How important is your MBA admission essay in the whole school application process? Generally speaking, your essay is one of the factors that could make or break your application. It has a domino effect on the application process. It can even influence the interview questions. MBA Admission secrets tells us about the importance of MBA admission essay and how it impacts your interview.
Interviews present a great opportunity for applicants to seal the admission deal…The questions that may arise may be as simple as probing for more details with regards to an essay you wrote. It could be feedback that your mistake essay seems weak and for you to come up with another example. Perhaps the choice of essays and the way you approached all your essays did not reveal fully who you are and this could be a flag that the admission committee has about you. Perhaps you have focused too much on work or too much on your personal/community side. The important thing with preparing for your interview is to have one or two people who know you well evaluate your admission essays and identify the knee-jerk response/issues that jump out at them. Then you may want to have an objective person who has experience evaluating candidates to assess your story in order to flag blind spots and potential gaps/issues which you can prepare for ahead of the interview.
Tips in acing the interview
Preparation for the interview requires a lot of effort. As part of your preparation, you should read blogs written by students who made it into prestigious schools. Here’s an excerpt from a blog where you can find a lot of tips that could help you prepare for MBA.
Tip #1: Share stories that demonstrate your leadership skills, team experience and approach to solving complex problems.
Tip #2: A confident appearance goes a long way.
Tip #3: Be passionate about future goals.
Tip #4: Be authentic with your interviewer, and don’t assume SOM is looking for a specific candidate.
Tip #5: Have clear career goals upon graduation, and explain how an MBA from Yale SOM with help get you there.
Tip #6: Show how your goals tie in with the school’s mission of educating leaders for business and society.
Tip #7: Don’t over-sell your volunteer work, and have confidence in the contributions business makes to society.
MBA admission interviews in Stanford
You should not only prepare yourself for questions based on your personal statement. Some universities ask questions about almost any topic. For a more specific example, let’s take a look at how Stanford conducts their MBA admission interviews.
Some schools outsource their interviews to alumni primarily. Stanford GSB is an example. My advice to candidates interviewing at Stanford is to be prepared to talk about ANYTHING. The interview is really more of an assessment of who you are, your vibe, whether you will fit at Stanford versus how impressive your particular work project or leadership impact was. Subtlety is key. That’s not to say that other MBA programs do not ask for awareness. It matters regardless of MBA program but pay particular attention to it for Stanford. And know the schools’ brand. If a school is very big on team culture (think Kellogg, Tuck) for example, going on and on about what you did and your great, impressive achievements could signal that you are not a good fit for the program. It also appears that Stanford is taking a great deal of time in matching alumni interviewers with MBA applicants which is interesting because it allows the school to get a really good read on the candidate’s authenticity. Don’t however assume that this is based primarily on work experience similarities.
You can increase your chances of getting admitted by writing an interesting personal statement and acing the interview. You can accomplish these things if you make the necessary preparation. Prepare a clear essay and review it carefully, as some questions in the interview will probably come from it. However, you should also be ready to answer questions about topics not discussed in your essay.
