February is here. Round 2 has passed. Now, MBA admissions teams gear up and get serious.

It’s interview time for business school applicants. Call it a rite of passage. Some candidates will get lucky. They might just skate by walking through resumes and trotting out talking points. In most cases, interviews are a means to flush out motivations That means applicants are defending their decisions and laying bare their faults.

THE UNDERLYING QUESTIONS

All the while, interviewers are asking themselves two questions:

1) Does the page truly reflect the person?

2) What does this person bring that we can’t find somewhere else?

New year. New priorities. New questions. Thanks to COVID, 2022 also brings an entirely new format. Forget the campus visit or coffee chat; many interviews will happen over Zoom or Skype. That distance makes it harder for read body language – and God help anyone who has a poor connection!

Beyond that, the admissions interview is a feeling out process. Conducted with an adcom, alum, or 2nd year, the interview – when done right – provides answers that separate applicants from each other. They reveal whether an applicant is serious and passionate. They illustrate how a candidate will contribute, whether they are a catalyst who’ll plan an event or a wunderkind whose insights and energy will elevate the class. Their etiquette will tip interviewers off to whether they are someone that classmates will invite to launch a venture or grab a beer. Of course, these interviews should always address the big question…

Just how bad does this person want to be here?

A SCHOOL-BY-SCHOOL LIST

Why here? Why now? Why an MBA? Those are the three big questions that applicants can expect in any interview. Basically – What’s your story? Where are you going and what do you value – and what do you do for fun too. Many questions posed will be straightforward and predictable. And then there are the ones no one expects – the behavioral questions that drag applicants back to their worst moments and the hypotheticals rife with cultural land mines.

Every school brings a different wrinkle. At Harvard Business School, interviewers love to probe candidates about company operations and industry trends, testing to see how connected they are with what’s happening around them. At Duke University’s Fuqua School, the questions boil down to leadership – how a candidate wields and accepts it – to see if someone is truly Team Fuqua material.

What can applicants expect from different MBA programs? Every year, Clear Admit publishes its MBA Interview Reports. Incentivized by a gift card, MBA applicants share the questions they were asked during the interview. Wondering what applicants can expect at Stanford, Booth, Columbia, or Sloan? Here is a sampling of questions asked at 18 top programs so applicants can prepare the most effective responses.

University of California-Berkeley (Haas)

Think about an experience when you led a team and the situation become complicated or stressed, and morale was low, what did you do and what were the results?

Tell us a time when humility gave a positive result.

Tell us about a time when you argued with someone and you turned out to be in the wrong.

Tell us about a time when you collaborated with cross-functional teams and what was difficult about the process and what did you learn?

What is the biggest risk that you’ve taken?

Tell me about a time when someone has told you that you’re wrong and what did you do about that?