Kellogg Fall 2010 Applicants

All in all the interview went fairly well. Nothing the interviewer said screwed me up, but I was somewhat nervous (Kellogg is far and away my #1 choice) and it was my first interview, so I didn't articulate some answers as well as I would have liked. I also had just submitted the last of my apps two days before. I had prepared for about a week when I wasn't writing essays, but I had been sick for the past 1 1/2 weeks which made talking for a long time difficult because my throat dried out, so in the heat of the moment my delivery wasn't perfect. But I think my content was good.

I'm a Chicago-area applicant, so I was expecting an off-campus alumni interview. But a few weeks after I submitted my Part I app I got an email from Adcom about available on-campus interview slots. I jumped on it because, even though I had visited campus already, I wanted to show my interest in as many ways as I could. I don't think on-campus vs. off-campus matters but since I was available, I took a Saturday morning interview slot.

Saturday mornings are interviews with current students, and I interviewed with a first-year. When you sign in, you fill out a form and leave a copy of your resume. That is the first time the interviewer sees your resume (I didn't send it in advance), so they spend about 10-15 minutes prior to the interview reviewing it. The questions were pretty standard for a Kellogg interview. I would recommend reading the Clear Admit wiki for interview prep - that should be totally fine to prepare you. It didn't quite flow as a smooth conversation because my interviewer asked a lot of clarifying questions as I walked through my resume, but it wasn't bad. Just a bit different from what I expected.

Off the top of my head, trying to re-create the order of questions, I was asked the following:

Walk me through your resume.
Give me an example of an important teamwork experience.
Why MBA? Why now? Why Kellogg?
Two or three weaknesses?
Three strengths?
What kind of leader are you?
Anything else you want Kellogg to know about you?

(I think I missed 2-3 questions somewhere in there, but there wasn't anything unusual)

I talked a lot about not only my client-work experience, but also the entrepreneurial nature of my company, which resonated well with my interviewer because she had worked in a similar environment. It started about 5 minutes past when I was scheduled, lasted 30-35 minutes, and then I asked some questions at the end. But I didn't have a ton of time because they had interviews scheduled at the top of every hour so my interviewer had to prepare for the next one.

If I had to grade myself I'd give myself a "B." Fingers are crossed.

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