Calling all Stanford Fall 2009 applicants!

Hi all,

Just had my Stanford interview today! It was at the GSB with an adcom member, who was super-nice but kept the pace moving. First question was a bit of a curveball - "Who is a public figure you admire/is a hero to you?" (I picked La Monte Young, who was a composer active in the '60s and '70s...but you can pick anyone you want ) - that segued into some talk about my undergraduate years (I studied music). Lots of questions were standard why MBA (although not too much why Stanford in particular). At one point she asked me what my ideal job was right after my MBA, which I was very ready for as I wrote an essay about that topic for another school.

Info I got from her: Stanford looks particularly for people who have made a major impact in their organization (not groundbreaking info, but it was the first thing she said on the topic). She also compared Stanford to HBS (where she had gone and later worked) and said that of all the top schools, the Stanford students interested in entrepreneurship were often the ones who came to their MBA program with an already pretty solid idea of what they wanted to do afterwards, whereas HBS was more of a factory catering to major financial firms. She mitigated that statement quite a bit, but that was the gist.

The other thing she mentioned is that no decisions will go out until almost the deadline date, and everyone is notified at once regardless of acceptance/denial/waitlist.

Anyway, I'm really happy with the way the interview went, but I'm still in touch with the reality of the situation and Stanford's competitiveness. Fingers crossed. Good luck everyone!