Calling all HBS Fall 2010 Candidates

Hey Janus,

I had my interview in Bombay as well - on Monday 15th. I had exactly the same experience as you.

My interview was extremely casual that I think I was caught a bit off-guard. The interviewer was warm, very receptive and extremely nice. I had been given the impression that the HBS interview was a bit intimidating, and in retrospect I'm confused as to whether that would have in fact been better (given the way I had mentally prepared for it). I felt that I had done some serious soul-searching, spoken to a lot of HBS alum and current students, and made note of some really interesting points that I wanted to make about my candidacy. But I didn't manage to touch upon anything at all! Maybe this was my failure and it was up to me to create opportunities to weave points into my responses. But the interview was so casual and so focused on just asking me to talk about my essays and the odd bullet point on my resume, that I just couldn't find a way to say anything else.

It all happened so quickly and before I knew it, I was told that we were out of time. I hope that my face didn't suggest extreme disappointment at the time, because I immediately felt that I had lost the opportunity to present a lot of things I was keen to and hadn't made a serious impact.

My take is as follows:

1) The interview was just a way to verify what I'd written in my app, and to confirm if I was articulate and would be able to mesh well with the HBS community in terms of the way I spoke and structured my answers - if that's the case, I feel I managed to do ok (it could always have been better, of course). Though somewhere the fact that only 50% of interviewees are admitted (I feel I've seen that stat somewhere) makes me feel that it requires more than just "verifying your candidacy" or else one would see a higher acceptance rate

OR

2) The interview is clearly a way to go beyond your app and truly distinguish yourself from everyone else by being an effective yet real/humble "salesman" of your credentials - the interviewer is fairly neutral in terms of questions and it's really up to you to be smart and creative to get all your points across within a short time-frame. If this is the case, then I feel less buoyant about the way I performed and definitely feel I may have missed the mark slightly

In retrospect, I feel I may be exactly where I was before the interviewer - at a 50% chance of success. This could be a positive (in that I didn't evidently just screw up and ding myself out of contention altogether) or negative (in that I didn't do anything to really enhance myself beyond my app). It's a completely unknown variable - I've been replaying every moment of it in my mind (each time, I discover that "one other thing" I should've said differently to be more effective/clear) since and this unending post-mortem just makes it even more confusing to assess how it truly went. Impossible to tell.

I feel I had somewhere read that Sandy (the HBS guru) had written that the interview won't "get you in for sure" but can definitely "get you out for sure" - so I'm taking solace in the fact that I feel I am closer to the former than the latter.

All that being said, I am personally a bit disappointed with my performance and know I could certainly have done better. It just went by too fast and seemed so comfortable that somewhere I almost lost track of everything I wanted to say and just went with the flow, and possibly missed out on some key things.

I guess I've typed all this out only to come right back to the start: I have no idea, much like you!

Good luck. All eyes on the 6th - this really could go either way.

Cheers.