Ross (Michigan)

"Interviewed with an alum in Seattle. The interview was about 45 mins long and pretty standard. My interviewer used points in my resume as prompts, which no other school had really done but I think is smart. - Walk me through your resume, and how has it led to your decision to pursue an MBA. (I discussed my interest in my current company's strategy shift, so we had a brief discussion about my ST/LT goals before they had a chance to ask) - Why Ross? - I am responsible for a training a lot of new employees, so they asked how I go about training someone new. What do I do to make training easier and faster? - Describe a time at work that put you under a lot of stress, and how you handled it. - How did you help alleviate the stress of your colleagues along the way? - Can you describe a time you made a decision that you regretted? - What would you do differently moving forward to avoid the difficulties you encountered?"

"Had my interview with alumni. Interview lasted for around 1 hour, first 20-25 mins discussion on resume and goals, next half an hour behavioral questions, and last 5-8 mins open for questions from my side. Major questions were: 1. Introduction - focussing on professional career till date and special emphasis on career shift decisions. Then started discussing on some specific points from my resume. 2. ST and LT goals 3. Why MBA, why now? 4. Why Ross - very detailed 5. Biggest achievements and failures and what I learned from them 6. Talk about one of the most stressful situations at work and how you overcame it 7. Experience of working in teams. What are the crucial characteristics required while working in teams? 8. Some question on a leadership role 9. What do you do outside of work - hobbies and activities? Overall, it went smooth. My advice would be to prepare well on why you are looking forward for an MBA and Ross specifically. Explore Ross' offering according to your goals and be prepared with some teamwork related stories and learnings from your professional life."

"*Ross Team Exercise Experience* Team exercise was actually quite enjoyable and pretty low stress. They break you out into groups of roughly 4-6, along with 2 MBA2s who are evaluating you. They give you two stacks of cards; you draw one card from the first pile which tells you your organization/company, and then 6 from the other stack which contains everyday business buzzwords (sales, growth, profit, etc.) Your task is to use 4 of the 6 buzzwords to develop a business problem and solution for the organization/company you drew. Your team has ~10 mins to prepare a 5 minute presentation in which every member must have a speaking role. The evaluators will also ask a follow up question. Like the admissions office says, there's not a whole lot you can do to prepare for the team exercise, just go in there with a positive attitude and don't be a jerk who tries to dominate the conversation or talk over your teammates. Good luck."

"I had my Ross interview last week. At one point, I thought I was going to miss it. The calendar on my phone reminded me that the interview was meant to be at 4:45 pm my time. It had been a really busy day on my Client’s site and I was only able to get away at 4:30 pm but then got stuck in rush hour traffic. The interview was meant to be via Skype. I received a ‘wave’ from the Ross Admissions team at 4:40 pm on Skype at which point I was still on the way to my office where I had booked a meeting room to have the call. I finally arrived at 4:50 pm and was convinced I had screwed up. Things only got worse when I tried to call them back on Skype and there was no answer. I then decided to call the Admissions Officer who had confirmed the interview details. She was really lovely and told me my interview wasn’t for another hour. So for some reason I got my EST conversion all wrong. This was a blessing in disguise as I was able to compose myself and do some last minute preparations. The interview seemed to go well. Ross are the only school who had said I should have a form of identification ready for the call but they didn’t ask for it. The interview was with a second year student. She started off by telling me about herself (her background and what she was doing at Ross). She was on a dual degree programme (I will talk about this later). We then went into the standard MBA questions: Tell me about yourself? Why you want to want to do an MBA now? Why Ross? etc. We then got to the scenario based questions and she asked me about: a time when I encountered difficulties while on a job and how I managed to come through; a situation where I had shown leadership; a situation where I had to work with different functions/unit to deliver a project, and; an experience of working with a difficult manager. When she finished with her questions she then gave me the opportunity to ask mine which I did. I have become more interested in dual degree programs as I have gone through this MBA process. I will explain this in another blog. This is where I feel Ross has a big advantage. One of the stats they are very proud of is that they have 97 top 10 graduate programs. Students are also allowed to self initiate their dual degree programs. This gives students the opportunity to create a ‘specialised academic program to meet their specific career interest.’ To do this you have to be accepted by both the schools you are interested in. The advantage of this is you can wait till you have started your first program and then apply to the additional academic unit you are interested in. It is then up to you and the faculty to come up with an agreed plan to complete the program. From my understanding the dual degree programs usually take 3 years but I think if you pick two programs that have similar allowable credits you have the opportunity to double count which could reduce the time. This is my understanding of the information I have gathered through speaking to my interviewer and my research but am happy to be corrected."

"Interviewed with the Alum an hour ago. The interview was pretty straight forward and interactive. The Alum started with introducing himself and talking about his time at Ross. Then he switched over to my experiences and asked me to tell about myself. Then the usual interview: why MBA, what goals, why Ross, a couple of behavioural questions on leadership experience and then questions for him. The interview lasted about 45 minutes. Call it interaction rather than interview. The Alum was very nice and calming. No curve balls thrown my way."

"I interviewed with a Ross' 16 alum in a Starbucks. It was really conversational and he made sure to let me know that upfront. He had gone through my resume before and asked these questions. 1. Tell me about yourself 2. So Why MBA? 3. Why Ross? 4. *points to a specific bullet point on the resume* - this looks interesting - tell me more about this 5. How do you think you will contribute to Ross? 6. Working in education, you must have come across many conflicts. Tell me about one such experience. 7. Questions for me. We ended up chatting for about 15-20 mins after the interview about his experience in Ann Arbor and just generally about Ross and a few mutual connections. Interview lasted for about 45 minutes (including the questions and follow-ups). Sent a thank you email. Received a prompt response. I am pumped for the team exercise now :)"

"Ross was my top choice going into this interview, and that hasn't really changed since. Overall the experience was positive. I really enjoyed my 1 on 1 interview with a current student. The programming surrounding the interviews was great as well, although it made for a very long day. I didn't elect to do the afternoon activities (Tour, class visit, etc.), since I had already visited the school previously. The team exercise was very disappointing. I'm not a believer in the exercise being a good measuring stick. I was placed in a group of several military applicants and was not given a chance to really show who I was due to them taking over the discussion and exercise. It's pretty disappointing that a top school like Ross believes that a children's exercise is a good way to gauge team skills."

"The alumnus interviewer was a pro at interviewing!! He could very well find out the nitty-gritties about me. The interviewer had lot of biases based on my profile... and he was constantly trying to put words in my mouth and trying to see how I will react. It was a very free-flowing and fast-paced interview. He started off by asking me to highlight some key points I want him to take-away from the interview about my profile/me. I hadn’t prepared in this way (realized it is important!) but mentioned few things. He asked me what is it that drives me. What made me innovate when organizing X. He asked me why I wanted to go to the USA for MBA instead of from the top univs in my country. I also summarized my achievements at one of my workplace. He asked me if one of those things was my biggest accomplishment… I elaborated on why I felt so. He asked me for “a time I had tried something and faced failure” and when I stopped for few seconds to think of which experience will fit-in yet not overlap with what I’ve already told … he mocked that I don’t have any failures, only accomplishments. I said I was trying to avoid an overlap. I again mentioned one same experience as before but talked about the other perspective to it. Why MBA, Why Ross, etc."