phd2010 wrote:
I have talked with a few PhD students on this topic and have received wildly different responses. An American that I talked to said that in his experience, PhD interviews aren't really "interviews", they are more like an attempt by the people in the department to try to convince you to come to their school (i.e., they have pretty much made up their mind to select you by the time of the interview). On the other hand, I talked to a couple of foreign students and they said that they were grilled on their past classes and even made to critically analyze a journal article and report back a few days later (i.e., the results of the interview matter when they are deciding to admit you). All of these students were from the same PhD program and of the same "caliber", but they didn't have the same interview experiences.
Were these students all in the same field? Even if there's a common screening at the (general) b-school level, admissions analysis and interviews are conducted at the department level (e.g. an Accounting faculty member will look at interesting accounting candidates, and so on for Marketing, Finance..), so whatever happens in the interview mostly depends on the interviewer. Based on my experience, it was clear from all 3 interviews I had that the faculty member I talked had already made up his/her mind and was mostly chatting with me to make sure I was fluent enough in English (as an international applicant), and whether I was seriously thinking about going there or not. To me, the "analyze a journal article" approach is nothing short of outrageous.