I visited and interviewed with ASU this week.Reached Phoenix on super bowl day and barely caught with few minutes in last quarter. And oh boy, what a game it was. Cardinals played really well but missed out on a wonderful win through a last minute dive and touchdown by Steelers. Well, ASU provided hotel accommodation for one night, a nice room with all facilities.
I had all scheduled for next morning- a class at 10am, lunch at 12pm, tour at 1pm and interview at 2pm.
I attended Operations and Supply Chain class by professor Choi, one of the most popular classes. And it was fun. The professor was very funny and had a good nick of teaching things in humorous way. After the class, I went with a lunch (paid by ASU) with a current student along with another prospective student. We had lunch in good old MU (old memories – spent lot of time at MU during my MS days). We discussed a lot of things about culture, classes, recruiting with the second year student ambassador. After lunch I went on a tour, which we limited to the business school building because rest of the attraction of the tour such as MU, SRC etc I have already seen and visited myself. Then I took opportunity to discuss further with the student ambassador about her experiences, specializations, goals, ASU culture etc. I went in for interview at 2pm. It was conducted by two people – one admission staff and other a current student in marketing major. The interview was very probing and went into details of all the examples I gave. Here are the questions that I remember:
1. Tell me about yourself and what you do currently.
2. Significant leadership experience at work
3. When things did not go as planned – talked about my failure experience at extra curricular
4. Had difficult time working with someone, what I did. – rephrased my teamwork experience
5. Manager feedback on strength and weakness.
6. Example of when I worked hard on something but did not achieve the expected result – had to go back to my days after 12th grade
7. Experience from my work where I had to do something I did not want to do – did not remember any work experience – so talked about my extra curricular experience. – follow up question to go more specific – I did not do well on this question
8. Choose an example of best team or worst team and why you think it was best or worst. I chose best team – one of my first company experience – I came up with story on the spot, so not sure how it went.
9. Short term, long term goals
10. Why MBA now. They did not ask why ASU and I did not get a chance to talk about why ASU, but I squeezed in few points.
11. What other schools applying and how would you choose if admitted in all
12. CASE: some TV company, going into overhead projection tv market, qa tested it well. 1. Customer demand increased 2. company could not meet demand
a- what does the company do?
b. Why did demand increase?
c. Why couldn’t the company meet the demand?
d. What can be done?
Then it was my time to ask questions and I asked lot of them. Finally we exchanged good byes and I left campus back to hotel and from their back to airport.
Overall, good experience, but mostly it is focused on Supply Chain and student did not look that bright. Moreover, most of the international students, especially Indian students, do Supply Chain Management specialization just because its ASU’s strength and they do not really know what they want to do after their MBA. But overall, ASU has good culture, small class size means personalized attention, and faculty looks promising. Moreover, they are rising in ranks and have good feedback from employers and recruiters. It will not be a bad school to go to and especially, living if you like to stay in west coast area.
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