly done at least hours of research on my field due to the specificity of some of the questions. Although I feel I could have answered some questions better in the latter ten minutes (questions asking me to describe my day-to-day, management questions), I actually really enjoyed the first twenty minutes of the interview and the opportunity to showcase my industry knowledge. My interviewer was friendly, although obviously still professional and upfront about the strict time limitations on the interview, although I do seem to recall we went like 3-4 minutes over.
Post-interview reflection essay is due within 24 hours – I immediately recapped bullet points of my entire interview in my notes app, then took an hour or two to walk around campus/reflect, met up with some friends after, and then started writing my reflection later that night, turning it in the next day. My interviewer handed me a card with advice on how to submit it/the details were also on the portal so don’t worry too much about that beforehand.
I honestly fell in love with campus and how friendly the students were (some even approached me asking if I was interviewing, wishing me good luck) and am really hoping for a favorable outcome in 3 weeks. Best of luck to everyone else interviewing.
Advice (it’s difficult to give it without knowing my admissions outcome, but):
– go through your entire application and do your due diligence on anything you think an adcom might find remotely interesting (i.e. refreshing mind on your career goals, major projects, what you wrote in your essays)
– think about the entirety of your application story and what you want to highlight for your interviewer/how you can contribute to the case method – I felt as though the industry-based questions at the beginning were an obvious lead-in to that
– chatting with my fellow interviewees took away much of my nerves and relaxed me quite a bit
