Allyssa Bates, Admissions Director, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) School of Business: In an MBA interview, you should expect to get questions about your resume or CV up to this point and you should just basically expect your interviewer to really take the time to get to know you as a person. I know when I’m interviewing candidates, I’m very interested to see how this person is going to behave in the classroom, in the groups that I’m going to place this person in, is this going to be a contributor, what is does this person view as their strengths. So take some time before the interview to really sit down and focus on the points that you want to emphasize. One of the questions I usually end with, is there anything you didn’t get a chance to tell me during this interview, to give this applicant a chance to shine. So just make sure that you are really covering all your strengths and all the things that make you a perfect candidate to a master’s program. David Prince, Assistant Director of Admissions, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) School of Business: I think first when you’re creating a resume, you should think about the structure of your resume. At the very front end of your resume, you want to put a classified ad that best sells who you are and what you’re able to do. If for some reason your interviewer only glances at your resume, takes 8 to 10 to look at your resume, at least they’ll capture that information there. Below that, you should put information that will help to support what you have stated in your classified ad. As you’re building that support information, you want to think of not the tasks that you worked on, but actually the accomplishments that you’ve made. If you have accomplished it somewhere else, then you can accomplish it for that interviewer as well. Always remember to quantify as much information as possible and I’d say probably the most important point of all is to proofread, proofread, and proofread. A simple typo or a punctuation mistake will stand out and determine that interviewer’s decision. Allyssa Bates, Admissions Director, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) School of Business: Do your research before you come to an MBA event. It’s one of those great opportunities for you to really shine and make an impression on the recruiter with whom you’re interacting. As I tell all our candidates, every interaction with us counts. So when you come to the table with intelligent questions about our school, our programs, our faculty, even our extracurricular activities, it helps me see that you are serious about Worcester Polytechnic Institute and what we have to offer. Do not go to a table and ask the representative what they’re known for. It just shows that you really don’t care very much about their organization and could impact you negatively. Ia Hagan, Assistant Director of Admissions, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) School of Business: I think that as soon as you decide that you might be interested in pursuing a graduate MBA degree, you should at that point begin preparing for your GMAT. The GMAT is an important factor in your application because it’s the one commonality across all applications and so the admissions office tends to look at it and use it as an instrument to compare you with other students. The GMAT exam itself tests you not on content or knowledge that you’ve had in the past, but it tests you both analytically and logically. So it’s a different type of test that requires a lot of preparation. A lot of it is just you getting used to the test and getting used to the types of questions that they ask so start as early as you can. Allyssa Bates, Admissions Director, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) School of Business: You should use the optional essay when there is a component of your application that you feel is going to raise questions among the admissions review team. If you have something in your past, maybe it’s a bad semester or a very poor score on one of the standardized tests that you feel needs to be addressed, that’s when you want to take advantage of the optional essay. As I tell candidates all the time, if you think it’s going to raise red flags and cause myself or one of my team members to pick up the phone and call you and ask you about this, help us out. Make sure that you go ahead and write about that concern right before or right while we’re reviewing the application. It speeds up our process and it just kind of shows that you’re aware of, you know, any flaws that might be in your application.