Wow Rhyme, I must thank you for this. These are great advices!

I can understand thanking Hjort, rhyme, prasad, me and River .. but who thanks Kryzak? Stop doing that right now!

We obviously do not deserve (Not yet) to be mentioned in the same list that mentions Hjort and rhyme. But thank you so much for thinking so positively about us, sangoman!

He is trying to appeal to Kry's ego so that he wont have any posts locked or deleted by the evil mod.

Discuss yourself.



What is your strategy to answer this?

Have fun with it and just say something about what you like to do in your spare time. Its an open ended question with an open ended answer. If that worries you, you can be more focused and approach it with something like:

* I'm from X and lived in Y (start with something not work related, after all you are more than just a worker)
* I enjoy doing Y and Z (activities)
* My career focus has been in X
* I want to move to Y
* Thats why I'm here today

Then let him/her then probe deeper...

But anything like "Discuss yourself" or "Tell me about yourself" is really an invitation to talk about anything you want to tell them that might be interesting about you. I'd probably stick to non-work related things and only get to career focus stuff if it seemed like a logical step.

Thanks rhyme! That makes a lot of sense. I can't prepare for all the questions they can possibly ask me, so yes, recasting the question to fit what I know is a good idea.

One more thing - did any of your b-school interviewers ask you about trends/challenges in your industry?

Even outside your industry, in my interview last week, the interviewer asked me about a particular country's economy, what would I do to improve it, and what is my view on its population "entrepreneurial spirit". I wasn't expecting these questions, and it was a little tricky to answer it.

By profile, I assume you mean "resume"... No one asks you to walk you through the profile... ("Check it out, I got 4000 posts, and a kick arse avatar")

The short answer is maybe - *I* would probably approach those two differently. Walk me through your resume is really asking "What have you done, and why have you done it, and why are you here today?"... But... heres the thing.... its just how I might do it - that doesn't mean its the right answer. -- More importantly, I might not do it the same way twice. This is what I meant about trying to think of questions as a network that you can traverse..

Imagine a mesh of questions and answers, each interlinked by different lines. There are a hundred paths to each answer and hundreds of paths to each quesiton. Multiple answers link to multiple questions. Something like this:

http://www.enm.bris.ac.uk/anm/summersch ... _big01.jpg

With that picture in mind, try to develop answers that work that way - there are many ways to get to X and many ways to get to Y, and X and Y can both be reached in different ways...

In general... I'd say not to think of these questions so rigidly. Walk me through your resume does not have to be "X then Y then Z then this and now this".. Similarly "Discuss Yourself" does not have to be all about extracurriculars. Thats just how I might go about answering it....

You should get as comfortable as possible casting thoughts together.. You sound like you might be trying to "define" answers - and I'd urge you not to. Otherwise if someone says to you "So, what are you doing here today?" you'll find yourself struggling -- "Oh no! Is that more like "Tell me about yourself" or is that more like "Discuss Yourself" or maybe its more like "Walk me through your resume".... Oh no! Which answer do I give?" Then you wont be sure which answer to give and you'll waste time worrying about which one is the "right" one that you prepared for - and which one isn't... (when in fact, either is acceptable).

In other words, try to avoid tying answer X with question Y explicitly. Practice being comfortable with the idea of a mesh. There are multiple ways to answer questions and multiple questions that lead to answers. Usually, all that you need is some transitional sentences and thoughts to link things together. That doesn't mean you should actually draw out the question answer mesh....(thats just creating more explicit links) it just means you should conceptualize the idea and practice until it comes naturally.

When you can think of two or three different ways to answer a given question, you are thinking mesh.

The other reason its important to get accustomed to this is that it isn't uncommon to get asked X, you answer Y and then get asked some variation of X (Say X*) .... you can't answer Y again... you need to able to somehow link X* to something else - maybe Z. Or maybe, later on you get asked question A -- to which you were hoping to answer B -- but you already "used up" the B story answering another question altogether. If you get used to the idea that no question has a right or wrong answer - and you practice giving different answers to different questions in different ways - you'll never find yourself "trapped" like this...

I'm repeating myself, so I'll stop... you get the idea.

geez. If I were asked that, I'd look like a deer caught in the headlights, for sure. If you don't mind my asking - what school asked you that question?

So when the interviewer ask you to provide examples of leadership/teamwork, would it be ok to reuse the examples you provided on your essays? (pls assume that this is NOT a blind interview - the interviewer has briefly reviewed your profile). If not, would it be acceptable to draw examples from outside of work? Or should I stick to work experiences? I don't know if these b-school interviews are like real job interviews. During real job interviews, the interviewer almost always allows me to draw experiences from work, school, volunteer work, whatever.

Thx in advance.

Wicked post Rhyme!

Since ppl are all throwing who they admire on the gmatclub its my turn.

I've been "active" here for almost a year and in that time I've learnt to gobble up everything from Rhyme, Kryzak and Riverripper. Sometimes I skip the name of the author and jump into the post first and I cannot tell which one of them wrote that post. They're all that good, equally. Open the RKR admission consulting firm after graduation?

So anyway Rhyme gets 2 brownie points since I met him last month at the GSB, RR gets 1 since I spoke on the phone. But Kry gets 3 brownie points so he doesn't exercise his mod muscles on me haha

keep up the good work guys. there was another thread about why GC >> BW Forum, this is exactly why