Since many of our readers are in the midst of their MBA interviews, we thought we would provide some basic tips on the process at Columbia Business School.
1) Columbia generally uses their alumni network to conduct resume-based interviews by invitation. Despite the fact that the interviews are invite-only, it’s important to understand that your interviewer will not have read your Columbia application. It is also critical that you provide your interviewer with a well-presented, clear and concise resume (i.e. stay away from the 5-paged documents with extensive lists of high school internships or the 18 software languages you know).
2) Columbia views the interview process from two perspectives. The first is fairly standard: they want to evaluate potential admits. The second is a bit more nuanced: they want to sell their school and understand the candidate’s interest in attending. The following text is from a memo that the admissions committee sent to alumni interviewers:
“Purposes of an alumni interview:
a) Promoting Columbia Business School by establishing a direct contact between an applicant and an enthusiastic alumnus/a.
b) Informing the applicant, giving him or her an opportunity to ask detailed questions about the CBS program.
c) Providing the Admissions Committee with a valuable evaluation of the candidate.
d) Recruiting admitted students by periodic contact from an alumni interviewer.”
Note the heavy sales emphasis on promoting the program and informing the candidates. This should tell you how critical it is to demonstrate interest in the school and display your knowledge of the program.
3) Although resume-based interviews with alumni can take several forms, here are a few of the questions that our clients have seen lately:
-What do you plan to do in the next few years?
-How do you plan to achieve your goals if you do not gain admission to business school this year?
-If you were accountable for a project and there was a disruptive member who didn’t agree with the path the team was taking, how would you handle it?
-How do you handle teamwork situations in which you want one thing and another team member wants something else?
-How do you react to being on a team where you’re the only one with the hard skills needed to tackle the problem (for example, quantitative skills in a statistics class)?
-Where else are you applying?
As one can see, it clearly pays to prepare for your MBA interviews. Far too many candidates lose focus at this critical stage of the admissions process. Contact Clear Admit directly for more information about our Columbia mock interview services.
