London Business School LBS 2013 - Calling all MBA Applicants

Does anybody have any experience requesting LBS to provide a decision earlier than the published date? I need to take a decision about INSEAD sooner than later and was wondering if there is anyway to know about my LBS status early.

Hello Azn84,

I am really sorry to hear this - I had a completely different experience.

Before the presentation, my interviewer told me that he was explicitly asked by the Admission Committee not to disagree with the applicant, even if he has opposing views about the selected topic. The goal of the presentation is to test whether the applicant is able to communicate his or her ideas in a structured and efficient way. Given this - in my opinion - arguing with the applicant during the presentation is not fair at all. (The interviewers are also told that the applicants are not expected to have deep/factual knowledge about the selected subject.)

Given that application to business school is a huge investment, if you think that your interviewer did not follow the AdCom's directions, you may consider notifying your official contact person about your case.

Andy

Sorry mate, I know it is hard to digest that your all hard work and preparation goes for a toss just due to some 'limited knowledge' interviewer.

It is beyond my simple logic, why the schools fails to understand that the interviewers are representing the schools? It is a huge responsibility to represent a very reputed school. You are NOT automatically eligible for that huge responsibility just because you are "FREE" on that day and time.

If you can not assure consistency, fair practice, don't talk loudly about "holistic selection process"!!

If the school really want to address the issue, many people like me will will willing to share "what went wrong" and "what can be done to address those" very constructively!! I offered this to the dean of one school and that fellow shied away!!

Hi Andy,

No one is saying that all interviewers are bad!!! In fact I had 5 interviews and 4 were very excellent, insightful, matured and covered a very wide areas in reasonable depth.

What we are saying is, there are bad apples, rotten apples and probably oranges!! Schools need to be very careful in selecting their interviewers so that they can maintain a fair standard and give equal opportunity to every candidate.

I have reason to believe that some schools takes interviews very seriously and assign only matured, experienced and open people. And I have reason to believe that some schools takes very ad-hoc approach and assign the first available "FREE" person.

At one side, we talk about standardised GMAT score and on other side we randomly interview some one .... understood the issue?

Winamp I'm in the same situation, I'm under pressure to not let INSEAD go, factoring the cost angle. I'm wondering whether I can ask INSEAD for a one week extension on the payment deadline, but it might jeopardize things.

Ann, the more I read this the more I'm a bit disillusioned against LBS. I've now interviewed at Kellogg, Duke, INSEAD, Ross, and I have LBS on Tuesday. I've flown to Mexico for this interview and the interviewer has not responded to many requests to fix the time despite my telling him I don't have a functional cellphone and can't coordinate properly after arrival. Out of all the alumni I've reached out to (I contacted ~5 /school), I found LBS alumni to be the least responsive. It's a great school, but its alum simply don't seem to be the most helpful bunch.
I realize my experience is not based on a representative sample, but the above comments on interviewer choice seem to reflect a trend.

Sorry to hear about the negative experiences... I think I had my best interview with LBS. It took a while to schedule, but then again LBS interviews are lengthy and I understand it's not easy taking 2 hours out of your day. My interviewer actually apologized for how awkward it is to give a presentation as part of the interview, although honestly i thought it was pretty easy and he had purposely picked a topic that is very relevant to what i currently do. I liked that the interview didn't focus on behavioral questions (tell me about a time you failed, etc). It was overall very conversational and he offered a lot of insight on the school and the process. He also mentioned that LBS is known as a finance school, although he said it is strong across the board (my goals are non-finance related).

I'm thinking whether the dates were chosen intentionally far from each other, at least by one school of these two...

If you look back to the previous round's deadline date, it appears that people who are accepted receive phone calls a day or two before the deadline. Not sure that helps matters, but I would check those posts to get a better idea of timing.

I have also recently had my interview. And apart the story with the presentation, I can confirm the impression. I felt awkward during the interview and my interviewer was constantly correcting me / pointing out some stereotypes. I console myself with a thought that by far not all alumni are good interviewers and it should not have any impact on the evaluation. Further, what struck me is that my interviewer did not take any notes. So, I believe it will be just a yes or no at the end.

My impression after the school visit as well as consultation with my current colleagues who are LBS alumni left much better impression. Therefore, I do not dismiss my chances to get in.

Congrats on the (hopefully) double admit. Which one will you choose?

@Aximili ... congratulations on your LBS interview.. looks like it went very well...

My interview experience was pleasant. It was with an alum who graduated in 1995. He was very well prepared - had a copy of my whole application, mentioned that he read it over the night before and had already highlighted areas he wanted to probe. He was methodically going down the highlighted areas asking me questions and taking notes on the way. He spent the first 10-15 mins on my resume trying to understand my career progression. I had gone to grad school in engineering before, worked in the industry and then joined a boutique consulting firm - he probed me on why on every transition. Then he asked me some very generic questions like - how do you deal with stress, how would your colleagues describe you, does your current company know that you are applying for an MBA, are they supportive, tell me a time when you took risk, what did you learn etc., It looked like he had a list of questions that he might have gotten from LBS. He didn’t probe me too much on why MBA and why London. He suggested that he understood them from the essays and seemed convinced.

Then we went to the presentation. He described the topic, gave me a printout of the topic that I could take notes on. He left me in the room for a little over 5 mins & came back. He timed his watch saying you have 5 mins to put your point forth. The topic was on corporate responsibility in ensuring environmental sustainability. He gave me a little over 5 mins but didn’t say a word one way or the other. He was just silently listening. After this he asked me if I had any questions and I asked him about his personal experiences at LBS. He mentioned he had a great experience but some of his friends didn’t have completely positive experiences in their study groups (I was asking him about what are the things that I should watch-out for at LBS). It was overall a great conversation. I thanked him via e-mail and he responded saying good luck with your MBA pursuits. So am hopeful it was an OK interview.

Now the wait……

It sucks that we have to wait for another three weeks before we know the decision.

I am on the same boat as you are with INSEAD -- really torn between the two schools. Anxiously waiting…

Thank you all for the support. I really do wish things would have been more positive for me. So I think I will send the adcom an email. Below is what I drafted, let me know if you think its too "he said/she said":

"Dear ________,
Thank you again for accommodating my schedule and assigning my interview to _____ in ______. As notified previously, we met at her office on ________ to complete this interview. While I wished to be writing to you on a more cheery note, I would like to express concern regarding the format and content of the interview. Having worked in a corporate role for nearly six years, I have experience being the interviewee as well as the interviewer, and appreciate LBS Alumni commitment to the application process. Moreover, having interviewed for a few schools through the MBA application process, I am acutely aware that the primary purpose of an interview is to assess if the candidate will be a good fit for the school.
I found my interview to be incomplete and underwhelming. While each school is unique, based on my conversation with current/past students, and 1st round 2013 recruits, LBS interviews emphasizes on previous experience, future goals, and is used to gain insight into the candidate’s decision making process. In contrast, my interview had no formal walk-through of my resume or any questions regarding my past experiences, challenges and achievements. From the beginning, the interviewer type-caste me as a “finance person” whom she characterized as being too aggressive and “difficult to work with”. As we continued the conversation, she disagreed with why LBS is my top choice, I consider LBS as a well rounded school where over 30% of the class goes into consulting (based on job report statistics provided by LBS), however, she insisted that LBS is primarily a “Finance School”. Lastly, at the conclusion of the impromptu presentation where I was asked to discussion two upcoming trends in supermarkets, she disagreed once again and there was a misunderstanding on the question itself.
It is important to note that the interview was decorous and by no means contentious; however, I did not get the insight into LBS and the program as I had hoped. While I understand that every interviewer and conversation is unique, my experience was somewhat jarring and contradictory to my previous interaction with LBS community which have all been positive.

AZN, do you have an alternative ready? I'm apprehensive as to what you want to accomplish with the letter, ask for another interview or just point out that the experience was not great?

This could go 2 ways: They agree and offer another interview and waive this person's feedback (unlikely though, at best they will probably still consider their feedback and you may have highlighted what you considered an unpleasant experience, whereas the interviewer might just be a genuine jerk-face, like mine, and it was nothing personal, and she may have even liked you), OR they just say "tough luck and sorry to hear but we're sticking with that assessment"..
Do you have a back up?

Yeah it would be nice to have an alternative. Honestly, I don't think I'd even care if I had an acceptance from one of the other three schools. She was by no means a jerk face, in fact she was very appropriate... which is why I know she was not playing hardball.. she most likely has a prejudice against people in finance or maybe didn't like my face. It is highly improbable that she could have given a good assessment, I mean she didn't really ask any questions that would elaborate on my experiences or stories... It was not even a behavioral interview.. it was just awkward. My logic for the letter is as follows: 1. I have nothing to lose; 2. Rather do it before the decision making process before after; 3. Maybe they will take my feedback into account when evaluating the full application...

I can tweak the email to make it less bitchy i guess.. should i?

I guess the issue is what is your ask from the email. Currently its just pointing out that you felt their questions were not inquisitive enough and (from what I gathered) you could not gather much about LBS. Their response could be "that's your opinion"and "did you probe with the correct questions towards the end?". Sorry this may come across as a bit harsh, but I'm trying to evaluate worst case responses from LBS. As the mail is now, I would say no don't send as it doesn't really accomplish anything specific. I won't say make the tone stronger and complain/ask for another interview, that's too drastic.
What do others think?

Btw, do also speak to LBS alumni to get their perspective before sending, probably the best source for these doubts.