Calling all Wharton 2011 Applicants

For what it's worth, I had the same alumni interview experience last week, in all respects.

I wonder how they'll compare those interviews (with no grading system) and the interviews that everyone else had where they got graded on three questions from 1-4.....

I was wondering the exact same thing. This seems to go against leveling the playing field here as the comparison will not really be apples to apples. I wonder if there were specific candidiates that Wharton wanted to ask behavioral and others not. Or the alumni just did not follow directions...

I'm going to guess that alumni were just not following directions. I'm also really curious as to how this will all be evaluated in the end.

I would bet that it's the latter....i had a discussion with a Wharton alum who works in my office and told her about the interviews (she and her husband used to interview but decided not to this year)...when i told her how it was structured, she said that if she were interviewing, she'd ignore the instructions.....probably just a bunch of alums like that and it'll end up being a challenge for the committee....

Imagine if you were interviewing for a job, competing with quite a few other candidates. Is it possible for your potential employer to make a reasonable hiring decision based on both fit and merit, if the candidates faced different different interviewers with different questions?

Yes, but that's a far cry from a situation where 90% of the candidates are asked the same three questions and the other 10% are asked whatever questions the interviewer wants. Especially considering the head of HR (in your analogy) asked all interviewers to ask the same questions so that he/she could make his/her decision on the basis of those answers.....in other words, i completely disagree with your analogy....

Just wanted to put it out there....anyone who is sad/ disappointed/ angry/ mad at the Wharton process can withdraw their application to the school isn't it? It's funny watching all the back and forth on the interview process. It's like saying I really want to get on the plane but I want the pilot (who, by the way, has been flying successfully for years) to fly the plane the way *I* want.

That's the argument that Sandy was making. I'm just pointing out the difficulty that will arise from the actions of alumni who aren't following the instructions of the adcom...

I think the alumni just need to report out the score (1-4) for each question. Maybe, the ones who aren't following the instructions are filling out the scores (and writing comments) based off what they thought about the candidates after interacting with them.

This quote is from an interview with HBS' admissions director:

"Each interview is 30 minutes long. We’re trying to assess a whole bunch of things. The first thing is to screen out, to the extent that we can, hubris and character issues. If you cannot behave yourself for 30 minutes with a member of the admissions board at Harvard and we accept you, it would be like trying to bring a loaded gun on a plane. So to that extent, we’re baggage screeners, without any thought that we are going to catch every character flaw, but we are going to pay attention."

granted, the wharton process seems to be after some additional, behavioral details, but no doubt this is a piece of the puzzle as well. (i mean, its obvious to some people not to cry, curse, or talk about their herpes in an interview, but perhaps not to everyone)

FYI, pilot started less than a year ago. Just wanted to put it out there...

Had both my Lauder and Wharton interviews in Sydney daybefore yesterday.

Lauder Interview
Had my interview in a meeting room at the alumnus' office.. thankfully we stopped to grab some water before going in to the meeting room.
Interviewer started off by telling me a little bit about his background and then asked me to do the same. The interview overall was pretty laid-back and conversational and I asked questions throughout the interview as well as at the end. Specific questions I was asked included:
- Tell me about yourself.
- What are your short term and long term goals? - We discussed these in more depth - he had some follow up questions.
- Tell me about a multi-cultural challenge I experienced
- Why Lauder?
- Why not just Wharton? The MBA is already so well rounded and intensive and he mentioned some programs that Wharton has for international exposure.
- What were some areas I'd be interested in researching for the two research papers?
- How would I contribute to the program?
Those were the main themes of the interview but there was a lot of probing about why I wanted to do the Lauder program and how it would benefit me. E.g. he mentioned that most people in the Indian corporate world can speak English so how will learning Hindi help me.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the interview although I think I did have some minor goof-ups here and there. I might have tried to push my case a little too hard in the end because he pointed out that he can only submit the results of the interview but that ad com make the final decision on admission.

FYI, if anyone ever happens to be in Sydney and you're a fan of chocolate and coffee then be sure to try the Lindt Chocolat Cafes (https://www.lindt.com/au/swf/eng/chocola ... place-nsw/).. a Lindt Mocha before the interview definitely gave me a good stimulus for the interview!

Wharton Interview
Four hours later I had my Wharton interview with another alumnus in his office as well. Another laid back interview and a wonderfully pleasant and jovial interviewer. He explained the new interview process in detail and even read out all six questions to me before we formally started the interview. After he read all six questions we chatted for a bit and I asked him about what role the interview played in the admissions process. He told me in all the interviewing he had done so far he found no correlation between his feedback on the interviews and the applicants' final results and the changes this year were probably in an attempt to make the interviews more relevant and useful in the application process. After we were done chatting, he read out all six questions again and told me I could answer either of the two questions from each category and in any order. It was really helpful that he let me pick which question I wanted to answer from each category since I definitely had stronger stories for certain situations than others. So then we went through all three questions I picked and followed the same drill as everyone else: timed, lots of probing questions, lots of note writing. I guess 20-25 minutes later we were done and then we chatted some more about Philly and Wharton. He told me more than once I did a good job on all questions so hopefully I get a good rating (I'll be happy with an avg of 3.3 or higher across all 3 questions).

My thoughts on the Interview controversy this year

- I agree that it could be potentially unfair for applicants who went in unprepared for the new format and Wharton could have considered being more open and communicative from the start to level the playing field
- I disagree that anyone who agrees with the above statement should withdraw their application
- I like the new format better because the old format was really redundant for a school of Wharton's caliber where yield is not a major concern and asking the traditional Why Wharton/Why MBA questions didn't add much more to the applicant's overall picture

Oh and for the record, I will be in the "Fully commit to round 2 applications (including essays), but stop short of asking for additional recommendations" bucket. Back to essay writing from this weekend for me!

So what exactly do you think we're getting graded on. How well we tell out story? How effective our "past decisions" were in solving the problem? How detailed out story is? How closely it answers the question?


Any ideas? I.e. How do you get a 4

HOW APPLICANTS ARE BEING GRADED ON THEIR ANSWERS.

The accompanying scoring sheets ask alums to grade the answers on a numerical scale from one to four. Using “facilitative leadership” as an example, a score of one indicates that the applicant “doesn’t actively guide or shape the group or team.” A score of two shows that the applicant “facilitates the input of others,” while a three indicates that the applicant “takes the lead and achieves consensus and agreement.” The highest score, a four, shows that the interviewee, in Wharton jargon, “facilitates the team to build an ‘added value’ output.”

The interviewer is asked to back up the grades based on an applicant’s answers. If an interviewer gives an applicant a score of one, that person is asked to check off whether the applicant “describes situations where s/he provided no direction to the group or team to assist in the completion of a task” or “referenced times where she was unwilling to take any leadership responsibility.”

If an interviewer gives the applicant Wharton’s highest score, the interviewer is asked to check off whether the applicant “discussed times where s/he led a group and achieved a solution/idea that was more powerful than any individual’s original idea,” “talked about situations where they inspired a group to believe that challenges to the task could be overcome,” “mentioned situations where they confidently and positively challenged team or group members on their views,” or finally, “talked about getting others to work collectively to achieve successful outcomes.”

- https://poetsandquants.com/2010/11/21/le ... -issues/3/

anyone have any updates? recent inverviews? any more speculation?

Just trying to pass this terrible waiting time...

My approach: focus on R2 apps. If you have none, than focus on your career or extracurriculars, so if you end up waitlisted, you can have updates that are worth the adcom's attetion and show growth.