Navigating the whirlwind of MBA interviews can be daunting, especially when the questions are increasingly behaviorally oriented. On the Poets & Quants podcast “Business Casual,” John Byrne, Maria Wich-Vila, and Caroline Diarte Edwards dive into the latest admissions questioning trends. With Round 2 deadlines looming, they explore what interviewers are really looking for this year. John notes that questions are designed to uncover authentic candidate behavior, as seen with Berkeley’s probing into past project challenges or leadership initiatives.

Caroline emphasizes the strategic intent behind these questions. Admissions committees believe past behavior predicts future performance and are keen to see candidates’ authentic responses, contrasting with sometimes overly polished written applications. Such questions push interviewees off their scripts, allowing schools to gauge real communication skills and personal values. This approach becomes even more critical in a landscape where AI use may homogenize application essays.

Maria provides insights on tackling tricky questions, like handling disagreements with senior management, stressing the importance of emotional intelligence. She suggests candidates focus on understanding their audience, whether it involves appealing to analytical or emotional sensibilities. This depth of strategic thinking is essential for those aiming to showcase their potential in influencing higher-ups, marking a key test of one’s managerial aptitude. For MBA hopefuls, these nuanced discussions illuminate the path to mastering the interview process and securing a coveted spot in a top program.

Episode Transcript

Note: This transcript was generated by AI and may contain minor inaccuracies.

[00:00:07] – John

Well, hello, everyone. Happy New Year. This is John Byrne with Poets & Quants. You are listening to business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co-host, Maria Wittwilla and Caroline Diorkey Edwards. I will remind you that Caroline is a co-founder of Fortuna Admissions and the former head of admissions at NCI. Maria, of course, is the founder of Application Lab and a Harvard MBA, who actually even married a Harvard MBA. Can you imagine that? Anyway, we are here with our latest feature on the homepage is a compilation of all the interview questions that schools are asking candidates during this admission season. And because the round two deadlines are falling like dominoes right now, and people are going to be very hopeful to get an interview, we may as well go through what are schools actually asking. These questions come from people who were interviewed in round 1 and shared their questions publicly. One thing that I walk away with having looked at these questions is how behaviorally oriented they are. Take a look at Berkeley. It’s tell me about a time you had to work on a complicated project when your morale was low, or tell me about a time you championed the creative initiative in the workplace.

[00:01:34] – John

What was the thought process and attitude behind it? Tell me about a time when you had to manage a team. Tell me about a time when you took a professional risk. Caroline, tell me about a time when you asked questions like that at INSEAD.

[00:01:51] – Caroline

Yeah, well, I occasionally did interviews, but quite rarely because the interviews at INSEAD are conducted by alumni volunteers. And so I did the odd interview, but most of them were done by our team of about 3,000 incredible volunteers around the world. But I think those behavioral questions are really useful because admissions committees take the perspective that your past performance is the best predictor of how you’re going to behave in the future. And so they want you to talk in really concrete terms about what you’ve done in detail and really understand how you think, how you behave, what your values are. And also, behavioral questions are often very specific, and you can’t predict what questions you’re going to get. And I think that’s quite evident looking through your article here. There are some questions which are quite obvious and candidates can prepare for and should anticipate, but there are other questions here which are going to be coming out of left field. And with every school, every interview, you’re probably going to get some questions that you haven’t anticipated. And behavioral questions often fall into that bucket because there’s so many different scenarios you could be asked about.

[00:03:01] – Caroline

And the value for schools is not just understanding what you’ve done and how you’ve done it, and therefore, how you behave in the workplace and the qualities that you bring to the program in your potential future career. But it also helps them to get you off script. And I think that in an era when increasingly written applications read as somewhat canned because candidates are overusing AI and everything starts to read in a somewhat similar style and is overly polished, the interviews are an increasingly valuable tool for the schools to actually gage candidates’ real voice, their real communication abilities, their qualities in a way that is perhaps more authentic than they can grasp from the written application.

[00:03:58] – John

Right. I will say that the tell me about a time question just seems to come up again and again at one school after another in a way that almost surprises me. And some of them can be tricky, I think. For example, at Carnegie Mellon, candidates are being asked, Tell me about a time when you disagreed with senior management or supervisors. Maria, how would one answer a question like that?

[00:04:28] – Maria

I love questions like this. There are different ways to phrase it. Tell me about a time you had to push through an unpopular idea or when you had to win support from someone above you. I think what this really is testing for is your ability to manage and influence upwards. It’s much easier to manage people who are reporting to you and over whom you have formal power, because you can just to fire them. It’s a lot easier to get them to do what you ask. But to get a superior who is not behold and to you in any way to convince them does show a certain level of political deftness. To answer this question, a couple of things. First of all, I think it’s really important to emphasize the EQ element of it. By that, I mean describing what this particular manager or senior person is like and identifying what do they tend to respond to, because some people respond to numbers, so they just want to see a very thoughtful numeric analysis. Other people respond more to emotional entreaties or emotional please. Identifying, saying, Look, I’ve been working for this boss for six months, and I realized that she really loved to see things in graphs.

[00:05:38] – Maria

So previously, when I had walked into her office and said, We should do this thing, and she said, No, I then realized, Oh, my gosh, maybe I need to show things in a graph form. And when I did it that way, that’s what convinced her. Or whatever it is that you did. Maybe you formed a coalition of other senior leaders and then had them lobby on your behalf, whatever it might be. But because managing upwards is such a difficult thing to do, it does, no matter how you did it, I would explain your thought process and especially those emotional insights, as opposed to just what I did. I called a meeting, I presented my findings. That will not be as effective as talking about the emotional insights behind what guided your actions.

[00:06:19] – John

Yeah. This seems to come up again and again or similar questions. Like Chicago Booth is asking, Tell me about a time you had a non-popular idea. Columbia is the question, Tell me about a time you had a disagreement with a coworker. At a time when society seems so polarized and unable and unwilling to speak truth with each other, it’s interesting that these questions are being asked in this way. Carole, I wonder if in a way it’s reflective of how polarized society is and whether or not the people you admit into a business school can bridge the gap.

[00:06:57] – Caroline

Yes, I think that schools have had issues with students not being open to other ideas, clearly. And so they want to screen for that and make sure that they are admitting candidates who can really authentically engage in debate and be open to other ideas, because an MBA, by its nature, it’s such a transformational experience. And so you want to bring in students who have flexibility, adaptability, open-mindedness, and are willing and able to be moved by the perspectives of others. And so if you have a rigid mindset, then it’s not only going to cause problems in working with your classmates and potentially discussions in the classroom, but also you’re just not going to get the full benefit of the experience. So I think that adaptability and open-mindedness is a critical skill, both for to build a positive community, but also as part of your learning orientation as an MBA student.

[00:08:07] – John

And then you have a lot of questions that, frankly, I would expect. Harvard is asking, Tell me about some developments in your industry. How do you picture the future of your industry based on the trends you’re seeing? Harvard is also asking, Tell me about the entrepreneurship landscape in your country. That would seem to be questions that I would expect in a way, or Even Georgetown, McDonald, how are you prepared for the quantitative rigor of the program? What do you hope to be doing in 10 to 15 years? Or tell me something that is not on your resume that you’d like for me to know. I mean, these questions are more, in a way, obvious, not that they’re less important, and they do shed light in terms of how thoughtful and reflective a person might be about who they’re working for and what they want to get out of the MBA. Maria, you agree with that?

[00:09:07] – Maria

Yeah, absolutely. I think the interview is trying to understand a lot of things about someone in a short period of time and whether that’s their readiness for the rigors of the program, or it’s their… Do they have what I call a meer cat’s view, the meer cat, that little animal in the African desert that pokes its head up and looks around. Instead of just being so focused on their world and their work and their small little corner of the universe, are they people who are intellectually curious, who poke their heads up and look around and say, Well, what are the bigger trends happening in my industry? What are the bigger trends happening in other industries? A common Harvard business school question for people, especially who have spent their entire careers in one narrow field, it’s actually common sometimes to get a different variation of a question, which is, if you couldn’t work in the oil and gas industry, if you couldn’t work in software, what’s another industry, a completely different industry that you follow that’s just interesting to That’s trying to get at is somebody intellectually curious. The interviewers are trying to get at a lot of information.

[00:10:07] – Maria

Some of it very tactical, how will the person handle the schoolwork, some of it more strategic, and some of it cultural. Haas is famous for asking about its four principles and which of its four principles matter the most for you. Similarly, Duke Fuqua is often asking folks like, What does Team Fuqua mean to you? Because those are two schools in particular where their culture, their teamwork and supportive culture matters a lot. So even if somebody checks all of the other boxes, if they show up and they’re selfish or they’re cutthroat or they’re mean, then they’re not going to be a successful person in that community. So really, schools are trying to get so much information to the interviews that it’s not surprising that the questions also cover a broad swath of topics.

[00:10:51] – John

Yeah. And at INSEAD, it goes right to, what will you contribute to your study group or what would you lean on your study group for, given a sense of how well you collaborate and how thoughtful you are in terms of what you can, in fact, contribute in a team that’s working through a problem or a challenge in business. Do these questions at NCI that are in this story look familiar to you, even though they’re recent?

[00:11:22] – Caroline

Yeah, sure. Because the alumni interview is the perspective they’re taking is, if I was on the NCI MBA now, and if you were one of my classmates, are you someone that I would want to have as part of my team or as part of my classroom? So that’s really the perspective that the alumni are coming from. And so it absolutely makes sense that they would ask questions about what role you’re going to play in a study group. And the study groups at a school like in Seattle is such a core part of the learning experience. And the program management team put the study groups together, really with the goal of creating creating as much potential for conflict as possible with people from such incredibly diverse backgrounds. And you will face conflict with those people. And every year, there are people knocking on the doors of the program management team saying, I’m sorry, but I just can’t work with these people anymore. I’m just going to have to switch my team. And the response is, there is no option. You have to make it work. You’re not allowed to switch teams. And so you to get through that.

[00:12:31] – Caroline

So that’s a big part of the learning experience at such a diverse school as INSEAD. And so it makes a lot of sense that the alumni are looking to understand how you’re going to work in a team and what presence you’ll bring to that experience.

[00:12:46] – John

Now, Maria, when you work with your candidates on mock interviews, do you have some favorite questions to throw them off track?

[00:12:54] – Maria

Well, it really… I think there are some that are, For example, what other programs are you applying to and how do we rank with them? What’s your plan B? Okay, you told me all about how you’re going to get a job at McKinsey. Well, what if you don’t get the job at McKinsey? What if no consulting firms hire you? What are you going to do? Then for the other ones, for HBS, it is such a different interview because it really is so deeply intertwined with exactly what the person wrote in their application. I do try to find little nuggets of like, Hey, you said that you changed that person’s mind, but how exactly did you do that? You’re only a junior analyst, and do most junior analysts get to talk to the CEO? Tell me more about… It’s also for HBS, it’s trying to figure out, did this person exaggerate in their application, maybe overstating their role? It really does depend on the person. But yeah, I do try to find questions that are unexpected, especially if I’m doing a mock interview and the person starts off very robotic, very rehearsed, then I’m like, Okay, I’m not having a conversation here.

[00:14:00] – Maria

I’m having is somebody doing a presentation, doing soliloquies at me. When someone starts speaking as if though they were presenting a Shakespearean soliloquy, that’s when I’m like, Okay, the more they do that, the more I try to throw them off, or the more I might push back. Sometimes I push back and I pretend to disagree with them or I pretend to not like an answer, even if secretly I’m indifferent, just because I want to see, how do you respond to someone disagreeing with you? Do you dig in? Do you tell me that I’m wrong? Do you get defensive or do Do you try to work it out with me? Do you try to smooth it over? That matters a lot, I think, as well. But that is more specific to the HBS interview. I’m not sure that there are some other interviews where there may not be time for that level of probing.

[00:14:44] – John

I’m imagining that hitting that balance between not appearing scripted and being completely spontaneous is hard. I mean, what advice do you give Caroline to people? You want to bring them through the interview. You want to get them to a level of comfort. But at the same time, you don’t want it, to Maria’s point, them to come off as robotic, and you don’t want them to come off as flippant. So how do you achieve this balance that makes an admissions official or an alumni interviewer feel like the person is really genuine and authentic?

[00:15:24] – Caroline

Well, I think it’s important that the interview interviewer does some preparation. So they have a clear sense of the key messages that they would like to convey about their candidacy, and that they’ve also thought about some of the examples that they can draw on to illustrate their points. And those are especially important for the behavioral questions because you will need to give concrete examples, and you might not want to just give exactly the same examples that are in your written application. You might want to provide some different examples. So it’s good to go through some practice questions because there are some questions that frequently come up. So you should have in mind what are the key points that you want to get across. But it’s important not to script that and not to memorize responses. So you need to make sure that your response is natural and that you are responding authentically and not just delivering a script that you’ve pre-prepared.

[00:16:33] – John

Yeah, right. And there are some… Okay, Mishkin Ross is asking, who is your favorite historical figure? I don’t know what you get out of an answer from that question. That’s helpful to you in admissions, frankly. But then again, hey, maybe it would reveal some special insight. I suppose if you named a historical figure who is not very popular but gave a good reason why, then maybe that’s helpful. Maybe it isn’t. I have no idea. But actually, the Michigan Ross questions are interesting because they really delve into things that didn’t quite go right. Tell me about a time when you failed. Tell me about a time when things didn’t go as planned. Tell me about a time when you had to deal with ambiguity. Again, tell me about a time when things didn’t go as expected. Those darn tell me about a time questions are really popular this year, I have to say. Well, anyway, for all of you out there, take a look at this. It’s called 2026 MBA Interview Questions, a School by School List. This is an annual feature that we do based on questions that have been asked of candidates in round one and will most likely be asked in round two, if and when you get an invite.

[00:18:00] – John

Again, look at them and think about them, but don’t overrehearse them. Don’t over-script them because you don’t want to come off as a robot generating AI type of responses to an admissions official or an alumnus of the school. Incidentally, some of these questions are fascinating in a way that lead to the introspection that’s helpful for anyone who is going to go in Go into an MBA program, put your job, and work at this for two years. So the introspection that comes from these questions, I think, is also really super helpful. Do you have a favorite, Maria, out of this list?

[00:18:44] – Maria

Yeah, I really love. There was one on the INSEAD list that I thought was fantastic, which is one of the big reasons people go to business school is for the network and the connections that you get. If I could just give you that network and those connections right now without without doing the MBA, would you still do the MBA?

[00:19:02] – John

Yeah, that’s really fascinating.

[00:19:04] – Maria

That’s a great… That’s a really good question.

[00:19:07] – John

Kudos to INSEAD.

[00:19:09] – Maria

The answer is yes.

[00:19:11] – John

Caroline must be smiling.

[00:19:12] – Maria

No, the answer is no, thanks.

[00:19:17] – John

It’s really good. The first sentence in that question or line of questions is, an MBA is costly. Wow. That’s something that most schools don’t even acknowledge.

[00:19:31] – Maria

I don’t know, man. I think schools want people to know that you might not get a scholarship and you need to be ready. When we say that acceptance letter, then the next letter immediately after the acceptance letter is, here are the instructions for how to wire your money for the tuition deposit. You need to know right off the bat that you might have to open up that checkbook.

[00:19:54] – John

Yeah, that’s reality. Caroline, you have a favorite among these questions?

[00:19:59] – Caroline

Well, I think there are… So some of the schools have good questions that are probing for motivation and knowledge of that specific school. I think in particular schools that know that candidates are likely applying to several schools and are concerned about yield. So Cornell asks, what are your thoughts about living in Ithaca? And I could imagine some candidates squirming a little bit in that question.

[00:20:27] – John

Oh, it’s my favorite place in the world to go.

[00:20:29] – Maria

You I’m going to have a good enthusiastic response to come right back at that one.

[00:20:35] – John

That’d be easy for Paris and New York, San Francisco, and Chicago, probably.

[00:20:46] – Caroline

Yeah, I love those cold winters. Then Georgetown asked, what would stop you from joining if admitted? I think that’s quite a thoughtful question. I think, again, they’re looking to understand how committed the candidate is and how high a priority Georgetown is for that particular candidate.

[00:21:05] – John

Yeah, here’s one I wonder how we would answer. What company do you think has had the biggest impact on the world and why? Now, Maria, what would you say?

[00:21:14] – Maria

I would say Apple because the iPhone really mastered the form factor of accessing the internet in your hand at all time, 24 hours a day. The cascading after effects, the downstream after effects of all of us having a web browser in our pockets or in our hands all the time has had both incredibly beneficial and incredibly detrimental impacts on society. That’s what I would say. It was Apple.

[00:21:41] – John

Maria, no wonder you got into Harvard. Caroline, how would you answer that question?

[00:21:50] – Caroline

Yeah, I think Apple is a great example.

[00:21:53] – John

It really is.

[00:21:54] – Caroline

Some of those going further back in history, perhaps the Ford Motor Company, the automobile was such a transformation in how we live our lives. But I think Apple is, particularly for the last couple of decades, has been transformational in some ways that I’m not a big fan of.

[00:22:14] – John

Yeah, no, absolutely right. I think that is the A answer for sure. All right, well, why don’t you folks out there figure out how you would answer that one and the other questions on the list? Check it out. This is John Burn with Port-a-Quant. Thanks for listening.