[分享]NYU Stern interview preparation material

chipmunk

Dinged by Stern today. Thought the material I collected for interview will be helpful for other NYU aspirants

Example #1:

Sure , mostly classical kind of questions, the set of why mba why stern why now ... And we walked through my resume as well. Strengths and weaknesses were also asked. The interviewer was an adcom member who had read all of my essays.


Example #2:

The interview was more interesting than someone running through a list of questions. She flowed the questions very well and connected them to our converstation. She definately had read my application and was holding my resume in front of her.

The toughest question that I wasn't prepared for was what are your strenghts and weaknesses and how will those affect you in a small group atmosphere? Another was what motivates you to get up each morning and do well in ........? Insightful, not standard questions.

I knew what Mercer Kitchen is - it's very good - but I thought you were saying there is an NYU brunch there!


Example #3:

Standard Qs.  Asked some specific things about my background.  Strengths, weaknesses... asked about my career plans.  It's a relatively short interview  30-40 min compared to other schools.


I didn't get any tricky questions.  First I was asked to review my career progression, and why I made the choices that I did, and why I want an MBA.  We went over a couple of points on my application, and then we basically talked about what it would be like to go to school at Stern.  I asked some questions, and that was it.  


I found the Stern interview to be a bit more formal because it was with an adcom member as opposed to an alum.  erhaps it was just because I was wearing a suit whereas my other interviews were casual dress.  The questions were pretty standard.  Why my career goals, why Stern, my strengths, weaknesses, etc.  I think the key thing is to show enthusiasm.  It was also shorter than my other interviews (they say 30 minutes, mine lasted a little more).  As always, be prepared to ask some questions.


I think the lunch and classroom visit would show an added interest in the school and demonstrate that you are putting a lot of time into the decision of which MBA program to attend.

As for the interview.  It was pretty standard.  

1)Why did you choose to work for the company or companies you worked for?

2) Strengths? Weakness?

3) Why MBA?

4) Why Stern?

5) A variation of a teamwork question

6) Why are you unique?

And them time for questions.  Very personable people in the adcomm department.


my interview was different from what others have described. I was interviewed by a student in the admissions office. The questions were not the standard 'why MBA' questions, but rather were targeted at specific aspects of my application. My interviewer was very nice, but the interview was more of a question-answer session than a conversation.


Mine was similar, but with an adcomm. They don't do their interviews blind, so after we talked about my resume, we talked about my specific interests as described in my app. Not unconversational but not just a Q&A.


some of the specific questions included:

- discuss your quantitative experience and skills, and why you believe you will be able to handle quant classes at Stern

- if you get into all your target schools, how will you decide which to go to.

- Tell me more specifically about your career goals.

- how would you contribute to the stern community.


Definitely wear a suit to the interview. I did schedule online and went to lunch with a student which i thought was very informative.


It'll be the standard b-school interview -- why Stern, why MBA, tell us about your career progression.  Questions that stood out  were what schools did I apply to and why, and any comments I have about my GMAT being below their accepted average.  This question really made me mad because my GMAT is only like 20 points below their damn, very high average.  It's an average, not a minimum threshold.  Since this was the last question of the interview, I left with a sour taste in my mouth.  I did not send a thank you note to the interviewer because I found him insulting.


I also got a 660 and received the same question...I felt it was totally uncalled for.  The interviewer even asked me what I would if I didn't get accepted anywhere.  I only interviewed about a week ago,  but with those questions, I am not overly optimistic!


I think they're also asking what your back up plan is to see how resilient you are, it's what the current students are going through right now. Current students can't just have 1 plan anymore. What if they don't get the job they have their hearts set on? What if you don't get into the school you have your heart set on?


my interview did not go well - i knew it as soon as i walked out of the ad comm's office.  
answer me this:  i've been in IT for 4 years and want to transition into finance.  how
do you convince the interviewer that's what you want to do?  MY interest
has developed from my interest int he stock market, where I learned fundamental analysis
to chose stocks but there's nothing tangible I could throw out, such as I have been taking
finance classes int he last 2 years to develop my interests.  



I have been interviewed, but questions are not standard, they are very personal. The second year student who interviewed me did already know my story, so I needed to explain some parts of the application where not clear to him. The three things I believe they like to hear more are:

you are a leader

you are a team worker

why you want an MBA at NYU


The questions are going to be specific to you as an individual. I think most people who've interviewed will agree with that.
So if your GMAT is low, they'll ask.

If you never led anything in life (not even a club in College), they'll ask.

If you have a good career and don't seem to need an MBA, they'll ask.

If you don't seem to bring anything different than anyone else to the table, they'll ask.

If you don't seem like you really want to get into Stern/Stern doesn't appear to be your first choice, they'll ask.

If your desired career after graduating has absolutely NOTHING to do with what you've done for a living, they'll ask.

If you've done no community service, they'll ask.


I recently had my interview.  It was basically the stuff that has been mentioned.  One thing that they did focus on was how I went about getting my past and current jobs and how I would go about getting summer internships and future jobs.  I'm entertainment/entrepreneurship focused, so I think they wanted to make sure they wouldn't have an unemployed grad and that I didn't expect Sony, Vivendi and Viacom to formally recruit on campus.  I focused on networking (which is how I got all my past jobs) and I think it went over positively.



I had the same question in my interview -- whether I would conduct my own job search for summer interships and following graduation. I'm also an entrepreneurship/media type. The good news is that they still accepted me . . .


Sounds like my answer was similar to yours -- that I had found all my previous jobs through networking and thaty I would use my exisiting and future Stern networks to find work on my own, while at the same time making use of traditional on-campus recruiting channels blah blah. My sense is that they want people like us (i.e. non-finance) to diversify the class,  but want to make sure that we can hold our own in the recruitment process.


Interview was very short not more than 30 minutes. I was only asked three questions: Why stern? What would you contribute to Stern? What are your career goals?

Last 15 minutes were about me asking some questions and some casual discussions.



Part I

I interviewed on Saturday and wanted to give some info on the interview and my overall impression.  The interview lasted about 30 minutes (ran slightly over) and the questions asked (not in any order) were:

Give me a sense of what led you to make your career choices to date?

You've known xx for a long time.  What do you think she wrote about you in your recommendation?

What qualities did you like about the Stern MBA program that led to your decision to apply?

If you were a member of a band, what would you be (i.e. drummer, guitarist, singer)?

You've applied to a diverse range of schools.  Assuming you get into all of them, how would you make your decision?

What's your backup plan if you don't get into management consulting once you've graduated from an MBA program?

Here are my impressions of the various stages of the interview day:

The Tour:  Two 2nd year students gave the group (about 15 people) a pretty brief tour of the various facilities, including a couple of classrooms and some study lounges.  There were a surprising number of students there working on various assignments/projects, so I guess working on Saturdays appears to be normal for Stern, which I can't honestly say I'm thrilled about as I haven't worked substantially on weekends in a while.  They appeared a bit confused about where to take us, and sometimes we would get off a floor and then get back on so it was kind of a haphazard tour.  Overall, I liked our tour guides as they seemed pretty relaxed about the whole thing and appeared to be sincere when they answered any of our questions.

According to our tour guides, the facilities are wireless so you should be able to log onto the network anywhere within the building if you want to.  Laptops are not required, although we did see a lot of students with them so they're pretty common.  The classrooms are generally stadium style and vary in size from small (which we didn't see, although I think they may be about 30 seats) to 400, although there's only one of the latter.  Then they have block classrooms for 1st year students that look like they seat about 65-70 people.  There's two basic kinds of study lounges, including individual study lounges (quiet) and group study rooms (not so quiet).


Part II

Lunch:  The people sitting at my table (generally all applicants) were from a pretty diverse geographical area, including Atlanta, LA, San Francisco, a couple of New Yorkers and Boston.  I was a little disappointed that there weren't so many international applicants (I only saw four out of about 40), although with such a small sample size, I don't think what I saw is necessarily indicative of what the overall class would be.  The dean spoke during lunch, and he thanked all of us for coming, and then went into a spiel about how Stern is a great school, although a lot of what he said was attributable to the fact that Stern was located in NYC.  That was a little disappointing as well since I would hope that they have more to bring to the table than location.

Interview:  By far the most impressive aspect of the day, largely due to my interviewer.  He was a 1st year student, was very down to earth, had obviously been through my essays and presented tailored questions to my individual application, was helpful in describing the current situation at Stern and B-schools in general, and even pointed out an article in the newspaper about potentially cheap places to rent in NYC.  I would have been psyched to be in a class or study group with this guy, and that really left me with a very good overall impression of the school.  Now I anxiously await the status change.

Sorry for the long posts, but hopefully this is helpful for those who haven't interviewed yet.  One last note, my interviewer said that there were about 6,000 applications to NYU this year, up from about 4,000 last year, which seems to indicate that their acceptance rate should be about 13% this year.




Well I had my interview today...I don't know how well it went...I am usually a good interviewer having sat at both sides of the table, but today I felt just average in my responses...I actually had thoughts of re-answering some questions but decided against it...

Anyway...The format was pretty standard...Why NYU...How do others perceive you...What roles have you played in the past...What will you do outside of class if you attend Stern...The normal type of b-school questions that everyone seems to get...No one question stood out in my mind and I was pretty much prepared for every question she asked...I didn't get the GMAT question, because my stats are much higher than NYU's avg...

I hope that I didn't come off as rehearsed...I realized this was a problem as an undergrad because when I was looking for jobs and interviewing I seemed to almost robotically shoot off answers to the questions asked later on in my job search...The result was that the people I interviewed with first I got job offers, the later ones sent me GFY letters...

I was very fortunate to meet another prospective student who happened to be eating lunch with me...Wut a fantastic girl...She was an American from Texas, graduated from Yale, and is now working in Seoul, Korea...When the lunch dude asked where she was from both of us were perplexed by her Seoul response...Even though I'm Korean I just didn't expect an American girl to be working and living there...He He...She was a little worried about her GMAT score...But I told her not to worry about it. Mainly, of her fabulous work experience and the initial impressions I got just talking with her...This would definitely be a person that I would love to go to NYU with, I just hope Columbia, Wharton and Kellog don't steal her away...But I fear that she might choose another school because her intended concentration is not Finance...I wanted to go to Korea this summer to visit my family, but also catch some of the World Cup, but I was unable to secure tickets...She told me that she had a ton of extra ones and if I wanted to I could drop her a line and hook me up...Wow!!!

The guy I had lunch with was kewl too...Very open to questions and frank about the things going on at NYU...I attended a class and met some other first and second year students, all of whom welcomed me with open arms and gave me their contact info if I had any questions...I was thoroughly impressed by the quality of people going there, as well as applying...

I asked the admissions interviewer about what direction Stern wants to go in...Obvisouly they want to keep their finance reputation, but they really want to be the best in everything...They are very concerned about the rankings and seem to have this sibling rivalry with Columbia...Expect NYU to grow in caliber and strength as the years go on...It is going to much tougher to get into this school as years go by...

All I can say about NYU was that is was so much what I had hoped for and more...Even though I see NYU as the underdog in the fight between it and Columbia, I for one have always loved to root for the underdog, and with all that has been going on, I like the chances with this underdog...



The interview was your typical MBA interview.  Here are the questions that were asked of me:

1) Why did I chose the college I attended and what were my fondest memories of my experiences there?

2) Walk through of resume...focused on my decisions to move from one company to another.

3) Why MBA?  Why Stern?

4) Strengths and Weaknesses?

5) Name a leader I admire and explain why?  (that was a bit of a curveball)

6) Is there anything else you would like the adcomm to know that you haven't covered yet?

I actually had two interviewers in the room with me.  The main interviewer was an adcomm member.  The other person was a student who was training to conduct interviews.  I would have preferred to meet with one person but it turned out ok.  I thought I didn't do so well in the interview but it looks like I was just worrying too much.

chipmunk

Even though we've only been in school for a couple weeks, we already have 2-4 companies coming in *every single day* to talk to us about internships.  This week Pfizer, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, American Express and a ton of others gave presentations on campus.  Not to pat ourselves on the back, but I'd challenge anyone to name another school that has the same access to premier companies that we do based on our location.  I can't imagine the same amount of companies being able to make it up to New Hampshire (Tuck) every day!

Socially, let's just say that people at this school know how to party.  Every Thursday we have "Beer Blast" which is basically a school subsidized happy hour.  For $50 a year, its all you can eat and drink from 6 until 8:30 or 9 and then they always set up a post-Beer Blast bar with specials for students.  Friday mornings can be pretty tough, but thankfully, we don't have classes on Friday!  Outside of Beer Blast, we have a ton of block activities, including house parties, block dinners featuring the food and drink of the international student's homelands, pickup games of basketball, etc.  Tomorrow, my block is having a night out on the town with heavy doses of karaoke expected.


One more thing - the interview is not done blind.  Your interviewer will have read your application thoroughly before conducting the interview.  Thus, don't expect that you will spend too much time "going through your resume" as compared to schools which use blind interviews (such as Wharton).


I had an interview last year in April. The interview was conducted by Margaret McKegney. I think she was new on the job since she seemed a little stiff and there was another adcom in the room guiding the process along. It was pretty standard stuff really. Walk through the resume, why I made some of the choices I did, why MBA, why Stern, what did I plan to do after graduation. I also remember they were really trying to gauge my interest in Stern. Which wasn't an issue since I really liked the professors, the location and the energy of the school. And another major factor is that they have a great MIS department, so it didn't take a lot of convincing that I was seriously interested in the school.

As for the questions, no surprises were sprung, only the usual ones (why Stern, how will you enrich the diversity, how will you make a decision if offered admission from multiple schools, etc). The only new question was 'if you do not get an offer from any of the schools you're applying to, what are your plans?'.

Your interview will last 30 minutes, with the last 2 for any questions that you might have. In my opinion it's always good to ask 2 or 3 questions.


My interview was basically the same.  I think they try to mix the "hard question" up.  I had the "what if I didn't get a job in my first choice field" question.  FYI for others, students are not doing interviews right now but they are around for lunch.

chipmunk

The toughest question that I wasn't prepared for was what are your strenghts and weaknesses and how will those affect you in a small group atmosphere? Another was what motivates you to get up each morning and do well in ........?


1)Why did you choose to work for the company or companies you worked for?

5) A variation of a teamwork question

6) Why are you unique?


- discuss your quantitative experience and skills, and why you believe you will be able to handle quant classes at Stern

- if you get into all your target schools, how will you decide which to go to.

- Tell me more specifically about your career goals.

- how would you contribute to the stern community.


The three things I believe they like to hear more are:

you are a leader

you are a team worker

why you want an MBA at NYU


If your desired career after graduating has absolutely NOTHING to do with what you've done for a living, they'll ask.


One thing that they did focus on was how I went about getting my past and current jobs and how I would go about getting summer internships and future jobs. that I had found all my previous jobs through networking and thaty I would use my exisiting and future Stern networks to find work on my own, while at the same time making use of traditional on-campus recruiting channels blah blah.


Give me a sense of what led you to make your career choices to date?

You've known xx for a long time.  What do you think she wrote about you in your recommendation?

What qualities did you like about the Stern MBA program that led to your decision to apply?

If you were a member of a band, what would you be (i.e. drummer, guitarist, singer)?

What's your backup plan if you don't get into management consulting once you've graduated from an MBA program?


How do others perceive you...
What roles have you played in the past...
What will you do outside of class if you attend Stern...


1) Why did I chose the college I attended and what were my fondest memories of my experiences there?

5) Name a leader I admire and explain why?  (that was a bit of a curveball)

6) Is there anything else you would like the adcomm to know that you haven't covered yet?


4)  Hypothetical:  It's your first day of class at Stern, and you're introduced to your new "team" members which you'll be doing projects with over the next year.  You're given a problem to solve.  What is your role in your new team?

5)  What would your boss say is your biggest weakness?

6)  What would your colleagues say are your strengths?


how did you decide on your major, on your first job out of college?

did you enjoy your first job and why?

what made you change jobs, what were you looking for?

have you ever had a project that you have had to fight for or champion to your managers and how did it turn out?

what do you hope to get out of business school?

elaborate on your long term goals.

what are your medium-term goals and how will they help you accomplish the LT ones?

if you are unable to pursue <>, then what other things would you consider or how would you plan your career?

given your background, how will you market yourself to recruiters in X competitive industry to find either a summer or full-time job?

what were you looking for when you decided which MBA programs to apply to?

Well, your GMAT is quite impressive.  But, how do you explain the discrepancy between that score and your low GPA?

attic

It is unbelievable! Is that you dinged by NYU, chipmunk?

chipmunk

Yeah, it's me. Still crying hard.

lewis

Chipmunk bro.. sorry for hearing that.

But again, I am sure at least one of your dream schools is walking up you, since we believe that you are one of the strongest candidates for any Top MBA program around the world.

attic

Me too! Agree with lewis bro!

Those stupid and snobish NYC guys!

They won't know that they have missed a golden future business star!

chipmunk

Thanks attic and lewis for your comfort. I just finished a shower using my tears. : )

Now I feel much better.

[此贴子已经被作者于2003-3-13 15:07:54编辑过]

山峰

agree with lewis and attic,

chipmunk bro, you are indeed one of the strongest and kindest of all the applicants in the world!!
Do not lose confidence about yourself,
we all believe in you!

attic

chipmunk, 这时候还能开得起玩笑，和大家分享，真是服了你了！