Episode Transcript
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Welcome to the Clear Admit MBA Admissions podcast. I'm your host, Graham Richmond, and this is your wiretaps for Monday, February 19, 2024. Are you looking for an MBA program where you'll be more than just a number? Vanderbilt Business offers a personalized learning experience to help each student reach their unique career goals. Whether you're looking to switch careers entirely or accelerate the path you're on, the Vanderbilt MBA program will provide you with the individual support you need to propel your career forward. Vanderbilt is currently waiving their $200 application fee for MBA wiretaps. Listeners to learn more about the Vanderbilt MBA program and to claim your application fee waiver, visit business vanderbilt.edu clearadmit. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. Alex, how are things this week?
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Very good, thank you, Graham.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: So today we're actually going to totally deviate from the script, and we're going to do just something very different. So instead of our usual rundown of news and notes and candidate profiles, we're going to talk specifically about the wild and crazy Wharton admissions interview process, more commonly known as the Wharton team based discussion. It's unlike almost any other admissions interview, and that's why we're going to devote this week's show to. I think, you know, even if you're not interviewing at Wharton, there are going to be some nuggets and tidbits here about working in teams and even about interviewing generally that are probably going to be useful. And we'll have some fun talking about this, because Alex and I are both pretty passionate about this process that they have in place over at Wharton. So if you are fortunate enough to get an invite, obviously this is must listen stuff. But even if you're just Wharton curious or applying to other schools, I think it could still come in handy. So I think that it's also worth reminding people that there are some other schools that do these kind of team type things. So IMD in Switzerland, Michigan, Ross used to do it. They kind of stopped when the pandemic hit, but that's always a possibility of re emerging. And then there are other schools that have these come to our campus for interview day, and then they do other things, too. Like, there's sort of, like, team activities. So I think it's worthwhile. And I'm thinking, like, Duke, Berkeley, there are other schools that get people together and have these massive days where people are interviewing, where there could be some parallels here. But in any event. So, Alex, let's talk about this. I guess we'll try to cover the history of the TBD, which is like, over ten years old now, which I can't even believe why Wharton uses it, how you can prepare, how you can perform. And then we'll get into the details on this year's question that they ask in the team based discussion and as well as the one on one interview that Wharton does after the team based interview. So, Alex, do you remember the background on this?
Why did Wharton invent this? It's more than ten years ago. I want to say 2012 is when they started it. But do you remember why they're doing this and why they kind of said they were going to do it?
[00:03:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I have some recollection. I'm not sure it answers why they do it, because I'm not sure why they do it.
In terms of, I'm not a fan of this. But anyway, that's by the by, I'm a huge fan of the Wharton school, as all our listeners would know.
[00:03:20] Speaker A: Everyone knows.
[00:03:21] Speaker B: I'm certainly not a fan of this process, but why do they do it? So it reflects, I mean, it comes out of some faculty research, I guess about 1012 years ago. They wanted to get a better sense of how do we judge folks that are going to thrive in the learning environment at Wharton, I. E, how can we best create a proxy for or mimic the whole learning team environment through the interview process?
Or at least that's my understanding of its origins. I thought it might last a year or two, and then they'd go back to normal interview process, but obviously it stood the test of time. So they must be seeing some real data that shows that this process works really well for them.
So I assume it does work really well for them.
But, yeah, it's a very unorthodox methodology. Quite interesting.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: Yeah. And just to kind of give everyone a background, I mean, basically, if you're invited to interview at Wharton, you're going to be put into a team of five to six applicants. And it used to be that you would all come to campus or meet in a global city, wherever the school was setting up shop, to do remote interviews. But now it's all virtual. And so you'll basically be on a Zoom call with five or six applicants. There will be, I believe, two second year students at Wharton who are kind of the moderators for this team discussion. And you're given a topic in advance, and so you do a little homework, and you come to this discussion ready to talk about your ideas relating to the topic. And the school basically observes how the team behaves. So you're given some loose instruction, like everyone present their ideas and then have a debate and arrive at a kind of joint conclusion. And so meanwhile, the Wharton admissions observers, who are second year students, are kind of watching you and taking notes. So that's kind of how it goes. It's 35 minutes long. And again, it went virtual during the pandemic, and they've left it virtual, which I actually think is one of the good things that came out of the pandemic, because it used to be that it was probably hard to have at least geographic diversity in these team based discussions. When they would go to India to do the interviews, everyone would be indian. When they would do them in, know people would be coming from various parts of the US, right? So now they can kind of structure these team based discussions and have something maybe more representative of an actual learning team at Wharton. And I guess the other thing about that, Alex, is we should talk just briefly. You mentioned the learning team, and I don't know that everyone knows, but there are 860 or so students in a Wharton class, and that's broken down into something that they call clusters. So there are, I guess I want to say four clusters of 215 or so students each. And the cluster means that everyone in your cluster has the exact same professors in the first year at Wharton. So you're taking same homework, all that stuff, and then they're further broken down into cohorts of 70.
And in the cohort, again, everyone has the same professors, but you're all in the same exact schedule, too. So a professor might teach two or three sections worth of economics, but in your little cohort, you're always traveling with the same people to all of your classes. And within cohorts, they're further broken down into learning teams. And learning teams are five to six students, just like the team based discussion. And they really spend a lot of. I don't. I don't know what office it is at Wharton that does this. It's not the admissions team, but there's somebody who creates learning teams and makes sure that they're sort of really. Right.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it'd be academic affairs or whatever the current label is for that particular office. And just to be clear, you're in that learning team across all your classes in the first.
So it's not just a learning team for each individual.
Mean, it's a really interesting concept. It's a really good way for a big program like Wharton to create a more personalized experience as they break it down to clusters, cohorts, and learning teams. So huge fan of that process.
But there are some idiosyncrasies to this sort of team based discussion that aren't reflected necessarily in the learning team experience.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So let's get into that.
Well, first of all, as I said, you get the question in advance, and you're going to have this team discussion with the other applicants, and so you've got to come ready to discuss. And as you say, wharton would say, well, this is like a learning team. You're going to get to meet some potential future classmates. But we know Wharton interviews about, what, 40% of the candidate pool, and then only, like, one in three make the cut after the interview. So arguably, what, four of the six people in your TBD likely will not be your classmates? I mean, obviously, anything is possible. All six of you could get in, and then there could be another team based discussion where no one makes the cut. Right. But in theory, it's like two out of each six in the interview. Team based discussion will make it through. So that creates something different. Do you want to talk about that? I mean, obviously, when you're on a learning team, which I remember at Wharton, it's a collaborative thing, you're in this together. You're all trying to graduate and do well in class and learn from each other. There might be different motivations here, though, right?
[00:08:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. You're competing with these folks for those coveted seats in the class. So at the end of the day, what you need to do with the team based discussion is affect a really positive environment and discussion and come to a great conclusion, so on and so forth.
So that's all in play, as you would want to do in your learning team for a project that you're working on and so forth. So that is all the same. But the reality is the folks that you're working with in the team based discussion are not all going to end up at Wharton, and you're effectively competing with them.
It's going to create a little bit of a dynamic, but you've got to move that aside. You've got to assume that you're all on the same page and you're all aligned to have a very fruitful, team based discussion.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: Yeah, agreed. So you know what I'm going to do? I think what I'll do is just. I'm going to read out the question for this year just to give everyone a real flavor of what the assignment is, and then we'll just continue to talk. We have a bunch of sort of general tips on what you should do to get ready. And then I do want to talk about how to handle certain personality types. And then obviously we'll get into some detail on this year's prompt. But this year, just the question. I'll just read it out. It says, this year's question tasks you and fellow TBD participants to name and design a new course on a cutting edge business topic for Wharton's pre baccalaureate program. As part of the Wharton Global Youth program, this opportunity for exceptional junior and senior high school students introduces them to business education. The idea is to inspire talented young people to analyze the world's complex challenges as they take their first steps towards becoming leaders who will transform the global economy. Your team's challenge is to develop a course on a cutting edge topic for the generation of young business leaders coming behind you. You'll name the course, outline the topic and themes, identify faculty to lead the course, and decide on learning outcomes and assessment methods. So there's a lot there, Alex, that we'll get into. But one of the things that's fascinating is you always call this a little bit of, you've said, what a marketing ploy, right? Do you want to just elaborate on that? Because the question is different every year, but there's something that it does have in common. Do you want to talk about that?
[00:10:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, basically these types of questions, and one is not unique in this type of approach in terms of other schools maybe do it through their essays and so on and so forth. But the question sort of really requires you to do a deep dive study of the school, of features of the school that obviously Wharton is very proud of, and so on and so forth. As it should be. I should say from that way, it is a marketing exercise, because what does it do? It makes all candidates have been invited for an interview more engaged in the Wharton program, such that when someone gets admitted, they've done that extra, deeper dive into one particular program that they've been admitted to, it's going to give them an edge. I think it's very clever stuff, actually.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: I mean, this is slightly nuanced because they're not actually asking this year. And we should preface this by saying, this is the team based discussion from the round one interview, folks. In every year to date, it has also been for other rounds. They might change that this year. We don't know.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: Yeah, we never know.
[00:12:17] Speaker B: Let's say 90 some percent. We're confident that this will be the question for round two folks that have just been invited for interview last week.
But, yeah, it is a little bit of a marketing exercise, but that's a smart thing to do. I guess my point was actually for the prior team based discussion questions, it was directly related to the MBA program experience itself.
This year, they're taking a bit of a different approach because it's more broad in terms of, all right, it's asking you to explore a pre baccalaureate. Well, whatever that baccalaureate, understand it. But pre university prep programs that Wharton offers.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: Yeah, it is interesting.
I think one of the things that I was actually, in reading about this, I was like, wow, this is a great thing that they do. Wharton actually know high school students to campus, or they do it virtually. They do a number of different things to educate young people about business. And I had no idea that they were doing all this stuff. And if you're in the Philadelphia public school system or at a Philadelphia area charter school, it's free. So I mean, it's actually a really nice program, and it's working, right. Because I did the reading, and now I'm excited. I'm like, wow, I feel even more proud to be a graduate. Right. So it's working in the marketing sense. But the other thing that I just want to really tease out, and we'll get into this maybe a bit more, but is that you have to identify faculty to lead the course. And it turns out that it's the MBA faculty and the business school faculty in general who are teaching these things. So by virtue of that, you're going to dive in and learn about some amazing professors at Wharton. And so, yeah, I think it'll definitely help people to get up to speed on the school, which ultimately leads to them maybe wanting to attend. So it does work in that way.
I will say I have this list of, like, ten general tips. Like, how do you get ready for this thing? Right. So I'll run through these and feel free to add color commentary as you want. But the first one is just read the prompt and think about it. Like, spend time thinking about and preparing what it is that you might want to say to the group. Because the way the team based discussion starts is each person in the group is given, I believe, a minute or two at most to kind of just lay out their thoughts on what this course should be, who should teach it. Just share what you come to the table with.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: Yeah. So effectively, if you've got five or six folks in this team based discussion, you're going to have five or six ideas to discuss, and then you're going to need to synthesize it down to one great idea. Right. That's effectively what your team has to do through the entire process of the team based discussion. So it'd be five or six competing ideas. My advice is always really do the research first to one understand what this pre baccalaureate university experience is that Wharton offers. Look at the history of it in terms of what classes they've offered to date, which faculty are teaching them, and are active in this program. Look at the goals of this program and the mission in terms of what they're trying to achieve for their young participants, and so forth. And then start exploring particular ideas that you think would fit in the current sort of geopolitical business environment in which we live to start really coming up with your particular proposal and idea. And then once you've sort of fine tuned on a particular idea, then make sure it's fleshed out so you know which faculty that you would target to teach. You would have some goals for the particular program, some outcomes, and so on and so forth. But I'm a big believer. Graham, we talked about this before. I don't think you can over prepare for whatever you do.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's fair.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: I do think you should not be scripted, but you can never over prepare. And you'll be in a team based discussion with five or six other passionate folks.
Come fully loaded. But then your approach in the team based discussion is quite different, and we'll talk about that a little bit later.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Yeah, so I think, great advice. Be ready for this. And I should remind people, remember, they're only interviewing about 40% of people who applied. So you're already in a pretty elite group of candidates, right? Who are going to be in this team based discussion. Now, I would say that you can't over prepare, but also keep in mind that your preparation is kind of the appetizer, not the main course, right? You've got to be ready. But then the main course is making sure that you do well in the actual team based discussion. And so we have some other simple tips there.
The second tip is just prep is one part, not all of it. The third is arrive early. Like, be ready. You do not want to piss off your fellow team based discussion, folks, by showing up. So, you know, this is zoom. It's pretty easy to get online and just be in the waiting room five minutes before whatever the other thing is. You've done your research, Alex, as you've just suggested, but practice your pitch like you don't want to be scripted, but you need to be able to figure out a concise way to deliver a kind of 1 minute pitch on everything that you've kind of learned, like, what is your idea, as you said. So keep that in mind. I would also say that more generally, be succinct in not only you have to do this short pitch, but as you speak during the team based discussion, the goal should not be to hog all the air time. Anything you say should be additive. Right? Which is not easy. Right. Because everyone wants to kind of have their time in the spotlight. But that's important. I also think, great.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: But to also distinguish. Sorry, Graham, but to distinguish between your pitch, that's your time, right. And then the discussion afterwards, which absolutely needs to be additive and not hogging the airtime and just being very conscious and self aware and so on and so forth. But the actual pitch itself, I think you need to talk about everything that you think is important for that particular pitch, irregardless of other folks at that point. But as Graham says, really practice. This is your elevator pitch for this particular program.
Make sure you're within the requisite time constraints because you don't want your peers to start thinking, we've got to shut you down or whatever.
And again, if you've prepped really well and practiced really well, you're going to be confident in that pitch while still being humble and do it really super well. And then when other folks are pitching, take notes.
And I would say really try to hone in on the strengths of each of the pitches, right? So you've got four or five other people, folks pitching, you're taking notes, you identify two or three key strengths of each of the individuals that will really help then, with the ongoing discussion. Right. Because effectively, you now need to figure out how to create one resoundingly good idea. And it's unlikely that it'll be an original pitch idea in its entirety. It'll be perhaps influenced significantly by one pitch, and then you want to try to weave in the key sort of really good ideas of each of the other pitches to the extent that you can. I mean, obviously, if someone's unprepared and created a useless pitch or whatever, you don't have to force a good idea out of something that's not good.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: That's fair.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: But anyway, I'm rambling on.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: No, these are all good points, but as you also say, keep an eye. One of the tips we have here is keep an eye on the clock, because you only have a certain amount of time. And the way these have worked in the past is that you are required to kind of come up with a kind of single idea at the end. And so it's good to have maybe even as a team coming together and deciding that, okay, someone's going to keep us on schedule here so that we have enough time at the end to present our idea. I would also argue that you don't necessarily want to shy away from conflict. I mean, be polite, but constructive disagreement is, like, not a bad thing in these team based discussions. In fact, I think it can be a good thing to demonstrate that you're able to politely disagree with someone or.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: To obviously don't make it personal.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: Right.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: And if you are disagreeing, you got to back it up with your reason.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:21:17] Speaker B: So as long as it's grounded in data or fact or whatever, then that's good. But be obviously polite. I mean, we're now telling stuff that I think people, hopefully for most people, it should be pretty straightforward.
[00:21:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I think a couple more tips, and then we can get into some other aspects of this. But a couple more tips are, one is be careful about getting carried away with tools, whiteboards, or whatever you might use in zoom. Some people like to use a lot of these tools to kind of like take notes, et cetera, which is all fine, but just be careful, again, mindful of the time and that this is really about the discussion and the final kind of conclusion that you're going to come to as a team.
I got to read this quote, alex. It's from a report we had from a couple years ago at this point. But one of our tips is to be authentic.
And it's because this one person who interviewed at Wharton writes, everyone was bright and articulate, but there was not an ounce of authenticity in the TBD. Everyone was overdoing it. Like, great idea. Let's take the caps off of our know. I love that quote. This must have been from someone who did it in person, I'm guessing. Maybe, but it was like, so be authentic.
And then the last one is the second year students who are observing you. Some people are perturbed by like, oh, these are just second year students. This is like a life decision for me. And they throw some students to observe us. Can't we get an admissions director or something? But they are there, and they've done these. They've been trained. They obviously, by the time we get to round two here, they've done a number of them in round one. And so I've actually asked directly the admissions director and some of the other associate directors at Wharton whether these second year students are easily swayed by a group as a whole. Like, oh, this whole group was good. They should all get in, or, well, these guys didn't come to a good conclusion. They should all not be. And apparently that doesn't happen. They've assured me that it really is, that they're good at doing this.
Folks need to not worry too much about that.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: I would say they are going to tell you that, Graham.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: I know. But now, one thing I want to really hone in on, though, and you've alluded to this, Alex, is the idea. Know, I spend all this time preparing. I've got my pitch down. I've practiced it. I come in, I make it. And you pointed out, well, my pitch may not, in fact, almost definitely will not be the final conclusion that we come to because there's five other people in the room who are also going to make pitches. And so we're going to end up with some kind of new idea that emerges or a mix of different ideas. And so I guess what we tell people, right, is just don't stress. If it's not your idea, you're not coming into this session with the idea that if my idea is picked, I'm the one that gets in. Right. I mean, that's not what's happening here.
[00:24:06] Speaker B: No, it's not what's happening.
I've actually been studying probability theory lately because I've taken up playing cards, but that's a whole nother story. But your probability of your pitch being selected is what, about 20%? Right. So it is in the minority, but there are lots of different roles that you can take in this process. Right. So, yeah, maybe it is your pitch that's selected so you can be sort of the innovator or whatever it is, but you could also manage the flow of the conversation, sort of timekeeping, keeping everybody on track.
You could be the person that's helping tease out ideas from someone that's perhaps less vocal to sort of bring them into the conversation.
I mean, there are a variety of different roles that you can take, and obviously, these folks won't know how the dynamic is going to unfold ahead of time because these folks won't have met so on and so forth. Or it would be rare if you knew somebody in the team based discussion ahead of time. But, yeah, there are lots of roles to potentially take to really show that you're someone that works really well in a collaborative, team based environment.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. I mean, recognizing a good idea is a.
That's.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: And being humble enough to actually. John? Yeah, Jennifer, I love your idea, but how about this element that Zoe brought up could we merge that into your idea?
[00:25:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: So therefore, you're talking about two other folks's idea, none of your idea, but you're really helping steer the conversation forward and working to the best solution, and that's what's key.
[00:26:06] Speaker A: Yeah. And now for those of you thinking, ooh, so my idea doesn't really matter. I can come in and just play, put the puzzle together.
Don't be lazy. Like, you still need to come in with your own idea.
And don't just adapt somebody else's, because it's, like, the fast way.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: And the more you've thought about your idea, the more you've developed it, the more opportunity you would have to identify the best idea and to identify other elements that can improve that idea. Right. If you're coming into this blind, you'd be bluffing your whole way through, and that will be.
[00:26:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I've been thinking about this, Alex. I was thinking you would make, if you were on a team and you had to come up with an idea, I was just thinking that you would have some course taught by Peter Fader or something about marketing. But I'm just guessing.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. It would be all about customer lifetime value. Why that's the most important metric.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: Right.
[00:27:03] Speaker B: Either that or a new area that I'm really interested in is how businesses are required to be trusted entities in a world in which governments and media and whatever the trust deficit is increasing.
[00:27:19] Speaker A: Yeah, interesting.
[00:27:20] Speaker B: But that might be a little bit complicated for this particular target audience. But I think even someone coming in pre undergrad recognizes that the value of a customer is really important to a business. So, yeah, we could take some Peter fader content, deliver it to high school kids. They would love it.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. We digress. But I did want to talk about, one other thing I really want to talk about is there are different personality types. So we're going to make caricatures here. But you have somebody who's shy, or you could have a jerk, like someone who's really domineering and tries to take over the conversation.
I mean, there are different sort of folks that are out there. And I'm just wondering, do you have any thoughts on how do you deal? What if someone's not talking much? Is it up to you to worry about that, or should you just care?
[00:28:04] Speaker B: I mean, I would qualify that a little bit. I think Wharton will have done quite a good job of selecting folks to interview.
[00:28:09] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:10] Speaker B: So you would have less of the blowharts of this world and so forth. But you might still have a few folks that are on the timid side, and culturally more likely, too, from different regions of the world. And as you pointed out, these Zoom meetings will attract a much more diverse audience.
So I think that's the key, is identify the strong ideas of each of your colleagues presentations. If you've identified two or three from each, as I mentioned earlier, and then it turns out in the following discussion, one or two are not contributing, you have two or three thoughts that you could then go to one of those folks not contributing and ask them more about it. Right. So that's why notetaking during the actual presentation, I think is really important.
I think if you've got the OD person that just wants to hear themselves talk the whole time, you probably need to be a little bit more assertive whilst trying to be.
You certainly don't want to tell them to shut up. You might think that they should shut up, but you probably need to do it in a bit more of an authentic but appropriate way.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think, yeah, you can interject or just be polite, try to create space for other voices in the group. But as you said earlier, listening to each person's pitch, taking notes, all these things you can do to make sure that you've got some ammunition to raise other issues as you move through the discussion.
[00:29:56] Speaker B: Always keeping in mind that the end goal is the best synthesized pitch.
[00:30:02] Speaker A: Right, exactly. Just remember, while it's important to deal with these different, maybe character types in the group, it's not your job to make everyone shine.
You don't have to make the jerk into a nice person or the shy person an extrovert. Right. So that's fine, but, yeah, just keeping this stuff in.
So a couple more things I wanted to give a few tips or talk through a little bit of advice on. Well, how do you go about actually preparing your pitch, and how do you do this? Sort of respond to the prompt that they've given. And then I don't want us to forget, Alex, we should spend a couple minutes talking about the one on one interview that you do have afterwards. So the reason they have two observers is because.
Or part of the reason is when the meeting ends, you break out into kind of everyone's in the waiting room, and then one by one, each of you will speak with one of the observers and have a short ten minute personal interview. So we'll get into that in a moment. But in terms of how to prep for this, I had kind of five points that I'd noted. One is get to know the Wharton Global Youth program and how it works. You and I were looking at that this morning. There's a great website. There's a ton of information. It's really easy. This is in particular the pre baccalaureate program for high school juniors and seniors. I believe it's offered virtually, and they currently have what I think I saw. They have like four or five courses that they currently offer. So the good news is that there's a lot of room to, and the courses were pretty basic economics, like just sort of general stuff. So I think there's a lot of room to come up with cool creative class ideas. Then the second thing, and this is an important one that we have not mentioned, Alex, is, and you love this stuff, take inventory of your personal experiences and knowledge.
Mean, ideally, the observers learn a little bit about you as you kind of based on what you bring to the discussion. And so do you want to elaborate on this at all?
[00:31:55] Speaker B: Well, yeah, just knowing your own strengths. And it's something we talk about right at the beginning of the application process. Right.
So making sure that you feel that you've gone through that process so the elements of that potentially could emerge through the pitch, through the conversation, through the whole interview experience.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, for example, if you happen to be working, and I don't really necessarily recommend this because I'm sure it's the topic that came to everyone's mind, but artificial intelligence is obviously, everyone talks about AI and generative AI, but if you happen to work in technology and you've been exposed to a lot of that, you might think, wow, there's a real need for young people to learn about what the future looks like with this and how it's going to impact the business world. But you would invariably, as you introduce that topic, probably be drawing upon your work experience and your personal experience.
That's what I'm getting at here, is take inventory and think about how your background might inform the idea that you bring to the table.
It can be a nice sort of side benefit about just how you bring that to bear. The other thing is that you obviously have to come up, don't forget, you have to come up with the name for the course, an outline of the topics and themes. You got to think about who's going to teach it. So there are these specific things that you got to go out and do some research on as well as the assessment methods, like how do you want to grade this class? It's pretty down in the weeds, right. So you got to remember to figure that stuff out. And you might, I don't know if look on the website, see if you can get your hands on a syllabus or whatever they describe in terms of how they're currently teaching. What are they currently doing with these kids? Just so you can understand what the baseline is. And then again, remember that this exercise is not all about your idea or the work you do beforehand. It also is about learning what other people bring to the table and coming up with some even better idea as a group.
So that's kind of the basic tips there. Alex, do you want to tell us a little about this one on one? Because you were reading some of the interview reports in our archive the other day and we were kind of talking about it. But it is funny, they still do a one on one interview, but it is ten minutes long and it's not really a traditional interview.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: Yeah, one's not completely moved away from one on one interview. So you'll get ten minutes.
And there are two topics or themes that those ten minutes can be focused upon. One is your own, sort of. All right, now tell me a little bit more about why you're planning to attend Warton, why Warton? Why MBA, your goals and so on and so forth.
Also, potentially an opportunity to ask questions that you might have. So make sure you've got one or two questions that are genuine, authentic questions that you would like to ask. And remember that these are second year MBA students. So I would make those questions experiential, talk about their particular experience in the program.
The second theme of line of questions is actually to respond to how do they think they performed in the TBD and how do they think the TBD itself worked and was successful and so on and so know that's really important too. Right? And that'll draw in some sort of self awareness issues and so on and so forth in terms of how you think everything performed and you want to be authentic and frank without throwing anyone under the bus in that particular assessment.
What we've noticed in the past is more of the line of questions have been on about goals, why Wharton MBA, but this year maybe a little bit more leaning towards the actual TBD experience itself. So I would just prepare for both. Recommend that folks are prepared to answer both sets of types of questions. Now, they're probably not going to need to tackle both in a ten minute window, but be prepared for both is the point.
[00:36:15] Speaker A: Yeah. And we have a video as well as some admissions advice around like five most common questions, which are those kind of why do you want an MBA, why our school? As to the others, the questions that they've been asking, especially this year so far, have been like, talk about the TBD experience. What did you think? How did you think you individually contributed the most? So that's an interesting, again, self awareness stuff. How did you think the team did? What went well? What could have been improved? And as Alex said, do not say, well, it would have been great if that jerk hadn't dominated the whole conversation.
Careful how you kind of position this.
So, thinking through, how could you constructively describe, you might say, wow, I wish we'd had more time. And it seemed like so and so had some really great ideas. We didn't get to all of know, just think through how things could have gone. Yeah, it is interesting. I know for candidates, one of the things that, and this is why I think, Alex, you and I react to this method a little bit negatively, is that candidates who apply, I feel like people are yearning to have that, like, 20 or 30 minutes where they can just talk about their background and kind of bring their application to life. Right. And that doesn't really happen in this process, and it hasn't for many years now, but lots of people have gotten into Wharton and been very happy going there. So it's working. And I know the admissions committee feels like they get a lot of good information by observing candidates in this process. So it is what it is. Hopefully, by tuning into this episode, everyone's learned a little bit more. And for those of you who really don't care about Wharton and are not interviewing at Wharton, if you're still here, congratulations. But also, we'll be back next week with a regular episode of Wiretaps, where we'll review our candidates and do all the usual stuff. So, Alex, I appreciate you deviating from our normal course to just sort of talk about this, because I know last week the invites came out, and it's a sort of top of mind thing, and it is a very unusual process, so it's worth discussing.
[00:38:09] Speaker B: Yeah, no, absolutely. Very good. Good luck, everyone. Stay safe.
