Hello all,
Since I see a few thoughts about the interviews, I thought I would share my little experience. I do think that the interview does not weight much in the application, and that schools use it mostly to have a " reality check", but that the decision is almost made before hand.
Now about y Stanford interview. I was one of the very last ones to interview for R2 (10 days before decisions were released), so I did not post earlier. But now it may help R3 or next year applicants....That interview was different from what I expected, and what I had read about. No questions about tell me who you are, why MBA, etc,.... My interviewer started cold with " Why do you want to go to Stanford? "
He had obviously studied my resume thoroughly. Instead of asking the traditional " tell me about a time when you did not meet your objectives" , he asked " I see you did not go to the best engineering school in your country, how did you deal with this failure?" (which wasn't a failure for me, I am very happy with the school I attended....but had to make up something on the spot....)
He then moved on to more personal questions such as:
- " What is our favorite book? Why? What would I (the interviewer) learn that I could not learn anywhere else? Do you know any quotes? (he did know the book AND some quotes"
- Who is your favorite mexican artist ? (I am French but live in Mexico) Why?
- What is your favorite mexican band?
As most Stanford graduate I have met, he was VERY educated and had a LOT of culture about very diverse things. He also obviously took the time to personalize the questions. On my resume I stated that I am fluent in 4 languages, and he happened to be fluent in the exact same ones so we did 25% of the interview in each. Believe me it is a bit troubling to have to tell the stories you want to tell and have rehearsed in english in another language.
Overall, I got the feeling that he asked some of the mandatory questions- I think I remember he had to pick 3 or 4 from a list and then could ask anything he could see fit- just because he had to. But he was way more interested in me as a person, what I enjoy in life, what motivates me, and how I reacted to unexpected questions. We had a completely different background but he did find some small parts of my resume that we have in common, such as languages or music, and really grilled me on these. I don't think he was looking for a flaw, more for a way to get to know me on some common ground. But it was pretty unexpected and pretty destabilizing for me. Try to fit your " big leadership story" as an answer to " who is your favorite trumpet player and why?....."
At the end of the interview he repeated that his feedback did not weight much in the final decision and asked me to keep him informed of the decision. After I told him about the admission, he called me to ask if I had any questions and offered to put e in contact with some alumni from other MBAs in case I had a desicion to make (which I dont, Stanford has always felt like the best fit by far to me
)
Hope this will help some of you in the future. Good luck!
Milie