Preparing for the Tuck interview took a lot of research and speaking to a current student. If you can also get access to alumni you should take advantage of this. The first thing I did was to go on MBA forums to search for all the possible questions I could be asked and prepared answers for them. I also decided on the ‘scenario’ to use for certain types of question e.g. “tell me about a time where you showed leadership.” Remember that you could be asked for instances at work or outside work so don’t just focus on work related responses. I won’t bore you with the exhaustive list but will tell you what I got asked. The questions I am 100% sure you will get asked and I got asked are:
Why an MBA? This is a question I have discussed previously with you and is also the title of one of my blogs. You have to convince them you have thought through why you want to do an MBA and how it is the logical next step. This kind of follows on to some cases where you also get asked “Why now?” with the the “Why an MBA” question. In answering the “Why an MBA?” question you will usually find yourself answering the “Why now?” question as well.
Walk me through your resume. This is a standard question and was the one I spent a lot of time preparing for. You will be surprised how tough preparing for this question is. You want to go through your timeline starting with the earliest e.g. I always start with “My name is ….. and I was born in ….. I graduated from the University of …. ” I then go on to talk about my different professional roles. When talking about your roles it is important to highlight your key achievements in each role. I used the STAR approach (Situation, Task, Action, Result). There are a number of websites that offer advice on this that are just a google search away. You do not want to spend more than 2 mins going through your whole resume. You also want to go through a number of dry runs where you record your voice and listen back. It took 20 attempts to get to a point where I could do the walk through in 2 mins.
The other questions I got asked were “What do you think of Hanover”, “What will you contribute to the Tuck environment”, “Give me an example of when you had to deal with a difficult individual at work”, “What has been your biggest achievement so far.” The interviewer had a genuine interest in where I was from and wanted to know what the biggest difference was when I moved back home after being abroad for a number of years.
The Tuck interviewer was very friendly and the interview was more of a conversation. You however do not want to get too relaxed and should always remember this is a formal interview.
This was a virtual interview due to my location. Tuck send you a calendar of all the available slots and I was allowed to pick one that was convenient for me. A second year conducted the interview and they contacted me before the interview date to provide their skype number. You should do a dry run under interview conditions and consider the following:
- The interview time was in EST. I had to find out what time this would be in my country.
- As I hadn’t used skype in a while I had to ensure my log in details still worked and my profile picture was appropriate.
- I needed to figure out whether to use a laptop, phone or notepad (this was discounted as the skype version that was available was no longer supported on my notepad!).
- Ensure your audio and video work well.
- Find the most appropriate internet connection. My country has terrible internet connection so I wanted to make sure the time of the interview wasn’t during peak usage hours. I also made the interviewer aware that it could get disconnected anytime during the conversation.
- Power outages. This is another issue where I am from and I had to select a location where I was guarded against this during the time of the interview.
- You also need to be in a room where you won’t get interrupted.
I have attached a youtube video which helped me prepare for my virtual interview by Curry College
I think the interview went well but I will just have to wait till decision day to know. I am yet to hear from Ross or McCombs
A Nomad's MBA Tale... 