MBA interviews can be nerve-racking for business school applicants, but if you want to make sure that you ruin your chances of admission, these nine tips should help.
1 .Don’t bother preparing. The name of the school is probably all you need to know. Being able to talk about specific classes and student organizations makes you look too eager.
2. Don’t focus too much on one school. Show business schools that they’ve got competition by name-dropping the other schools you’re applying to while you’re interviewing. If you want to make it even more clear, you can mix up the program names
3. Recite your resume. Try not to paraphrase or shorten. Most MBA interviews are around 45 minutes so you should make sure that you resume takes up as much of that time as possible.
4. Don’t talk about your other achievements or activities. You shouldn’t brag about things like the nonprofit you helped found or your personal interests. If it’s not on your resume, there’s no need to mention it.
5. Answer quickly. Don’t take the time to think about what kind of answer the interviewer is looking for, just rush right into an answer. You’ll figure out what you’re trying to say after a couple sentences.
6. Don’t practice the most common questions. You never really know what interviewers are going to ask, so there’s really no point in rehearsing the reasons why you think this school is a good fit or your best examples of leadership.
7. Don’t ask questions. The interviewers expect you to know everything about the school, so they don’t appreciate it when you ask questions about things like student organizations or specific features of their MBA program.
8. Be casual. In this day and age, a sweatshirt from the campus store is much more impressive than business attire, because it shows that you’re committed to the school. And definitely don’t make the mistake of sending a thank you note after your interview.