Oxbridge 2011 applicants

Just got my admission letter from Oxford. Applied in Stage Three, had interview on 20th of May on campus. Interview was 30 mins long with more or less typical questions.

My stats: M32, 730(Q50/V39), Toefl110, MS in Math, 10 years of exp. in Software Development.

Congratulations!!

Still waiting on my own decision here.. good to know that the emails are going out.

Oops nevermind I just got the email myself. Looks like we'll be classmates next year!!

My stats: Chinese-Canadian M27, 770 (Q49/V47), low GPA (~2.7), B.A. English Literature, 1 yr teaching in Japan, 2 yrs wealth management, level 2 CFA

Congrats vrepets, Kylian!

I also received the admit email an hour ago and looking forward to it!!!

Profile: Canadian-Middle-Eastern/B Eng (high GPA)/M Eng (high GPA)/720/4years blue-chip tech consulting

Got The Email a few hours ago.

My stats: Indian working in Texas\ 5 years in the Energy Industry \ GMAT 740

See y'all soon!

Anyone planning to attend the Welcome Day event on June 18?

Congratulations to all of you.
I will attend the Welcome Day on June 18. I look forward to meeting my new classmates. See you soon...

Anyone interviewed for JBS with Dr. Yin? My rejection came just days after the interview. Maybe it was just me but he stress tested and challenged me and asked open ended, none standard questions such as why didn't any philosopher before David Hume develop British skepticism and empiricism. I don't believe he read my essays or profile thoroughly and was asking random questions that struck his fancy. He started off with assuming it was my first time in Hong Kong - I flew to Hong Kong just to meet him - and commenting on my 700 plus gmat score in a derisive tone. He then proceeded to ask about my ten year goal. In my career goal essay, I focused mainly on my short and mid-range goals and mentioned my ten year goal more as a "vision" which to my mind is an ideal, a general direction to strive towards and not a concrete clear cut goal. In all honesty, how many people have mapped out their lives for the next decade and can predict the future so that their long term goals would be consistent with the rapidly changing world? However, Dr. Yin was adamant on hearing a detailed 10 year goal right away. He did not give me the chance to talk about my short or mid-range goals which are realistic and achievable given my background and well thought out. When I gave him the 10 year vision, he flat out rejected it, leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head in a domineering posture and said there is no logic to my idea, that it’s a moving target and that he is a business trainer himself, what makes me think I can compete with him. He then went on asking what I had learned from courses I took a decade ago in an open ended fashion. In the end when I asked Dr. Yin why he felt that there is no logic to my 10 year vision, he said he isn't familiar with my industry and rushed me out of his office as he let the next interviewee in.

Overall, I am very disappointed with the cavalier attitude with which Dr. Yin conducted the interview. Granted, I showed up to the interview haggard and tired because I flew in early and had to climb hills and staircases for 45 minutes to reach the complex for the interview. I didn’t show up with high energy and didn’t sell my ideas with enthusiasm. If I were in Dr. Yin’s shoes, I probably wouldn’t recommend myself on that day either. However, that does not justify the dismissive and arrogant attitude. I purchased plane tickets, missed my work and flew to Hong Kong to meet him and he did not even thank me for coming. I would understand the confrontational and dismissive tone if this were a job interview. However, this was a graduate school interview and I expected some measure of civility and courtesy. Actually, on second thought, even for profit companies have the decency to thank job applicants for applying and coming to interviews not to mention for this interview I had to pay for the plane tickets and travel expenses out of my own pocket.

I am not bitter about not being accepted by JBS. I was accepted by all the other schools I had applied to, which happen to be all higher ranked. I am however disturbed by the interviewer's arrogance. I hope my experience is an outlier and not the norm.

NPV

Thanks for sharing your interview experience and I am sorry it did not turn out as well as you had hoped.

All our interviews are conducted by faculty who teach our MBA classes in challenging and thought-provoking ways and that flavour comes through in the interviews. We conduct surveys after most interviews and a significant majority of candidates are very positive about their interview experience.

An admissions interview runs two-ways, and it is as much about you assessing a school, as us assessing you as a candidate. While my team and I try our best to ensure that people we invite for interviews are a good fit for the school and vice-versa, that does not always turn out that way at interviews. In our most recent interview round, we made offers to 75% of interviewed candidates. That was the same percentage for those candidates who were interviewed in Hong Kong.

Reading your post, I get the impression that you too had concluded that you and JBS were not a good fit. Nonetheless, I am glad that you have been accepted in other schools, and in your words, you are "not bitter about not being accepted". I wish you all the best in your MBA.

Conrad Chua
Head, MBA Admissions
Cambridge Judge Business School

I'd chalk it up to a personality clash, or perhaps it was due to something he really didn't like after reading your profile. It may even be as simple as an instance of an educator wanting to find out how well an interviewee handles him/herself under pressure and faced with an unsympathetic adversary; we likely deal with difficult people every day in the realm of business, after all. As always, I'm sure there are two sides to this story.

In any case, if your experience with this particular faculty member was that terrible, I'd count my blessings and be grateful that you found this out before you got in, as opposed to afterwards if you choose to matriculate and end up having him as your professor for an important class.

Sorry to hear about your bad experience. I am not sure what Cambridge's policy is on interviews but I know some of the schools do give the applicant a second chance to interview in case they felt the applicant was not given a fair interview. May be you could have sent to your interview coordinator at Cambridge as soon as you left the interview stating your horrid experience.

JBS is definitely having admin problems - I'm still amazed that after strongly insisting that candidates travel to Cambridge for their open interview day (with related visa problems) you will only get a 20min interview. Also that the head of admissions is active on our gossip forum. This is pretty unheard of in graduate admissions (PhD, MBA, MD, etc.) I think assigning megalomaniacal interviewers abroad is the same spirit...

If you want to talk about a legit admissions process, I was really impressed with IESE (admit, not matriculating). Really intense assessment day where we broke into teams and prepped/presented cases. But they are a better (rank, post-grad $$$, food) school

Hi,

One quick question. What is the dress code for Oxford Skype video interview? Just neck tie will do or suit with neck tie or business casual?

-- YM

hey guys. yeah ive heard some ppl having negative interview experiences at cambridge. Like outstanding candidates but because the interviewer didnt like one answer they were rejected. after flying all the way there. honestly, its cambridge's loss because the people who do well in business are real, normal people who have personality... the robots who answer every question perfectly with their prepared answers might get into cambridge, but those who are successful in the real world are more outspoken in general. The problem with cambridge is many of these "faculty" members who do the interviews have absolutely no idea what it takes to excel in the business world, because they have NEVER been in it. They have been in an academic bubble where they make the rules and study THEORY. i had a great experience at LBS and Oxford. ANd even INSEAD. AT oxford for example i had an interviewer who was an alumn but had also been a banker for several years (like i was)- he knew what to look for.

on another note... are there any american students going to INSEAD or Oxford? if so, do you have any advice on funding and how to go about it... can americans get scholarships at any of these schools, especially this late in the game?

Coucou
I do agree with you that the assessment day is a better idea than just a short interview. I have participated in one for another program and have to say I was impressed.
However, do you mind sharing whether you were admitted to Cambridge Judge in the end?

I don't mean to offend at all, however I just find that candidates (me included) tend to have a negative interview experience whenever they are rejected and positive otherwise.

I also consider the presence of the admission committee here on the forum a rather positive sign. At least people care of the feedback they get. Nowadays every decent business is present at the various social networks and forums to improve its image and collect feedback.


DGreenlead could you share your results please - which ones you were successful at? Oxford, INSEAD and JBS?

CambridgeMBA
it'd be really great if you could comment on the practical experience of the members of faculty.

Haha yes I was denied so please take my comments with a grain of salt. Its just that this forum gives the impression that one's chances are very good at Cambridge if they show up for the interview. I kind of wish they had spent more time evaluating (assessment day) and less time promoting the virtues of "The Cambridge MBA."

Flights are expensive, visas are a *complain* to get - applicants who made it to this stage deserve more than 20 min with an unprepared faculty membe

Posted from my mobile device

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