Interviews, Interviews
Greetings from Babson Park, where it never snows and our New England winter is almost over (wishful thinking)! We in the Admissions Office are really in the thick of it—another application deadline this week (February 15), admissions committee meetings (just finished another round of decisions), and Welcome Day Events for new admits—all on the calendar.
I’m launching this blog to keep you informed about the admissions cycle and to offer you another avenue through which you can send me and my staff questions or comments about the admissions process and your experience with it. I will certainly be blogging about what I am experiencing!
Good weather or bad, nothing has deterred the many of you who submitted applications for the Two-Year MBA and the One-Year MBA program. Congratulations and thanks for choosing Babson! For those of you who are submitting this week, what can you expect now? In addition to acknowledgements of the receipt of your application and reminders to complete your application by submitting any outstanding documents, many of you may receive an invitation for an interview.
Interviews
How do we view interviews and how should you? We invite you because we really want to talk with you about your candidacy to the MBA program. Our hope is that you take this invitation seriously and make whatever arrangements you must to accept it. We offer interviews on campus throughout the business week and at least one Saturday per cycle. We conduct interviews by Skype and by phone, domestically and internationally, so distance or cost should never interfere with an opportunity for us get to know one another better.
Why do we interview? Babson is a community of people engaged in teaching each other and learning from each other. It is a place of action. For the Admissions Committee to fully understand whether you would seek, benefit from, and actively engage in that type of learning environment, an interview gives us that much more information about you, delivered by you.
How should you prepare? Know your story, the points that you make to anyone who asks you, “Why do you want an MBA?” If you consider that you have already pulled your entire narrative together by preparing and submitting an application, then you should feel much more secure in knowing that you actually have all the answers. No cue cards or inked notes on the back of your hand are necessary. Think of it as a conversation, one that you can use to enhance your story in person, with all your wit, sincerity, passion, and conviction.
Good luck! Think big.
Best, Barbara