ESADE Business School

ESADE Business School appreciates if you try to meet them in person. The extra effort to come to an Interview Day in your region, or an On-Campus Session in Barcelona, shows ESADE how serious you are about the process. Also, be prepared to ask plenty of good questions in the interview!

ESADE Business School is open minded regarding the candidate’s work experience, education, and the post-MBA goals, but when they are reviewing the application – and especially in the interview stage of the process – the school wants to see consistency and sincerity in responses.

The interview can occur with or without a case study. If the case study is included, the process can last a couple of hours whereas if no case study is included it will be over in 40 – 50 minutes.

1. Introduce yourself
2. Tel us 3 key learnings from your work experience.
3. Why MBA
4. Why do you want to do MBA at this stage in your life/ career
5. One reason that we should not select you?
6. What are your short- and long-term career goals? Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
7. Tell us about a challenging situation that you faced? How did you resolve it?
8. What are your greatest strengths? Give examples
9. What are your weaknesses? Give examples
10. What would you describe are your greatest achievement to date?
11. Interests and Hobbies – Be prepared!.. questions as basic as “Why do youdo poetry (or any other activity” may be asked.
12. Do you have any questions for us?

Okay, so a round of interviews has started in India as some of you may know. Katie is conducting them in Delhi at the moment, and I had mine yesterday. I was a little bit worried about the case study, but I needn’t have been. If you were good at GMAT Comprehension, then this should be easy! You just have to summarise the article they give you and answer a few questions in presentation format. I had my notes in bullet points and expounded from there.

The rest of the interview is simply a chance to sell yourself. There are probing questions, but only to get to know you better. There isn’t any stress or putting you under pressure. Just make sure you can answer all the standard MBA interview questions in depth. She is very friendly throughout and it is almost semi formal – some parts of the interview may become like a discussion or even a chat. I think you have to work hard to sell yourself in such a situation, yet maintain a balance, and not overdo it. I came away with a positive feeling, but it is difficult to assess your chances after such an interview as she probably would not show it if you did badly. I know it is a cliché, but you really need to be yourself in this interview as they are trying to genuinely determine if you would be a good fit for the school, which would be mutually beneficial.

My interview experience was very extremely good. The interviewer was very professional in terms of punctuality and preparedness to conduct my interview. She had really done her homework and had prepared questions that managed to touch upon every important aspect of my online application.
My tip: Go through your essays again, it’s a one-hour interview and one last brush-up will help you structure your thoughts. In my experience, I was answering all of my written essay questions verbally during that one hour. 
Another highlight of the interview was how it seemed more like a conversation, rather than being a standard one-hour grilling session that most people expect at a big school/organisation. This really worked well for me. 
Also, have all of your questions ready, my interviewer really encouraged questions. It was around my questions that the conversation was built and I believe that this enabled me to structure my interview better. 

The interview experience as mentioned by a few others on this forum was indeed wonderful. It is known that ESADE admissions team focus most on the candidate’s background, goals and motivation. In my case, it was no different. Moreover, I had the opportunity to connect with the admissions director and some members of the local alumni network during an admissions event before I submitted the application on 9/30. I felt this went in my favor and so by the time the final interview happened over Skype on 10/16, the admissions team was well aware of my background. I received the acceptance note this morning. A beautiful coincidence but it was the best birthday gift I could have asked for!

My interview was with Katie on 4th December in Mumbai.

The interview started with a case study (as they call it). But it was more of a reading comprehension than a case study. It was some article from economic times which discussed about strategy and audits with 5 questions in the end.. Too difficult for me… One of the questions was to write a letter summarizing the article.

The above exercise went on for an hour. After that, Katie asked me to answer each question from the case. (It was not a written exercise).

After answering each question, the formal interview started. Notable thing about ESADE interview is that they want to know everything about you…. Katie was extremely cool and humble… she asked me everything about my work, my background, my hobbies, everything. Some work related questions were, What is the most constructive feedback you have received, What is your learning from your experience, strengths, weakness, biggest contribution, etc. It continued for one hour. SO one should be prepared to answer questions from every possible topic. Questions were only focused on me as a person and as a professional. My suggestion to everyone is to go there with a cool mind.. You are going to be interviewed by a person who genuinely wants to know you and wont grill you at all.

Something to share:

The interview was composed of two parts. First, a case interview. You will have 45 minutes to read a relatively short story about a company and then you will have to draw some slides and present it. Don’t worry, it was not hard. Second, general interview questions, but really I felt very comfortable during the whole interview. Basically we were talking about what would be the best decision for me, how ESADE could help me on my career path. That really makes me feel how people-oriented this school is.

My interview was with Albert and it was great! Very comfortable and conversational. We talked mostly about things on my resume, my experiences, why I picked the program. Was also asked some questions like “If 20 years from now you’re on the cover of TIME magazine, what would you want it to say about you?” This was the third interview I had done so I was pretty comfortable answering these types of questions. I made sure I was sincere with my answers and that I made it a point to mention things that I believe made me stand out like the fact that even though I have been a varsity softball player for 5 years, I still excelled in my academics. I also mentioned things I knew about ESADE like how it was well-ranked and focused on working in teams and how I believe I’d make a great addition to the program.

I had my interview in the first round application and i got admitted at ESADE..i will be joining the program in August.  My interview was over the phone.. here are some of the questions i was asked

1. Why european schools (i am applying to only european schools hence the question)
2. Why MBA and Why esade.
3. A situational question ” in esade teamwork is of imporance and your grades are dependent on the team’s perfromance, having said that how would you deal with a situation where some of the team members are not pulling their weight”
4. Where would you want to work post MBA
5. How did you land your job? how do you get customer leads.
6. how would i contribute to ESADE MBA class?

other questions were with my background and stuff. the interviewer wanted to know more about me as a person. I got positive feedback on the questions i had asked the admission director and also on the overall i was told i am very focused. the interview lasted 45-50 mins