Ask Jason@沃顿 (closed)

chinazdk

Just completed the interview. The questions are within what Jason has listed. My performance was so so, but the interviewer was very nice. 

Thanks a lot, Jason. 

cannedpineapple

That's great! The best you can hope for is just not to screw it up. In truth, the bulk of the work has already been done before you interview: the application is in fact more important than the interview, if only because it provides more points of view of you.

Good luck!

monopoly2008

Hi Jason,

Random question, are students at Wharton allowed to have a few 'taster' lectures or classes before they decide which courses to take? And if you are not officially registered for a particular course, will you still be able to go to the lectures, and get whatever teaching materials that are handed out for that lecture?

Thx

蘑菇

good!

 

enliang

刚刚面好Wharton，上海校友面试的，这人一下午居然要面5个，比较无语。没约上hub，约了校友，发现校友也快变hub了，排队面。他反复说今年非常非常competitive。

没有很多常规的“说故事举例子”题目。个人感觉准备的时候再一次好好的想想到底怎么stand out，怎么differentiate，而不是只根据问题来准备。面试虽然是他问你答，但是你要尽量master，其实还是有很大空间展示自己的。（我没机会了，同志们继续冲）。

再次谢谢Jason的答疑解惑。

pega09

以下是引用enliang在2009-3-3 17:23:00的发言：

刚刚面好Wharton，上海校友面试的，这人一下午居然要面5个，比较无语。没约上hub，约了校友，发现校友也快变hub了，排队面。他反复说今年非常非常competitive。

没有很多常规的“说故事举例子”题目。个人感觉准备的时候再一次好好的想想到底怎么stand out，怎么differentiate，而不是只根据问题来准备。面试虽然是他问你答，但是你要尽量master，其实还是有很大空间展示自己的。（我没机会了，同志们继续冲）。

再次谢谢Jason的答疑解惑。

然后呢? 他要面几个半天?

pearlycy

enliang MM，请问你是上海哪个校友面啊？是Vicky Yan 吗？ 或是纯老美？

cannedpineapple

pearlycy> Vicky Yan is a second year student now... I don't think she's considered an alum. Besides, I don't think there is only one non纯老美alum in Shanghai

monopoly2008> this depends from class to class. Some classes, like negotiations, do not allow sitting in because class interaction is important. Others in a lecture style, say finance or accounting, are more open to this. In general there is a very complicated bidding system for you to choose classes, but yes people do swap in and out of classes.

enliang> don't worry too much about the interview. As long as you didn't screw it up, you did well. It's sort of like the GMAT. A bad score will hurt you, but a good score doesn't help.

cannedpineapple

mogu> thanks for your support

So I saw that another CD
poster got into Wharton and HBS, and there were a lot of comments about
diversity at business schools. Here's my own thoughts.

First
of all, it tends to be that people from certain industries (consulting,
banking, etc) value an MBA more and apply more for the MBA because it
is important within their industry. So it is not surprising that many
business school students come from these backgrounds.

Second,
naturally some companies are leaders within their industries, and so
tend to attract the top talent in their industry- in the same stroke,
then, since the top talent get into the top business schools, it is not
surprising that many successful applicants come from these companies.

Third,
at the same time everyone is different. If you add up how many people
worldwide work for the top 3 investment banks, PEs, VCs and consulting
firms, you probably have something like 20,000 people- FAR more than
the top 7 schools can take in (the famous "M7"). So even within these
schools, the people I've seen as my classmates have tended to have very
varied backgrounds. One guy took a break from his consulting job to be
a 主播 in sports in India.. Another took some time to work for the
government doing cross-border deals. And so on.

Fourth, and this
is something I frequently encounter, people typically ask about 'how
many from China got in', and about GMAT and TOEFL scores. Unlike the 高考
system, applicants for business school are simply not split up
according to their origin nor according to their scores. At Wharton a
rule of thumb is that if you have above 80% on both verbal and quant
GMAT scores, then you're fine. Any better will not give you any
advantage, though worse puts you at a disadvantage. Seen this way, 720
(ie above the average score) is really the same as 800. Apart from the
GMAT and TOEFL scores, another misconception is that Chinese applicants
are competing primarily with Chinese applicants. This is simply wrong.
There are so many other ways someone can be defined- one's occupation,
age, number of years of working experience, number of languages spoken,
gender, which schools you graduated from, which countries you have
lived in, and so on- that merely simplifying the equation to a single
factor- nationality- is inaccurate, misleading, and ultimately not
productive.

Lastly, this is not about diversity, but about the
loan situation. I have every confidence that Wharton will have a
non-cosigner loan in place for International Students by the time
school starts. The key question (and this is something to ask about
other schools that currently have this), however, is at what interest
rate? Looking at how credit is scarce in the US right now, I'd be
surprised if other schools were able to offer substantially lower rates
than us, given we all have the same sources of credit (the banks).

[此贴子已经被作者于2009-3-4 2:51:23编辑过]

cannedpineapple

Saw a useful post from Wharton's adcom about the interviews. The original poster had said he worried that the interviewer was 'non-reactive', and unable to relate to his background. Here was the response:

"Hello,

I'm sorry to hear that you feel your interviewer was "non-reactive." All of our interviewers are trained by the AdCom, and we always hope that the interviews are a pleasant experience for the Wharton applicants.  That said, our interviewers, as alumni of the Wharton MBA Program, come from hundreds of industries, and thousands of individual backgrounds.  They are not expected to be able to specifically relate to the background of the candidates they work with.  They are, of course, expected to respect the background of the candidates they interview, but the aspects they are judging the applicants on are far more general: fit with Wharton culture, personal qualities, communication style, interpersonal skills, etc.

The AdCom understands that not every interview will result in perfect chemistry between applicant and interviewer.  We take that into account when we read the interview evaluations, and because our process is holistic, the interview is only part of our evaluation of the candidate and not weighted any more heavily than any other single aspect of the application.   But we also believe that our interview process does mirror real-life business scenarious: often you will walk into a business meeting/interview/negotiation and sit across from someone who is "non-reactive" and relatively unfamiliar with your background.  

Regards,

Kathryn, Adcom Staff"