Wow, this thread has just exploded.
Since I joined Judge 2 years ago, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the assessment process, of which the interview is a major component.
Compared to other schools, Cambridge interviews a much smaller percentage of applicants. This is largely driven by two factors :- a) the time our faculty can spend interviewing; and b) a desire on our part to minimise the considerable amount that some candidates, who are subsequently waitlisted or rejected, spend to attend an on-campus interview (precisely the point that NPV made). Because of this, my team and I spend more time reading applications compared to our counterparts in other schools. I know that some people won't believe this because our turnaround time is shorter than other schools, but that is because we clear our schedules for two weeks after every deadline to focus on application reading. I know for a fact that some schools don't even read your applications when deciding who to interview --- they just have a spreadsheet where they sort by GMATs, GPAs and they also eliminate candidates outright based on certain work experience backgrounds. One could make a case that because we are more conservative in whom we invite to interview, then the chances of a candidate getting an offer once they reach the interview stage is higher than in other schools.
Since I joined Judge, we have become slightly less conservative in terms of inviting candidates for interviews. I believe that there is a limit to what we can glean from a paper application and I believe in giving people a chance to prove themselves in an interview. I call most of these cases to get a better assessment of whether they stand a chance at an interview before finalising an invitation. One by-product of this adjustment is that there are now more people who are rejected or waitlisted at the interview stage. Believe me when I say that I do not enjoy telling people that we will not be giving them offers. However, the fact that we are rejecting and waitlisting candidates also tells me that, unlike what some people might think, the interview is not a formality, and I know from reading from reading interviewer comments that our interviewers spend a lot of time thinking about each candidate they interview.
We are unique in that only faculty members interview candidates. This is a by-product of the University-wide system, but I also see that there are many other positives to this arrangement. Faculty take their roles as interviewers seriously because they have a stake in ensuring that we give offers to the right candidates who will then become good students for them to teach. Some of you wrote that academics are unable to assess candidates compared to people with industry experience. Setting aside that almost 95% of our faculty have industry experience in one form or another, the fact that our faculty have a stake in the outcome of the interview process because they have to work with the students for a year, gives me the reassurance that there is necessary rigour in the process.
Nonetheless, we are always looking into ways to improve the assessment process. I have talked to other schools who use alumni or sector-based consultants to interview candidates and I am still not convinced that these are better alternatives. The schools that I have spoken to tell me that it is very difficult to ensure consistency across alumni interviewers. Invariably most alumni interviewers are too lenient --- my friend who is a top US business school alum interviewed 4 candidates in Singapore and rated all of them equally as Very Strong. The School only made offers to 2 of them because all their global alumni had rated their interviewees similarly. I am also yet to be convinced of using Careers consultants for interviews. I may be wrong but I feel that such consultants will have an interest to recommend only those candidates whose work profiles make them very easy to place at top firms, and ignore the ones who have potential or who add diversity to the class. If anything, using alumni or consultant interviewers leads to the formulaic answers from candidates that some of you think our process encourages.
Some posters have debated about the merits of an assessment centre versus an interview. I am open to the idea of an assessment centre but I still have not figured out a way to make the assessment centre work in a way that is fair to candidates who interview over the phone. I am also not sure how to weight the inputs from an assessment centre versus that from an interview, and whether an individual assessment is coloured by the performance of other candidates in the group. If you have thoughts on this, let me know.
I am intrigued by the experiences of those of you who attended the IESE assessment centre. From what I know, not all the accepted candidates are asked to attend the assessment centre. So, do you feel that the assessment centre gave you a better opportunity to showcase yourself compared to the personal interview? Would you prefer if everyone had to attend the assessment centre?
Ultimately, no assessment process is perfect. I am always looking for ways to improve our assessment, which to me means improving the accuracy of our assessment. Errors can come in two forms :- admitting people we should have rejected; or rejecting those we should have accepted. To minimise the first error, I take inputs throughout the year from our Program and Careers teams. It is much harder for me to understand the scale of the second error, so discussions like this are useful.
Conrad Chua
Head MBA Admissions
Cambridge Judge Business School
26 May 2011, 12:14
