Yale Class of 2016 Calling all applicants!

In for Round 2! Good luck everyone!

They don't do this any more. My year was the last year. All off-campus interviews are conducted by AdCom members, and some interviews are conducted by Skype, but they really encourage you visiting. If it's cost-prohibitive to visit, reach out to the Admissions office, and they can schedule a Skype call.

Hi everyone! My name is Konrad - I'm one of the co-founders of Kira Talent, the online video interviewing platform that Yale is using this year. I just wanted to reach out and wish everyone at GMAT Club the best of luck in their MBA application process.

I'm also more than happy to answer any (general) questions that anyone might have about completing their online video interview. At Kira Talent, our number one goal is for each one of you to get accepted at your dream school, so we take any feedback you may have left after your interview very seriously. In fact, a daily report gets emailed to our entire company every morning containing all feedback from candidates from the past 24 hours. So if you've left feedback, we've definitely read it and if you have any additional suggestions, feel free to send me an email at konrad[at]kiratalent[dot]com.

And of course, if you have any questions on our website, or need assistance setting up your webcam & microphone, we have a dedicated support team that's more than happy to help you out!


Just a small clarification - a different vendor from us is supporting Kellogg's application. As a result, I'm unable to comment on their application process, but I can 100% guarantee we won't experience anything like that on our end for the Yale SOM applications.

Just finished my video questions. I don't have words to describe how bad it went. I got a little nervous and my pacing was incorrect. One of the questions, I had so much to talk and I don't think I put my actual point across properly. The last one, I didn't articulate very well why I disagreed with whatever statement was given in the question.

If I got to play back and view my responses, probably I could judge better how it looked on the video. Anyways, too late now. I am very disappointed. Yale is one of my favorite schools.

My advise to others would be - Stay calm people. The questions are very answerable. Pace well. If you are getting nervous, just go slow, breathe well and continue answering. 90 seconds may be too less for some answers. So, filter out everything that is not necessary and keep your answers simple.

Yep ... I felt the exact same. I was so nervous and I stumbled through all the questions. My answers were fine, but my delivery was pretty unimpressive.

I hope maybe there's a little touch of that in everyone's video interviews - since they're meant to judge your on-the-spot, quick thinking. (Wishful thinking??)

Another piece of advice - take your time and do the practice questions, just to rehearse the pacing.

Anyway, can't do anything about it now. Submitted for R2. Good luck everyone!!

Anyone know what the adcoms are looking for in the video essays? Is it the personal story and how I sound, or the errors that I am listing below?

I did mine for Kellogg and going to be doing them for Yale.

If I flub an answer, is my candidacy in jeopardy? After a minute into the video essay, I stopped mid sentence. I thought I had 2 more practice tries per question (long story on reading something incorrectly on another site) but this was the last one so there's no retry. I also used "and" continuously throughout the answer and made some sub-verb agreement grammar errors. I never talk like this but the nerves and thinking that it was practice screwed me up.

Completely agree. Just finished my video questions. Didn't smile as much as I wanted to and went a bit off the track during the third question. Overall it was pretty average.
I did some research on the internet and noticed one thing.If I'm right, the first two questions are regarding your personal traits and the third question asks whether you agree or disagree with a statement.
Overall a smooth process. I was expecting technical glitches due to bad connectivity at my place but thankfully it went fine.

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk

If anyone has yet to do this, biggest piece of advice - Picture yourself as the CEO or in some long term position that you want to be in and you are being interviewed on HBR, Forbes or Fortune. I personally, looked at the HBR videos and tried to identify patterns of how they responded and added in my own personality and style.

Be creative, have fun with it. Good luck!

Ha! That's definitely a solid approach, but not one I could pull off convincingly.

I wanted my personality to come through, so I opted for a very conversational tone. I think my first answer was pretty strong, but I definitely didn't nail the second and or the third. In fact, I would call the second a big, fat flub.

All the same, I'm not worried. As adcom keeps telling us, the video interview is just one element out of many. There are lots of reports online and in this very forum where people thought they bombed the video interview, but were still ultimately admitted.

Yes - my #2 was slightly different ... #1: personal trait, #2: how would you handle X situation, #3: statement agree/disagree

Just submitted my application! good luck everyone !

Just submitted my application Video section didnot load so thought probably a link would be sent once I submit but I don't see the link either in my inboc...panicked and emailed the adcom.. Fellow applicants whats the deadline for finishing the video essays?? and was everyone able to finish the video questions before submitting the application

I believe it's 5pm EST today. At first, the video didn't load for me but it's because I use Chrome and didn't see the permissions bar pop up at the top. Were you able to record the test video on the first page of the video section?

Also, did you see the post from klistwan, up above in this thread? He is a co-founder of Kira Talent, the company that operates the video interviews. Perhaps he can help you?

Just submitted my app. I didn't have any problems with the video, although I wish the video app was available on iPad. Anyway, I think my responses to the video were ok. I wish we had more than 20 sec to prepare though.

Good luck everyone.

Hi Konrad, Suprisingly the video questions did not load in my application and I thought I will submit my application and check them later But I was unable to post submitting the app..either the application should not allow submitting without completing the video questions or there should be an option to take the video questions post submission can you please help ?

Phew finished the application in the nick of time..Kiratalent live chat services was so awesome.. when I explained my situation the service executive provided me a link through which I was able to complete the questions..video esssays experience was so much fun..I thought I could go on for eternity .. questions were fun to answer .went very well for me initially I was bit nervous and panicked when I didn't see the section load in my application

Good luck everyone. R2 - let's go!