NUS MBA Interviews
NUS attracts a lot of Asian applicants. Shortlisted candidates are invited for NUS MBA personal interview. For overseas candidates interviews are held either face-to-face or on webcam. The admission committee informs the interviewee whether the MBA personal interview will be held in person or through a video call, via email/call.
NUS Interviews are generally blind interviews. The admissions committee has not gone through the application/essays of the interviewee. Interviews are generally held for about 20-25 minutes.
They have only a single interview for a few candidates while they have 2 interviews for some. In case of 2 interviews, the first one is a 15 minute interview where you might be asked for a 3 minute extempore speech (so better sit with a notebook and pen) on a topic and the second interview is 20-25 minute long and might stretch for 35-40 minutes.
Keep in mind NUS’s vision, mission and values.
Vision – A premier partner in securing the safest environment possible for Singapore’s leading global university.
Mission – To provide and maintain, a safe and secure environment for work and study, through effective partnership with stakeholders.
Values – Honesty and Integrity, Helpfulness, Dedication and Commitment.
NUS MBA Frequently Asked Interview Questions
- Tell me something about yourself?
- Walk me through your resume?
- Why MBA? Why NUS school?
- Why MBA now or Why MBA at this stage of your career?
- What is your short & long term goals?
- What is your Plan B if consulting/Investment banking does not happen?
- What are your key strengths? Can you give some examples please?
- What is your biggest weakness ? Can you give some examples please?
- How can you add value to the Class?
- Why should we take you?
- One reason that we should not select you?
- Interests and Hobbies – Be prepared!.. questions as basic as “Why do you do poetry (or any other activity” may be asked.
- 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?
- 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?
- Do you have any Question for us?
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NUS MBA Interview Questions – 1
- If you had to choose a destination which one would it be and why?
- Why Singapore?
- Why not China? What will be the comparative advantages if it was China?
- Did you have any professional failure? How did you overcome that and what did you learn from it?
- Why MBA?
- What was the most exciting thing that happened while working with your clients?
- What do you do in your spare time?
- Why an MBA now and why from NUS?
- What are your goals?
- Tell us about a leader that inspires you?
- Why do you need an MBA to achieve these goals? You can achieve your goals without an MBA?
- So, you must have heard about IPL moving out to South Africa (SA). If you were a consultant to BCCI, what strategy would you propose to minimize losses of not having the matches in India. ( these kind of questions are asked especially if you have an Indian prof as interviewer)
- Imagine 20 years down the line you are invited at the commencement speech of NUS, how do you see yourself being introduced?
- Do you have any questions for us?
NUS MBA Interview Questions – 2
Finally done with my interview today. Below are the questions asked:
- So you want to go in the education sector. How do you leverage technology to help the needy.
- How do you help people who do not have access to computers.
- Goals.
- Why NUS
- Why Singapore
- Where do you want to work after the MBA
- A questions related to the eCommerce website.
- What differentiates you. Some discussion about an Edison quote about failure and perseverance
- How will you prepare yourself for the tough competition for consulting jobs at NUS
- How can you contribute to NUS
- How have you improved since your last application.(applied back in 2012 and was not called for an interview even )
- Plan B if you do not get into consulting.
- Any questions for us. Asked about Management Practicum and opportunities for my wife
All the best to those who are yet to give their interviews.
NUS MBA Interview Questions – 3
Hi, I had my interview 2 years back. The interview panel was very friendly. Below are some of the questions I remember:
- Tell me something about yourself.
- What are your strengths and weaknesses?
- Tell me an incident which shows your leadership style.
- What are your short term and long term goals?
- Do you have any questions for me?
NUS MBA Interview Questions – 4
Had my Skype interview couple of hours back with two adcoms. Questions were mainly targeted to my work and how will I get to my short-term goals-
Questions were as follows-
- Tell me about yourself
- Why Singapore?
- What are your goals and how do you plan to achieve it?
- Which technology leader would you like to invite to NUS and why? ( Had mentioned something about technology speaker series in my essays)
- Why would a consulting firm take you?
- Have you interacted with anyone in your target firms?
- How are you different from just another IT guy? Your unique selling point?
- Tell me about a project in detail which you guided to completion.
- Why is there a demand of the work you do?
- Any questions from us?
That’s about it. The interview lasted for about 20-22 minutes and I got disconnected for a couple of times and one of the interviewer was quite displeased by this for which I apologized but I am sure this left a bad impression on her. All the best to others who have their interviews scheduled. Hope this helps.
NUS MBA Interview Questions – 5
It was quiet an interesting interview taken by 1 ADCOM and 1 Alum.Below are the questions asked. I may miss the order of one or two questions:
- Asked about the last year’s interview
- Elevator pitch
- Questions about my startup. Quiet a lot of them infact. Around 5 – 6 questions. How will you manage while your MBA. About market strategies, about products etc.
- Questions about my extra curricualrs
- Again questions about the startup
- What has improved from the last application
- My views on any international happening. Talked about Paris attacks.
- My views about the role of media in the news.
- Any business leader I would want to meet over a cup of coffee
- Where would you like to work
- Questions about GMAT.
- Why should we take you in 3 sentences.
- Any questions for us
In all the interview lasted for 35 – 40 minutes.
NUS MBA Interview Questions – 6
The interview was a panel-style interview conducted by 2 people: the head of career services and a member of the MBA marketing team. The questions were basic, for example:
1) Why MBA?
2) Why NUS?
3) Why Singapore, since there are so many good B-Schools in the US?
4) a) What other schools have you applied to?
- b) Why NUS vs. those schools?
5) What is your plan B if you don’t go to business school?
6) How did you hear about NUS?
Even so, make sure to do your research and ask them GOOD questions. I think that will be one of the important factors.
Good Luck!
NUS MBA Interview Questions – 7
Hello!
I have been a serial reader in all the forums but have never posted
I have been dinged by 6 colleges so far, some with IV and some without. Somehow, I feel that I never really gave back enough to the community so I didn’t get any admit so far. However, I had my NUS interview day before yesterday and I’ll share my debrief in the community hoping that karma will find me this time.
It was very very different. All my preparation was not required and went to waste because they asked me questions which I never expected. However, I’m actually glad about it because it was unexpected and fun and therefore I had a better time being myself than delivering prepared answers. Also, the interviewers were really cool ladies. However, all these doesn’t matter to me if I don’t make it but it was a very good experience.
1st question: Tell us something about yourself
2nd question: So, I see you are very involved in CSR activities. What kind of employment activities would you recommend for people with intellectual disabilities, who can only work in sheltered places and do repetitive work. (I kind of took the guesstimate question solving method and screwed it up real bad).
3rd question: I see that you are a magician or an illusionist in your free time. Can you tell us more about it?
4th question: Have you invented any magic tricks?
5th question: Is it only about optical illusions?
6th question: Warren Buffet said, “Being born rich is having a silver dagger on your back rather than having a silver spoon in your mouth”. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
7th question: If you have to fire a friend, how would you do it?
8th question: If you have to fire a friend who has stolen data from your company and sold it in a market, how will you do it?
9th question: I see that you haven’t mentioned about how you will fund your education. Can you tell me about it.
Me: My father and my family will fund my education.
Interviewer: Oh, I see! Family scholarship! 😀
10th question: Do you have any questions for us?
All in all, I had a great time. The interviewers were way too cool!
There were no typical questions – why mba, why nus, why Singapore and no questions from my essays.
Maybe they are not even considering me seriously frankly, I never understood any interviews properly!
NUS MBA Interview Questions – 8
Just sharing my exp
Prog -NUS PT MBA
Experience : About 7 years
GMAT -660
Admission submitted 1st week of Jan , Interview call came in quite fast after all referee letter went in .
Interviewers – One of them was a prof and second interviewer was a Adcom
Questions
Why should we take you in ?
What sort of leader are you ?
Time when you exhibited leadership ?
Share a situation where I had to deal with a difficult customer ?
How does your company brand yourself to customer ?( I am working at an MNC , question was from Prof who is a marketing prof at NUS )
What is career goals ? What skills does you require to attain that position?
Though the questions where straight forward , my initial feeling was I did not do well .
But just in time for CNY holidays got the email offering the a place at the PT MBA prog. ( about 10 days after the interview )
FT MBA admission exercise I believe is going to be slightly more prolonged due to more applications and more criteria for assessments (eg:diversity)
Hope above information is helpful , Good luck with your MBA application .
NUS MBA Interview Questions – 9
I had my interview about 3 weeks ago. I researched online to get a general sense of how the interviews at NUS were held. In order to prepare for my interview, I decided to keep up with a lot of current affairs around the world, especially the ones that had some sort of relation with my essay responses.
Having said that, the interview for me was completely different than what I expected. I had two people interview me (one adcom member, one faculty) and we talked about various things. Here are some of the questions they asked.
- What are three important elements of a leader?
- Please expand upon your career goals after attending NUS.
- Why Bschool? Why NUS?
- What am I looking for when I am applying to BSchool (They didn’t actually ask for me to list the schools I had applied to)
- What do you like to do on your spare time?
- What are somethings you feel that you can bring to the learning community at NUS?
That was basically what I was asked. The interview was surprisingly short, lasted 15 minutes. I asked two questions and we discussed those questions for a while. My interview ended up being around 25 minutes.
I hope this helps, but like I said, this is completely different than what I was expecting. Good luck to you!
NUS MBA Interview Questions – 10
I just got done with my interview with Marie. She said that I was one of the two candidates who would be pushed for the next round. It was very quick. The questions were very straightforward.
Here is the list of the questions.
1) There are many candidates from India with high Gmat scores and great work profiles. What sets you apart?
2) Name one current event that happened in Asia, and one outside of it
3) Name three companies that have originated in Asia and have a global presence that are not from your industry.
4) What locations and companies would you like to work for and why?
5) Biggest achievement and failure.