MBA interviews where the interviewer has read your application
At a few schools the person interviewing you is on the admissions side and has read your application before you meet. The questions are built from it: a gap in the timeline, a decision the essays passed over quickly, a goal that does not obviously follow from the career so far.
Some go straight to it. At HBS, in Gabriel Goidel's experience, there is no walkthrough and no "why HBS": the interview opens with questions about what you wrote. Where the usual questions do come, they are asked by someone who already knows your written answer and is listening for whether the spoken one holds up.
The schools
| School | Who interviews | What they have read | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| HBS | Admissions Board member | Your application | 30 minutes |
| Stern | Admissions Committee member | Your application | About 30 minutes |
| Kenan-Flagler | Admissions Team member | Your application | About 30 minutes |
| IE | Admissions team | Your application | 20–30 minutes |
Unmarked entries are from the school’s own site. * Reported by applicants; the school does not say so itself. “Not known”: neither says. Each school’s page has the detail and the links.
How to prepare
- Reread your application the way the interviewer will have, and find the three places a careful reader would push.
- For everything your application describes, know where it stands today: the organization you volunteered with, the plan you said you would pursue, the problem you said you solved.
- Do not recite the essays. They have read them; say what is not on the page: the decision behind it, what it cost, what you would do differently.
- Be specific. A year, a person, a number and what you did carries more than a quality you say you have.
- Have a real answer to why an MBA, and why now. Someone who has read your file will notice if the answer does not follow from it.
A guide for these interviews: How to Address Your MBA Application Weaknesses in the Interview.
What Dean rehearses
Dean works from your CV, not your essays. What it rehearses is answering out loud, and the follow-up when an answer stays abstract.
Start a mock interviewSee a sample report
Other kinds of MBA interview: Blind interviews with students and alumni · Behavioral interviews · Interviews with other applicants · Alumni interviews, often in your own country. Every school.