Anderson: Interview Transcripts & Notes
Anderson Interview assessment categories, from a former admissions person:
Categories for interviewer ratings are:
- Focus/Direction for MBA (includes why Anderson)
- Leadership Potential
- Interpersonal Skills
- English Skills
- Areas of Strength/Development
- Bottom Line Assessment -- Yes or No, why or why no
- Tell me about yourself
- Why MBA/Why Now/Why Anderson
- how will you be involved as a student
- Short and long term goals
- backup plan
- how do you feel about living in LA
- What resources does Anderson have that will help you succeed.
UCLA 2nd year alumni interview questions:
1.Tell me about yourself
2. Can you walk me through your CV?
3. Why UCLA and business school?
4. Can you describe a failure and what have you learned?
5. What is your biggest accomplishment up to date?
6. How do you think diversity plays a part when you interact with MBA students at Anderson?
7. What is you strength? Can you give an example of when your strength helped you to work on a group project?
8.Do you have any questions for me?
--
UCLA Anderson Interview Report, with a second-year student
Interview went well, very straightforward with question and answer and then my questions at the end. The second year student and I had good conversation; the behavioral questions weren't overly difficult:
- Time when you made a positive impact on your team?
- What has been your biggest challenge?
- Time you encountered a diverse environment you had to navigate?
Anderson Interview, with second year student
- Walk me through your resume
- Why MBA?
- Why Anderson?
- Strengths and Weaknesses
- What will you do if your first career choice is not available/possible?
- How do you like to give feedback and how do you like to receive feedback?
Anderson with second year student
- Tell me about your resume and work experience
- Why do you want to get an MBA?
- Why Anderson?
- Why now?
- Tell me about an experience you had working on a cross-functional project
- What would your manager say your strengths are?
- What clubs do you want to join at Anderson?
- I saw on your resume you speak French and Italian, why did you choose to study these languages?
- Why Anderson?
- Besides the career/industry you're currently pursuing, what else could you see yourself doing?
- Most of the other questions fed off of the conversation/were specific to my experiences
30 minute interview with time for questions at the end
- Walk me through your resume
- What are your short and long-term goals?
- Why MBA?
- What was a strength that your boss shared about you during your last performance review?
- Describe an example of working on a diverse team
- How do you plan to make a positive impact while at Anderson?
- Tell me about a time when you were part of a team and drove change.
In person Interview (On-campus)
- Tell me about yourself.
- Why MBA?
- Why UCLA?
- Tell me about a time when you worked on a team? Any problems with team members and how did you address them?
- What weaknesses do you hope an MBA can help you address/improve upon?
- What do you like to do outside work?
- What clubs do you want to get involved with at Anderson?
- Anything else we didn't cover that you would like me to know about you?
Skype interview
- I was matched with a 2nd year student of very similar background and interests - the interview was 30 minutes and very conversational
- Tell me about yourself and walk me through your resume
- Some questions specific to my team at Google/specifics of my job function
- Long and short-term goals / will it be hard to leave Google?
- What is your day-to-day life like?
- Time when you worked on a team?
- Time when you were a leader?
- Why Anderson?
The interviewer was a second year student.
The questions that she asked me were very consistent with what I had read online and what we had discussed: mostly centered around why MBA, why Anderson, what would you want to get involved with here with a few behavioral questions thrown in. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The student interviewer had prompts that he could choose from to address each of the topics above. He started out asking me to tell him about my resume and transitioned from there to questions about why I wanted to get my MBA in general, and then why UCLA. He asked me what I thought I could bring to my classmates/contribute to the MBA class (he phrased it a little harshly and then backtracked a little so it sounded less like he was interrogating me), and then asked me to tell him about a time I led a group in a way I thought was indicative of my leadership style, and then he asked me what I like to do for fun.
I asked him how he thought the revised curriculum was being received by students and about what he enjoyed most so far about being at Anderson. He was really positive about the new course organization and then talked about the student culture. Overall, it was fairly casual questioning, so our practice interview was really helpful because it was tougher than the actual interview was.
It lasted about an hour with the last 15-20 mins or so being more of a discussion about my personal interests and my interviewer's experience at Anderson.
- ST + LT goals
- How did you receive the promotions that you did?
- What is a good leader in your mind?
- You come from a business background and want to study entrepreneurship and innovation - how are you looking to target the financial side of starting your own business
- You said your LT goal is to start your own business and in the ST work for a company like Google. Firms like these are very attractive to work for - if you were in a good situation with an organization like that - why would you leave?
- Describe how you feel about work life balance
- Give an example of when you approached a situation creatively
There were a few spin-off questions based on how I answered those.
Very informal - nice guy who spoke passionately about his experience at UCLA - certainly made me feel good about applying there.
I met with an alumni (10+ years out of school) in the Bay Area. The interview was fairly short, to-the-point, and lasted about 30 minutes.
- Why MBA, why now, why Anderson?
- Long-term career goals.
- Walk me through your resume.
- What were your GPA and GMAT scores.
- Questions for me
In person, with second year student:
- Why Anderson and why now?
- Career goals?
- Describe a situation where your values came into question?
- If someone on your team did not finish an important assignment, what would you do?
- What are your strengths and weaknesses?
- Anything else to add?
I interviewed on UCLA's campus on a Super Saturday. When I arrived, there were about four current students to help answer any questions and to just hang out with the interviewees. They were all very friendly. My interviewer was a recent alumni. He started out with just a "tell me about yourself question." I walked him through my resume and was also asked why I made the move from each job. While I was describing my experience, he threw in the following questions:
- What would your supervisors say are areas of improvement?
- Describe a situation when you had to convince a client to do something or change something that he didn't want to do.
- What are two of the most important things you took away from that job?
- Describe a challenging teamwork situation.
- Why an MBA?
- Why UCLA?
The last 5 minutes was mostly reserved for him to answer any of my questions and to do a little selling on why Anderson was a good experience for him.
Interview
I think this went well but she certainly sent rapid-fire questions and challenged most of my responses. She did mention at the end that they were looking for people with my international work background. Otherwise she was hard to read, but softened when it was my turn to ask questions
- we spent a lot of time on college studies and extracurriculars
- professional choices, why particular path
- example of team challenge
- example of a disappointment
- example of something I am passionate about outside of work
- why MBA now
- why Anderson
My interviewer was an alum and was very friendly.
- I was asked to go over my resume and cover the "why's" behind some important decisions I made.
- Then came the "Why MBA/now" followed by "Why Anderson and how it fits into my goals". *Next, I was asked a couple of questions on team situations and how I handled them.
- I was asked about outside interests before wrapping up with questions for the interviewer.
I interviewed on campus with a second-year student. I had my resume for her and following are her questions for me:
Take me through your resume. What are your likes and dislikes for your current job? Tell me about a challenging group situation. What are your goals? Why do you want an MBA? Why now? Why Anderson? What are your passions outside of work/business? Anything else you want to tell me or want to ask me?
- Walk me through your resume (starting with college). This included sub questions like why did you choose your major, why did you make that job transition, what made you interested in that, etc
- What are your post-MBA career goals?
- What are your two weaknesses? Can you give me examples?
- What do you do outside of work?
My interviewer also focused a lot on the “why” questions – why I chose to do X, what made me interested in Y.
______ I met with a 2nd year student who was very friendly and made me comfortable. She told me the interview would be two parts: MBA/resume based and behavioral questions
- Walk me through your resume, starting with college - Why MBA, why now, why Anderson? - What are you going to do after Anderson? - What do you find most exciting about that field/why are you drawn to it? - Teamwork - a time you were in a team and faced a challenge, a time you led a team and it failed - What's the most creative thing you've done? - What's the most analytical thing you've done? - Talk about a time when you took on a leadership role - With all the information the adcom has from you on paper, what's one thing you'd like to add?