Well, ladies and gentlemen, I had my Wharton hub interview at Bangalore yesterday and yes, surprise surprise, I met another GMATClubber there
. If this year goes well, I can't help but think about how much stronger the already powerful GMATClub 'alumni' community will become. Fingers crossed!
I was interviewed by an Ad-Com member and the interview on the whole was pretty conversational and friendly. I was a little worried that after sitting through two days of listening to people (mostly IT!) regurgitate their (again, mostly IT!) success stories, she would be fairly deadened when I got my turn. But to her credit, she really seemed interested and smiled a lot which really put me at ease right from the word go.
She started off the interview by giving me her business card and by telling me about the process and the role that the interview played. She then took two minutes to go through my resume in detail and made a few points on the resume itself. First question:
Tell me about this extracurricular activity.
DAMN. I had never expected the interview to
begin with my extra-curriculars! Anyway, I quickly recovered (I think) and proceeded to tell her about it and how I contributed to it. She then asked a
couple of follow questions to which I think I did OK. Not too great, but OK. Question 2:
Ok, now tell about this activity. Are you still involved with this?.
Double DAMN. Another question on extra-curriculars. I again spoke about how passionate I was/am about the activity and some of my achievements in that. Then finally came:
Ok kingKREEP, tell me what you want to do after the MBA and how you plan to get there. "Finally, something normal...", I said to myself and internally heaved a huge sigh of relief. At that point, I told her that I would take the liberty of speaking about my long term goal first and then come back to this. I proceeded to tell her about my goals, why they interest me and managed to bring in the "Why MBA" there. This is when I felt that the interview started to get pretty conversational.
Ok, I see that you are pretty young, so why an MBA now? Another 2 - 3 minutes on why I thought I was right for the MBA now. Then came
Tell me a little about your work, what you do and why this company. "Ah...more normalcy. - phew-". I told her what I did, who I worked with, the people I led and why I picked the jobs that I did. She didn't ask me any follow up questions on my work, which is why I think she had already heard tons of IT success stories.
Then came,
Tell me about what did you look at when you selected schools to apply to and what sets them apart? I kind of answered the question, but oriented my response more towards "Why Wharton". I think this was one of my longest answers and hope that my 'twist' to the answer doesn't hurt me. I told her about the things that I really liked about Wharton and what I believed were truly unique about Wharton. Next:
How do you plan to get involved at Wharton? "Ah...thank God!" I gave her a full five minute discourse on all the clubs I was interested in and what I hoped to do at those clubs. She then told me about a couple of new initiatives at Wharton that really seemed very interesting to me! "Man, I hope I get to work on them..." Finally she said,
At this point, is there anything else about yourself that you would like to tell me about? I thought for a couple of seconds (trust me, 2 seconds feels like a bloody minute in there!) and told her about an additional responsibility that I had recently taken on at work. Then, I got to ask her some questions that I had prepared. She gave really in-depth, insightful answers to my questions and really showed me how dynamic Wharton is and told me about some of the changes that were taking place at the school. That's it! I thanked her for her time, said my goodbyes and left!
The whole interview had lasted 40 minutes, 10 minutes more than the stipulated 30 mins. I'm just hoping that I didn't rant and bore her with my answers. All in all, I am satisfied with how the interview went and was able to hit all my points. But yeah, the interview at Wharton is not a make or break. So all I can say at the moment is, if I don't get in, I won't blame the interview.
24 Nov 2007, 11:35
