Thanks for the sharing from the 'upstairs' friends. Just completed the interview with James. Here is my experience.
I arrived earlier than the scheduled time and looked for James in the lobby for a while. When I was walking around and wondering where he was (the round lobby of Far Eastern Hotel made me dizzy...), he showed up from B1 because the noise in the lobby made him change the interview venue to the business conference room on B1.
While we walked downstairs, our conversation was about the weather and how I was doing today.
He began with very brief introduction about Tepper and his goals of the interview. After that came the following questions:
- Career progress
- Career plans. How can MBA help you?
- Why Tepper
I mentioned I joined the info session held in Jan in Taipei. James said he's very glad to know applicants actively taking actions to know more about Tepper. So...for those who also participated in the info session and will be interviewed tomorrow, it might be good to talk about this.
- What do you think are the qualities of good leaders?
- Of your leadership qualities, what are your strengths and areas for improvement?
- What strategies or tactics do you employ to handle the pressure from work?
For this question, my answers were about some management tools I used as well as my hobbies which help release stress. Despite so, James still asked me the next question.
- In addition to the hobbies you mentioned, what else activities do you do on holidays?
James tends to bind several related questions into one big question. My advice is that after he shoots his question, you can pause and think for seconds before answering, to make your answers logical.
My questions for him:
- Since there are so many applicants this year, will Tepper increase the class size correspondingly?
<A> Yes and No. Tepper expects to have a class size around 170 or 180 for class of 2008, (class of 2006:151 / 2007:165) but will not go back to the level of more than 200 (class of 2005:236) due to constraint of faculty capacity.
- The notification date of the 2nd round is 13 Mar. Will all the results be released on that day or will some results be released earlier?
<A> Tepper always hope the results can be released prior to the notification date, but according to their experience it's difficult to do so under the condition that many admission officers are now traveling. Hence, it's better for applicants to expect being notified on 13 Mar.
My interview lasted about 30 minutes including some chat. I think his interview schedule is really tight because after me there are couple more interviews to go...
) 接著也是聊聊天氣, 說他去年來台灣的時候又下雨又冷的, 這次來天氣好多了(我竟然回他說: 對呀, 那你可以去海邊玩呢
)
