Haas Interview

Earlier this week, I headed over to Berkeley for my interview at the Haas Admission's Office. I always mis-estimate the amount of time that it will take me to get to Berkeley because I don't know my way around that well yet and it seems that parking is always incredibly challenging and requires a long walk to Haas. I left myself plenty of time and ended up with about an hour to kill.

I wandered around Berkeley and chuckled at the many hilarious sights that you see wandering around along with the most intelligent comments from the homeless bums. (One bum was arguing that you owed him your spare change because you had not suffered as he had for years sleeping on cement and that it would be cheaper than paying his medicare.) After spending a few minutes relaxing in the sunshine and reviewing my interview notes, I headed to Haas.

The interview was an hour. We started talking about me (resume, why b-school, why Haas - those kinds of questions) and then we moved onto her background as an alum and then role in the Admissions office. Finally, we wrapped up with questions. She asked some very interesting questions about my resume that really required that I link common themes throughout my work experience. Most of these questions stemmed from my research paper about nonverbal communication. She also asked about challenging situations that I had encountered and how I had handled them. We talked about why I felt particularly drawn to Haas and why getting my MBA now. This conversation evolved into her asking me about which activities I was looking forward to participating in at Haas. Next, I got to ask her about her experience at Haas and the types of things that she wish that she could have done while a student. Also, she covered the remainder of the admissions process for me since I was interviewing on the decision notification deadline for the 4th round and the timeline over the summer before school starts.

All in all, I felt that the interview went really well. We had a great conversation and I got to show my knowledge of Haas and passion for business school. I can't wait to hear from them in the next couple of weeks so I can start feeling more settled about what my next direction will be.