As per the website of NYU Stern School of Business –
Interviews are by invitation only and are an important part of the application process. You must interview to be admitted to NYU Stern’s Full-time MBA, Tech MBA, or Fashion & Luxury MBA.
A member of the Admissions Committee will conduct your interview. In most cases, this is a member of the MBA Admissions team. In some instances, your interview may be conducted by another Stern administrator or an alumnus/alumna of the MBA program who has been selected and trained to conduct admissions interviews. These individuals are also official members of the Admissions Committee.
The NYU Stern MBA interview will last approximately 30 minutes.
Plan to arrive early, as you will need to sign in at the security desk in the lobby prior to coming to the MBA Admissions office. The security desk will require photo identification. If you cannot travel to NYU Stern, you may inquire about interviewing at one of our offsite locations in March. These interviews are typically held in London, India and China. Priority consideration is given to applicants who apply by October 15. Email mbaintvw@stern.nyu.edu for more information. Phone/skype interviews are almost never granted and reserved for extreme circumstances.
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- Tell me about yourself?
- What do you feel is the weakest aspect of your resume?
- Which achievement are you most proud of?
- Is Stern your first choice? If you are admitted to other schools, what criteria your decision will be based on?
- What’s the main difference between your current position and your goals? Why do you think you are ready for an MBA at this moment of your career?
- What programs have made you interested in Stern? And what clubs will you participate?
- What job do you imagine yourself doing during your first summer break?
- Can you list some companies you’d like to work for post graduation?
- What will you do if you can’t get a job in the domain you are looking for?
- What would your manager say is one of your strengths? One of your weaknesses?
- During the first few weeks at Stern, how will you distinguish yourself from the other students?
- If 25 years from now you were asked to return to Stern to speak, how would you want to be introduced?
- Is there anything else you’d like me to know?
I was interviewed by a member of the admissions who also happened to be a part-time MBA student at Stern. It was pretty straightforward and relatively casual. No curve balls. Questions included:
Tell me about your self
What are your ST/LT goals?
Why MBA and why Stern?
What have you done so far to prepare for your goals?
What will you be doing at Stern to further prepare/achieve your goals?
What will you contribute to the Stern community?
If I called your boss/co-workers and asked about you, what will they say?
How would you describe your leadership style?
I asked a couple of questions at the end
I actually really enjoyed my interview. The interviewer seemed genuinely interested in my stories and to learn about my goals. It was a long interview because it was more of a conversation, rather than me just answering questions. I received a call exactly three weeks after my interview and was accepted.
My two cents – make sure to prepare few good stories/anecdotes that you can spin to answer any questions and really know how to effectively communicate your goals. Good luck everyone!
I was interviewed by an adcom at the NYU Stern building. I sat in her office. It was very relaxing and conversational.
The interview with the adcom was application-based.
I was asked the following:
- A) tell me about your background
- B) why MBA?
- C) why stern?
- D) any questions for me?
The interview was very conversational. We were very casual and the chat was smooth. NYU seems to focus on its location in NYC a lot so you should know how this will benefit you.
Have a Skype Interview ?
I was invited to interview in December and scheduled my interview for early January. Stern wants students to attend in person and interview on campus. I booked a hotel for the night before my interview near Penn station. My interview was in the morning so I took the time to walk down from Penn to the business school.
Upon arriving, I checked into the admissions office. I was given a personalized folder that included information on the areas of interest I had indicated as well as clubs that I might be interested in based on my essays. It was a very welcoming environment and shows that Stern cares about the people they interview.
My interviewer was incredibly kind. We started off with some small talk about how I got down to NYC, how the New Year was going before jumping into some more structured questions:
- Tell me about yourself?
- Tell me about your current role?
- Tell me about a recent project you worked on?
- How would the senior leaders you interacted with in this recent project describe you?
- What type of team environment do you like working in?
- What strengths would you want to see in your classmates?
- How would you get involved with the school?
- What other clubs would you be interested in joining?
- Beyond snowboarding, what other activities do you do?
- Any questions for me?
Overall the interview went quite well although I didn’t feel at my most confident and stumbled through a few of them. Everything on their end was very professional yet friendly. I never felt intimidated, and instead felt quite welcomed. When I was preparing to leave I was handed a Stern t-shirt. It was a great experience and better than the others I had received. Stern showed that they care about their applicants.
My interview lasted 35 min. More or less anticipated the questions:
Please describe your career progress.
Describe conflict situation at work and how you resolved it.
Why Stern?
What are your expectations? How are you planning to use your MBA?
What are you bringing to the table? What experiences could you share to contribute to student body at NYU?
I have attended the info night at the campus the day before and was able to speak to how I relate to issues brought up by the panel of current students – coming to work early, studying at lunch. Using days off to prepare for finals, etc.
Frequently asked Situational and Behavioural interview questions
Very casual interview. Adcom is super nice. Very standard MBA interview.
Questions:
- Tell me about your current role
- Why MBA now?
- What do you do besides work?
- Leadership experience/greatest accomplishment
- Strengths and weakness
- What do you expect from Stern?
Was a very easy going interview with a number of standard questions. Started off with an icebreaker about my undergrad experience. From there we went all over the place with some standard questions and some I hadn’t considered but were interesting:
• Questions about résumé items
• Why MBA?
• Short Term Goal after MBA?
• Why Stern?
• Give me a 15 second elevator pitch for consulting (my short term goal)
• After 2 years, what do you want your fellow students to say about you?
Conversation was 20 minutes and then left 10 minutes for me to ask questions and discussion.
Prior to the interview I was told that Stern’s interview style was very much a two-way street between interviewer and interviewee. In other words it was very conversational.
Luckily I still did my homework as this was not at all my experience. Although the admissions counselor was gracious and polite her questions were formal and pointed and were certainly not conversational.
Some questions I was asked:
What is a typical workday right now at my job?
If I had 6 months after school to affect change at my current job what would I do and why?
Why did I want to go back to school now?
Why Stern?
What do I think makes a leader/ how am I a leader?
What would I say my biggest failure to date was?
When was a time that I saw an inefficiency at work and resolved it?
What would I say my greatest accomplishment to date was?
What would I like my summer internship to be?
If I got that internship, what three things would I bring to the company that would make me stand out?
Where would I most like to travel/ study and why?
My interviewer clearly knew a lot about me before we sat down. She did not take any notes so it appeared that she was looking more at the big picture. I think it is very important to have done your homework regarding the school- know the faculty you are interested in working with, etc. I also think that she was impressed with my answer for summer internship choice as I was able to cite things about the corporations that would currently make internship experience there useful. This clearly showed that I did my homework and also demonstrated that I had a pulse on what is going on in the business world these days. I would highly recommend having a fine-tuned answer for this.
All in all it was a pleasant experience. I left it not totally convinced one way or another. Good news was I did indeed receive an admissions letter 5 business days after!
Total interview time: 30 minutes
Questions:
Tell me about your move to New York.
Why do you like New York?
Walk me through your résumé.
How would your co-workers describe you?
Why do you want an MBA?
Post grad goals?
Three companies you want to work for?
What do you do for fun?
It was the most basic, ridiculously shallow interview. I felt like I did not have the opportunity to really show who I was and why I was special because the questions did not leave room for that. It was like they had a book of questions to choose from and they chose them completely at random, so the interview was all over the place. And the adcom was not at all interested, or receptive, seemed like they wanted to be somewhere else, and I was a terrible inconvenience on them. Like talking to a wall. When I asked questions at the end I was given the most canned, rehearsed, unthoughtful answers.
It was a terrible interview overall and makes me really wonder how they get good candidates. But maybe they just hated me. On the other hand, super easy interview to do.
Type of interview: application based interview. I had the feeling that the interviewer had a very detailed knowledge of my application file, as she referred several times to my answers in the applications, to elements of my essays and to very detailed data points of my résumé.
List of interview questions:
Why MBA? Why now? Why Stern?
Please explain why did you decide to choose X as your current job + around 6-7 follow-up questions regarding my current job.
What do you see yourself in 5-10 years?
Describe an occurrence in which you managed a workplace conflict/made a positive impact?
How would you contribute at Stern?
The interview was rather formal. There was almost no small talk, and the interviewer was really deep diving into her questions. She was really pushing me and bringing me out of my comfort zone as she was really burying me with questions and constantly asking for details.
Outcome: admitted for R3 with merit scholarship.
R3 Applicant…Invited to interview on Feb 18th. Interviewed at Mumbai off campus today. It was a very friendly interview with an Adcom member, also a part-time MBA student at Stern. Interview was not blind.
Questions:
– How does your day look like in your office?
– What is your proudest moment at work?
– Failure at work
– A time you had to resolve a conflict at work with a team member/client
– What would your teammates tell about you if asked?
– Short term and long term goals
– Expectations from Career center at Stern and how do you expect to contribute to accomplish the goals you have set
– Why Stern
– What are 3 transferable skills that would help you to transition at Stern and post MBA job.
– In the terms of global ready, which is one country you would like to travel from Stern given a chance
– Queries for her.
Got a cool T Shirt! Interview took 20-25 minutes. Hoping to hear some good news in 2-3 weeks ?
All the best for others interviewing in Mumbai. Hope it helps.
Transcripts were first published on clearadmit.com and gmatclub.com
2 mock interviews with feedback