Harvard Business School - Interview Experience

Harvard business school is the second best global b school for MBA program. Below is the interview experience of a candidate applied through General Education. Some specific questions related to the candidates profile is being asked to the candidate during the HBS MBA personal interview,are mentioned in the HBS Interview Experience of the candidate.

TheMBA personal interview was in person at HBS campus and an adcom member was taking the interview.

She never interrupted me and and she was nodding sometimes as she was writing stuff down.

Contrary to what I was expecting based on other candidates' experiences, she was very friendly and encouraging and the interview was much more conversational than I had expected.

I can't recall the name of theinterviewer but she was a member of the adcom and said that there would besomeone else in the room (she said they try to do that wherever possible sothat they get more views).

She said that she thinks there are many ways to get answers to questions other than during the interview and sounless I had any pressing questions then there will not be time for any questions.

• When did you arrive in Boston?
• What class did you attend at Harvard Business School?
• What did you think?

Did seeing the protagonists of the case talk change your perspective?

She said that she read my application very carefully and thanked me for all the work I did and that hopefully it wasn't such a bad experience and they totally appreciate all the hard work candidates do for the application.

• If you had to introduce yourself to your Harvard Business School MBA classmates the first day of school in 1-2 minutes what would you say?
• How would you compare and contrast your experiences at MIT and Oxford?
• After MIT and Oxford how did I choose to go into banking vs. other options?
• How has my role at MS evolved since I started?
• What are the challenges?
• What do I do on a typical day (amongst other things, I talked about managing structuring and syndicate teams to give us output needed for the clients)
• Can you think of ways to improve the relationship with the syndicate and make them more helpful/motivated?
• What did you wish you did more/less of in your job?
• She asked me to clarify what do I mean when I say that in some projects we are not adding significantly value for the clients (I talked about how some markets are very well established and traditional and there isn't a lot you can do to help clients by being creative and good at your job- you just execute the transaction the way any other bank would have done it - can't really make a difference).
• How would your colleagues describe you?
• Who is your mentor?
• What is the most useful piece of advice he gave you?
• Where do you see opportunities in infrastructure right now?
• A lot of your classmates would be interested to know about Greece. What would you tell them? What would you likethem to know?
• She asked me if I am optimistic about Greece?
• Family business infrastructure how is it affected by crisis?
• What are my thoughts about going back to the family business?
• Anything else we haven't discussed that you would like to add?

I might be forgetting some questions.

She reiterated that she hopes the application process was good and asked whether I had any issues with it. (this wasn't a real question but more of a closing comment after we were done). I told her that it was a good experience because you always learn some things about yourself in the process.

She said that she will write an interview report and then this will be added to my application and they will go back to the admissions committee to review all applications and come up with a decision on March 29. And then the other person walked me down. She was also friendly and was smiling and nodding throughout the interview.