CMU Tepper MBA Interviews

Tepper School of Business attracts many Indian applicants. It has a high average GMAT of 690.

CMU Tepper interviews are generally conducted over a skype call if the applicant is outside U.S. or the alumnus and on campus interviews. Tepper interviews are taken by the admissions committee member.

Tepper Interviews are generally held for about 30-40 minutes. The interviews at CMU Tepper held very casually and the interviews panel makes the candidate very comfortable during the interview.

CMU Tepper MBA Frequently Asked Interview Questions

  1. Tell me something about yourself?
  2. Walk me through your resume?
  3. Why MBA? Why CMU Tepper school?
  4. Why MBA now or Why MBA at this stage of your career?
  5. What is your short & long term goals?
  6. What is your Plan B if consulting/Investment banking does not happen?
  7. What are your key strengths? Can you give some examples please?
  8. What is your biggest weakness ? Can you give some examples please?
  9. How can you add value to the Class?
  10. Why should we take you?
  11. One reason that we should not select you?
  12. Interests and Hobbies – Be prepared!.. questions as basic as “Why do you do poetry (or any other activity” may be asked.
  13. Some Situational & Behavioral Question
    • What would you describe are your greatest achievement to date?
    • Give me an example of a time you faced a conflict while working on a team. How did you handle that?
    • Give me an example of a time when you did not meet a client’s expectation. What happened, and how did you attempt to rectify the situation?
  14. Case questions are fairly common in MBA interview especially for consulting aspirants. Below are a few sample for to practice for:
    • How many Golf balls can fit in a Boeing 747?
    • What’s the global market size for smartphones?
  15. Do you have any Question for us?

CMU Tepper MBA Interview Questions – 3

I applied to second round and was invited on 15th of January. Originally I was invited to interview in hub cities with Adcom but I could not arrange the trip due to visa issue. So I ended up schedule interview with another Adcom via Skype. My interview was on 12th of February. It was very conversational and he seemed to be very professional in keeping the interview interesting and moving it forward. He did not take note at all. Overall, he looked for how much I had researched about Tepper and why I want Tepper.

Here were the questions.

– Why MBA? (I did not get “Walk through resume”)

– Short-term goal

– How I did research on Tepper?

– What is the important trait of leader?

– When work in team, how do you interact with other function?

– How do you solve conflict?

– What do you prefer outside work?

– What is challenge in your work?

– What is your strength as leader?

– Do you want to work abroad?

I had an issue with Skype at the start of interview. I was 10 minutes late when I could connect with him. He was so kind waiting me and did not mind about my problem.

Client Testimonial

Client Testimonial

CMU Tepper MBA Interview Questions – 6

Scheduled the interview on the 14th October with Emily Archambeault.

She was very kind and started off with a pep talk about the weekends, travel plan etc. We even discussed about my marriage and came to know that she is about to get married very soon. She told me that she had not gone through my complete application and just had my resume with her.

Then started the typical conversation. Would list down the questions.

  1. Why MBA

Related to it my present experience and aspired role. How MBA will helpme and How Tepper will help me

  1. Why Tepper

Interdisciplinary approach

Nobel laurets

Consulting Club- Boot camp, Sunday Night interviews, Consulting Trek

Small class size. Stron relationship with faculty and students.

  1. Job roles and Responsibilities
  2. What difficulty is your organization facing
  3. One incident where you worked with senior team. How did you work and how did you learn
  4. Cultural Differences faced in organization
  5. What if not Management Consulting
  6. Conflicting Situation. How you handled it
  7. Extracurricular activities.
  8. Name of students you interacted with. How was the experience.
  9. Do you have anything to ask.

Asked about the typical day at Tepper and about Scholarship.

She told that she would connect me with the students and the financial aid team

I think that is pretty much it. It lasted for half an hour exact.

Feel free to ask any questions. Would be glad to help out.

CMU Tepper MBA Interview Questions – 7

Had my interview with Ms. Jones on the 14th via Skype. It flowed naturally and was over in exactly 30 minutes.

She started with some key points about Tepper and told me that this was a blind interview so I shouldn’t worry about mentioning things that might be there in other parts of the application.

The questions were:

  1. Tell me about what you’ve been doing since your UG.
  2. What’s your post MBA goal?
  3. Alternate post MBA goal
  4. Tell me about a time when you helped other people attain their goals.
  5. How do you handle criticism as a leader/manage conflict?
  6. How did you learn things that your job demanded but undergrad didn’t provide?
  7. What kind of international experience have you had?
  8. Why Tepper?

One thing that the interviewer did was sort of summarize my answers after I uttered them. Eg: “So its very nice to know that you took out time from work to do…”.

I don’t know what that means. I hope it was only a way to make the conversation seem like a chat rather than an interview and not that I wasn’t ending my answers properly. Let’s see.

CMU Tepper MBA Interview Questions – 8

My interview was scheduled for today with Emily Archambeault.

She came across as very friendly and warm person. Started by making me comfortable, asked me about the correct pronunciation of my name and what it means etc. The interview was very conversational in general and she was making notes throughout.

The questions were pretty basic in nature:

Why MBA.

How MBA seems to be the next step to what I am doing currently.

Post MBA plan.

Alternate plan if immediate plan does not work out.

What do I know about Tepper and how that interests me.

My work and any interesting experience that I had with clients.

Any conflicting situation at work, culturally or otherwise. How I handled it.

My key takeaways from working in a multi-cultural organization.

Any situation where I worked over something I had little knowledge about. How did I cope with it.

Any situation where the client did not seem too happy with the kind of solutions provided. What was my learning there. How did I handle the situation. What could I have done differently.

What are my personal hobbies.

I had mentioned during the discussion that I am involved in diversity team. Asked me to describe my experience.

I realized I spoke a lot, despite my mind going completely blank the moment the Skype call started

However she was extremely patient and listened intently, while making notes all the time.

She ended with asking me if I had questions for her. In the end wanted me to ask her “one last question”, despite the call crossing 35 minutes by then. I wonder what made her.

Overall it was far better than I was dreading, considering this was my first ever interview. In hindsight I realized I could have mentioned some other things that I totally forgot about.

My suggestion: Do not try to over sell yourself, definitely not talk about what you haven’t done. They are not looking for your achievements and awards but want to know if you will fit well with the kind of culture the Tepper community has to offer.

CMU Tepper MBA Interview Questions – 10

I scheduled my Skype interview online with the Tepper adcom – MJ Wrobleski. The interview started just a few minutes late. I was freaking out when I did not get a Skype invite on the dot, so I searched for my interviewer on Skype and added her to my contact list and sent her a reminder that we have an interview scheduled.

For those with invites, I’d recommend you wait if your interview has not yet started. It could be that the previous interview ran long or the adcom might be busy with something else for a few minutes. Unless it’s WAY past interview time (15 minutes past), and you have still not received word from the adcom, you can then reach out. But otherwise, I’d say give them the benefit of doubt and keep calm.

Anyway, my interviewer was chirpy and friendly and I was at ease a few minutes into the interview. The questions I got asked were fairly standard, so you should have no surprises as long as you are prepared with the standard list of interview questions.

These are the questions that I got asked:

What are your career goals?

Why MBA?

Talk about a time you had to take an unpopular decision at work. How did it affect you and your team?

Talk about a time you motivated your team to work towards a common goal.

Talk about a time you didn’t have the skills required to do a particular job so you had to ask for help.

[I took about 30 seconds or so to think about an answer to this question, as I wasn’t prepared for this.]

Talk about a time you had to work with someone you had cultural differences with. How did you resolve these

differences?

Talk about a time you had a disagreement at work (maybe you gave an idea that was not implemented) and you had to compromise.

Why Tepper?

That was pretty much it. Overall it took just about 20 minutes to answer all the above questions.

Then we had about 5 minutes for Q&A where I asked:

Are there any facts you feel like prospective applicants should know about Tepper but don’t?

What’s it like living in Pittsburg?