What are your short-term and long-term career goals?
What the interviewer is looking for: Interviewers want to know what you will do with your MBA degree, and thus they will invariably ask about your career goals in one way or another. Start by dividing your goals into two categories—“short-term” and “long-term.” For each category, explain what the goal is, why it is important to you, how you will set about achieving it, and what aspects of your current career and educational choices will help you get there. Introduce your long-term goal first and then talk about how your short-term goals will help you get there. Be specific about your objectives. Instead of saying “I want to open a small business,” tell about your dream of creating a microloan NGO, including what led you to this goal and what exactly you are doing and will need to achieve it. Be sure to mention skills and positions that will utilize your MBA degree.
Key Factors to Include: details about your career goals, reasons for these goals, action plan
Model Answer:
Tip: Give milestones and/or deadlines for your goals.
Which MBA interview questions are the most important to answer?
Different universities are known to ask specific questions in their respective interviews, and this goes for the top ten business schools in the country (according to US News & World Report). Testimonials from MBA applicants gathered by Clear Admit and Poets&Quants paint a clear picture of the most frequently asked in MBA interviews at these top-tier universities.
By our logic, the most important questions to know about are those asked by most of these top schools. So let’s look at the five most frequently asked interview questions, note which schools are highly likely to ask them, and decide what information to include, what to avoid, and how to give a response that will make that post-interview handshake feel oh-so-satisfying.
Other frequently asked MBA interview questions you should prepare for:
Preparing for your MBA interview means gathering as much information about the program as possible and practicing your interview responses beforehand. The questions in this article are by no means the only questions that interviewers will ask, so consider doing a bit of research on what recent applicants have experienced in their MBA interviews. For more information about the MBA programs mentioned here and the general MBA application process, check out the resources below.
1 Have you applied to any other schools?
This is a tricky MBA interview question. It may appear obnoxious or forthcoming, but do not take it that way. Instead, respond to the query, list a few schools youre applying to, and explain why you chose them. Try not to display your preference for one school over another because this may backfire.
Here are some examples of “quirky” questions:
How to answer:
When you get a question like this, don’t panic. Remember that there is no “wrong” answer for such questions. For quirky questions, the most important thing is to focus on the “why” rather than the “what”. Let’s take an example of the question “If you were an animal, what would you be, and why?”. It doesn’t matter what animal you pick – picking a tiger doesn’t automatically get you more points than a mouse. What’s more important is explaining your reason for picking the animal and how you describe yourself, and how you make the connection between your business school ambition and the question.
Sample answer:
If I were an animal, I would be a fox. Foxes are known to be friendly, sociable creatures, and I count my interpersonal skills as one of my top strengths. Additionally, in many folk tales, the fox is the clever and wily one who often outsmarts the other animals via unconventional solutions to problems. I can relate to that as my professional and business philosophy is to always look for creative solutions to tough problems and not get too bogged down by how things have always been done.