Stake in the heart, in Texas: Interviewing at UT Austin

After getting rejected by NYU, I lost a bit of hope. Shortly after that, I also got dinged by UCLA and USC.  If the school I went all out on didn't even humor with an interview, how was I going to land anything else?

I was in for a pleasant surprise though when I got an email from UT Austin requesting to interview me. After I saw that email, I got really excited:

This was my time to shine and to show Texas I belonged at their school.  

When you get an interview invite, good sites to check are the GMAT Club Forums and the Clear Admit Wiki.  A lot of applicants that have gone through the interview process will post the questions from their interviews on those sites. It'll give you a good idea of what to be aware of.  Also, remember to check with the schools whether its a blind interview. Blind interviewers have not reviewed your file and they will be asking you questions strictly off of your resume. A non-blind interviewer will have reviewed your profile and could possibly have very specific questions about your resume, essays or other parts of your application. UT Austin's interviews are blind so I made sure to bring a copy of my resume as well as any other collateral that I wanted to share.  Some people I met at UT in the interview room had no clue what the differences were. They assumed the interviewer had a copy of their application and they didn't print their resumes.  BE PREPARED PEOPLE! Getting into a school is tough so you don't want to drop the ball once you get past the application round.


Onto my interview experience, my interviewer was a second year student.  He was an aspiring management consultant and was a pretty damn tough interviewer. I could not get this guy to crack a smile at all.  It was like talking to Siri, but a male version. He had me sweating because I didn't know whether I was doing good or not.  Here are some of the questions I was asked:

1.  Tell me about your career and what led you to decide you wanted an MBA.
2.  Why UT?
3. What was the least rewarding experience on your resume?
4.  What is a common misconception people have of you? How do you prove them wrong?
5.  What type of worker is most difficult for you to deal with/ work with?  How did you alleviate problems with this type of worker? Name a situation and resolution. How is your relationship with this person now?
6.  What experience added the most value to your personal growth?
7.  What type of leader are you now? How will the MBA experience transform your leadership abilities? What type of leader do you see yourself as post MBA?
8.  What are you most passionate about?
9.  How do you anticipate giving back to the McCombs community?

At the end of the interview, my interviewer said I did well and that he thought I would be a great fit for the school.  What a relief! He wished me luck and said that he hoped I would be hearing good news in a couple of weeks. After hearing that, my confidence went up again.

When decision day rolled around for UT Austin, I was in for another shocker.  I received the email, but was out at a birthday dinner and was scared to open it.  I waited that night until 2 AM to check the decision and boom. Rejected. Holy crap what went wrong?  I thought interviewing was my strong point and even though I was sweating during the interview, my interviewer said I nailed it. 

That was it.  With the final rejection, I was out of the running to be a part of the Class of 2014.

What I think I did wrong and what I did next in my next post.