The biggest dilemma that most MBA applicants struggle with is how to answer the most challenging MBA interview questions.

Challenging MBA interview questions

By “The most challenging MBA interview questions”, we mean interview questions that range from the unfamiliar to the unexpected.

Expect the unexpected

In fact, when it comes to facing the MBA admissions interview jury, always expect the unexpected.

More so, in 2020 and 2021, when MBA interview questions have bordered more on being unexpected.

Look at some of the actual questions that were asked by interviewers to MBA aspirants in 2020 and 2021.

• How did COVID-19 impact you personally?
• Tell us about your stand on Donald Trump’s immigration policy.
• Which business school do you think is the toughest one to crack?
• Tell us about a time when you let someone down.
• Why do you feel that an MBA will be fruitful for your career now?
• What has failure taught you?

These questions were spontaneously asked by jury members and there’s a reason for it.

Many interviewers know that candidates often practice responses to standard questions.

So, they want to see how you react in an unfamiliar environment.

Which means no matter how much you practice with as many questions as there’re out there, you can always be caught off-guard.

So, what can you do when you find yourself being asked an unexpected or unfamiliar question?

A good strategy would be to prepare well by knowing how to present yourself during your MBA interviews and paying attention to your body language. It’s also equally if not more important, to invest in knowing how to keep your wits about you so that you can respond with confidence and clarity.

Prepare, Prepare, Prepare

There are several ways you can be mentally prepared to respond to such challenging MBA interview questions –

Show alignment with your post MBA goals or with your career journey so far

When you’re asked a question on a topic that could catch you unguarded, see if you can bring the response close to a goal or a theme that either relates to your career till date or to your post MBA goals.

For example, if you were asked “Which business school is the toughest one to crack?”, you might be tempted to blurt out one the top 5 business schools.

Instead, take a step back and think about some of the attributes that are missing in your current profile, attributes that some of the other business schools greatly value.

For instance, you may have no international experience whereas some of the other business schools strongly prefer those with international experience. There you have your answer! Pick one such school and explain why it would be difficult for you to make it to such a school.

Know your application well

Make sure you remember all the information you’ve shared in your application, be it your essays, resume or even recommendation letters (if you’ve access to those). Your application is a good starting point when preparing for your interviews, so make sure that when you practice during your mock interviews, your responses connect with the details you’ve included in your application.

Provide succinct responses

When you’re faced with an unexpected question, your first impulse might be to respond right away.

Instead, take a couple of seconds to gather your thoughts. It’s perfectly acceptable to do so.

And if you are given a case study or a guesstimate question, you can always request your interview panel for a minute or two to think through the problem.

Rather than giving a hasty response that you’ll regret later, take the time to think how you’d like to respond as precisely and succinctly as possible.

And if you aren’t happy with your response, you can always clarify by including more dimensions while keeping your response to the point.

Stay true to your core values

What’s it that you stand for?

What’re your core values?

It’s important to be clear about your core values.

Honesty, perseverance, respect, or any other positive trait that you not only possess but know are also relatable to the business school you are interviewing with, are the core values you should try to highlight through your responses.

For instance, if you were asked to respond to, “Tell us about your stand on Donald Trump’s immigration policy?”, a potential answer could look like this –

“I feel that is essential for all nations to allow cross-border migration of skilled personnel. This benefits countries at both ends as the recipient country gets to enrich its domestic innovation ecosystem while the donor nation gets remittances in return. Every country that has an elected government is free to decide on how it intends to manage immigration – legal or otherwise. However, at the same time, it is not good to turn it into an emotional issue to mobilize a certain set of voters. Instead, countries should decide on such issues by bringing their national interests, security concerns, business needs, and constitutional norms into consideration.”

This is a perfectly balanced response, one that shows you’ve carefully thought about this issue from multiple angles.

Also, it highlights several core values such as respect, open-mindedness, and inclusiveness.

Similarly, if you’re completely stumped by a question during your interviews, the best thing to do is to be honest and respond truthfully by saying, “I don’t know”.

Your interviewers are likely to appreciate you for your honesty and more importantly, for not wasting their time by cooking up something that’s false and implausible.

Conversations not interrogations

A common mistake many applicants make is to get overwhelmed, feeling stressed out with thoughts that they wouldn’t be able to perform well at their interviews.

Remember MBA interviews are conversations so preparing well is key to helping you sustain a good conversation with your business school interviewers and rocking your MBA interviews.

Your soundest investment

And one of the best ways you can build strong conversation skills is to invest in reading great books. Reading helps you expand the horizons of your thoughts and equip you with the tools to create memorable responses that will resonate with your interviewers.

And we know from experience, giving memorable responses at your MBA interviews is a sure-shot way of winning the admissions committee’s attention and making it to the business school of your dreams.