Saturday, October 30, 2004
Interviews, Part 2
I received my invitation to interview with Texas in the first week of November. I think I interviewed the following week with an alumnus at a small French bakery right across the freeway from my office. The lady I interviewed with was about 10 years out of her MBA, and was working for AIM. It was a standard interview, IIRC, with a mix of questions between the "behavioral" type and questions about things off my resume. She didn't have access to my essays, so there weren't any questions about them.
I don't like morning interviews because I typically don't perform as well. I can still remember my frustration when applying to undergrad because my Duke interviewer couldn't find his notes from our original, fantastic interview and so we had to meet at 6:30am at a coffee shop to repeat the experience. It didn't go well at all, for the same reason that my Texas interview was merely average. For some reason I can't quite wake up and get it together first thing in the morning. Anyway, the Texas interview went well when all was said and done, but it wasn't my best work.
I should pause here and mention something, because it really made a difference for me last year. After I submitted my final app for round 1 I had Jie change my BW password so that I couldn't access the BW boards. Now, it would have been trivial for me to setup a new account, but that's not the point. I didn't read the BW boards from the time I submitted my last app until after I was accepted at Texas in December. Instead, Jie read the boards daily and kept track of things for me. This drastically reduced my stress level and increased my productivity at work. I still checked my e-mail neurotically, but I never had the sense of foreboding or doom that comes when people start getting interview invites and you haven't received yours yet. It's worth noting that I hadn't discovered blogs at this point either, so that was another source of information that I didn't have.
I received my interview invitation for Stanford about 10 days before Thanksgiving, and my HBS invite the week of Thanksgiving. Jie responded to both of these events with a not-so-reassuring "Thank goodness, people have been getting invites for over a week!" She did a masterful job of masking her growing anxiety as I didn't get the interview e-mail, and it was fun when I finally got the news and she could relax. I think this is enough for now, so I'll save the discussion of my HBS and Stanford interviews for another time.
I don't like morning interviews because I typically don't perform as well. I can still remember my frustration when applying to undergrad because my Duke interviewer couldn't find his notes from our original, fantastic interview and so we had to meet at 6:30am at a coffee shop to repeat the experience. It didn't go well at all, for the same reason that my Texas interview was merely average. For some reason I can't quite wake up and get it together first thing in the morning. Anyway, the Texas interview went well when all was said and done, but it wasn't my best work.
I should pause here and mention something, because it really made a difference for me last year. After I submitted my final app for round 1 I had Jie change my BW password so that I couldn't access the BW boards. Now, it would have been trivial for me to setup a new account, but that's not the point. I didn't read the BW boards from the time I submitted my last app until after I was accepted at Texas in December. Instead, Jie read the boards daily and kept track of things for me. This drastically reduced my stress level and increased my productivity at work. I still checked my e-mail neurotically, but I never had the sense of foreboding or doom that comes when people start getting interview invites and you haven't received yours yet. It's worth noting that I hadn't discovered blogs at this point either, so that was another source of information that I didn't have.
I received my interview invitation for Stanford about 10 days before Thanksgiving, and my HBS invite the week of Thanksgiving. Jie responded to both of these events with a not-so-reassuring "Thank goodness, people have been getting invites for over a week!" She did a masterful job of masking her growing anxiety as I didn't get the interview e-mail, and it was fun when I finally got the news and she could relax. I think this is enough for now, so I'll save the discussion of my HBS and Stanford interviews for another time.
