From Darden Admissions & MBA Blog:
Each Wednesday at 12:30 -1:00 p.m. (ET), Darden hosts a weekly online chat for prospective students. Here is the transcript from today’s chat:
Question: Is there any update at this time on domestic Round 2 interview invitations?
Answer: Invitations to interview go out in batches. Some invitations have gone out now. We will continue to extended invitations and interview right up until the decision deadline.
Question: Can you please share information on when interview invitations for candidates in India will be sent?
Answer: I believe invitations will go out shortly to Indian candidates. We do some of those interviews via Skype with Student Admissions Committee or Adcom members and others with alumni in India based on their availability.
Question: If I don’t get an interview invitation, will the online application page mention something like “not selected for interview”?
Answer: In that case, your status would not change until the decision deadline. And, then you would see that you’d been denied. But, heads up, be positive. Hopefully, you’ll receive a “good news” message!
Question: I have scheduled my interview and class visit for next week. Can I attend some of the events offered the day before my interview? Do I have to register for those events?
Answer: Typically there is an opportunity for lunch and a tour from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. Candidates generally sign up when they arrive in the Admissions Office.
If I understand your situation, you are wanting to participate the day before you interview. I suggest you e-mail darden@virginia.edu to confirm that we will have lunch and tour that day. If we do, you can just come in and sign up that morning. No need to preschedule — there’s no limit on the number of individuals who can attend.
Wharton invites began going out on January 29th and will continue up until February 22nd.
From MBA Admissions Blog:
Greetings All,
Winter weather officially arrived in Philadelphia, surprising us with the first few inches of snow in the new year just last week. For the Admissions Team, this weather could not have come at a better time as we are hunkered down inside reading the Round 2 applications. We are thoroughly enjoying getting to know each and every one of you through your personal written story.
In the upcoming weeks, we look forward to the opportunity to meet many of you for interviews. Interview invitations will begin to go out on Tuesday, January 29 and continue through Friday, February 22. As a reminder, interview invitations are not released in any particular order as we do not read applications in a particular order. The timing of your invitation to interview does not indicate anything about your candidacy. I know waiting to hear from us is always nerve wracking and appreciate your patience with the process.
After the remarkably positive feedback that we received during Round 1, we cannot wait to see what Round 2 has in store. The interview process is not only a wonderful way for the Admissions team to get to know our candidates “off the page,” this new format has also proven to be a wonderful way for our candidates to get to know each other as well. Should you be invited to interview, we look forward to meeting you in one of the following locations: on campus in Philadelphia, Dubai, London, Mexico City, New Delhi, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, and Singapore. All Round 2 applicants received an email with more details on the interview process last week; we’ll be in touch with further details as well. You can also read more about the interview process in a blog posting from the summer here.
Thank you all for your patience during this time. We look forward to being in touch over the next few weeks regarding interview invitations and next steps.
Hope the new year has been off to a great start!
Sincerely,
Ankur Kumar
All HBS interview invites have been now given out so if you have not been invited you have been released (their terminology).
From HBS Interview Blog:
Greetings from snowy Boston. Here’s what is going to happen tomorrow.
At (hopefully) noon, Boston time, we will send out the first wave of invitations to interview in Round 2.
You’ll get an email from HBS MBA Admissions, which will give detailed instructions on the sign-up process.
As stated before, we’ll be interviewing on campus and in the following hub locations: London, Paris, Shanghai, Dubai, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Palo Alto and NYC.
Heads up to 2+2 candidates: All interview invitations to this group will be sent in the second wave on February 6 (Note: I posted earlier that this would be February 7 – we’ve moved it up to February 6).
Another heads up to those on the waitlist from Round 1 who have not interviewed yet: You will be included in one of the two waves if being invited to interview this round – if you are not invited to interview, you will be released on February 6.
Remember, this is just the first of two invitation waves. In Round 1, we sent about 800 invitations in Wave 1 and about 100 in Wave 2.
PLEASE don’t send any additional material or letters of support to the Admissions Board – or me or the Dean’s Office or anyone else. We will only consider material sent at the time of application submission and that means 3 recommendations for everyone (or 2 if you are a 2+2 applicant), not more. We do everything we can to keep this process fair and equitable – we hope and expect that you will support this effort.
From HBS MBA Program Blog:
Round 2 Interview Invitations – A Little More Information
Well, I dealt with the aftermath of the transparency about interview invitation numbers in Round 1 today. Someone called and asked directly why we couldn’t send out all the invitations on one day. Good question. Here’s the answer:
We could..but it would be February 13, not January 31. Maybe that would be better…a later date, but just one date. The way we’ve structured it now – 3 waves – is to accommodate the reality of a (human) Admissions Board trying to give thoughtful attention to a lot of applications. And each application needs to be reviewed twice. So we have to have a little bit of flex in terms of the notification dates. The senior team in Dillon does (a lot of) other things besides reading applications. Board member X may be pulled into an IT crisis. Board member Y needs to pull together the budget for the next fiscal year. I went to NYC last week to do an admit event for Round 1 admits. All these things can throw off an application-reading timetable, so we build in those extra two weeks (two waves) to make sure we’ve got bandwidth to make careful decisions. We’re not doing this by machine. It’s just us.
As always, hope this helps.
From MBA Admissions Blog:
Notes from the Director: Round 2 Interview Update
Ankur Kumar, Admissions Director
Round 2 interviews are well underway and we look forward to meeting many of you, stateside and overseas. I am constantly inspired to see the unique talent and sheer motivation in our applicant pool. As our staff’s interview travel continues, the Admissions Committee and I look forward to engaging with you and hearing more of your stories.
We released more invitations to interview on Thursday, 16 February and we will continue to release up until Tuesday, 28 February. Again, if you have not received an invitation at this point, please do not be discouraged. Applications are not read in any particular order; interview invitations are extended as we complete each applications evaluation process. We have plenty of interview slots available on campus and we will continue to offer phone interviews for those with extenuating circumstances.
Our office will be open on Monday, 20 February for President’s Day and all campus visits and interviews will take place as scheduled. Please continue to follow our blog, as we will post further updates on office closings, interviews, Round 3 applications and our upcoming global events.
Should other questions arise, please continue to contact our office directly at mba-admiss@wharton.upenn.edu or post on our S2S Discussion Board and we will respond as soon as possible!
From MBA Admissions Blog:
Notes from the Director: Round 2 On-Campus Interviews
Greetings Round 2 Candidates,
Hello from the new MBA Admissions Office in Vance Hall! We have just begun our interview program, when we have the opportunity to meet many of you, in person, after reading your impressive applications. As my colleagues on the admissions committee will be speaking with some of you in various cities around the world, I will have the opportunity to interview candidates in Philadelphia– and I couldn’t be more excited.
For those of you interviewing here in Philadelphia, this is a great opportunity for you to take part in our campus visit program while you’re here. Indeed, it’s a great time to see Wharton’s campus, as this is a busy time, all-around: current Wharton students are back into full swing after winter break; Round 1 admitted candidates have just wrapped up Winter Welcome Weekend; Round 2 candidates are in town for interviews; and prospective students are visiting to learn more about the School.
The visit program gives you the opportunity to sit in on a class, to speak with current students, to tour the campus and to gain further insight into the opportunities that the Wharton MBA offers through our information session. This is an excellent way to interact with the Wharton community and to get a feel for life on campus.
Whether you are in Philadelphia or overseas, I wish you the best of luck as we move through this phase in the process. Should you have any questions regarding your interview, please just contact our office at mbainterview@wharton.upenn.edu and a member of our Admissions team will work with you directly.
From Booth Insider:
Round 2 Update
Interview invitations for Round Two started to go out this week, and as such, we wanted to provide an update on the process. Interview decisions will be announced on a rolling basis through the mid-decision date, February 15th. We start releasing interview invitations earlier than the mid-decision date to ensure that we have enough time to interview applicants, and so that applicants have time to plan accordingly. All applicants will be notified via email, and interview invitations will be released throughout each day. Please know that we are currently in the midst of reading applications and will continue to read applications until the mid-decision date. This means that if you haven’t heard from us, we have not yet completed the full evaluation of your application. Applications are assigned randomly and in constant streams throughout the read cycle.
I hope this is helpful.
Carrie
From Ross Admissions Director Blog:
Interview updates and happenings around the school
As promised, Wave 1 interview invitations went out yesterday. The next two waves of interview invitations will go out by end of day on Friday, February 3 and Friday, February 10. The first wave of Consortium interview invites will go out by end of day tomorrow, and the next set will go out with the second wave on February 3.
In case you missed one of my earlier posts explaining the wave process, here’s the deal: the wave in which you are invited to interview has no correlation to: (a) when you submitted your application; (b) the strength of your application; or, (c) the likelihood of your admission. We do it in waves so that we can smooth the interview load over a longer period of time. If we released them all on one date, we wouldn’t be able to do it until much later in the process, and the window of time for interviews to be conducted would be extremely limited. The wave process enables us to do more thorough and thoughtful reviews with a limited staff.
Regarding the interview day that’s being planned in collaboration with the Michigan Business Women student club – yes, it’s open to all interview invitees. The thing to note is that the agenda will be focused on the Michigan Ross experience from our women students’ perspectives, and the panelists will be members of the Michigan Business Women student club.
To give you a glimpse of what’s happening around the school, on Monday (Martin Luther King, Jr. day in the U.S.), the school hosted a lunch and lecture with former Washington, D.C. Mayor, Adrian Fenty, who led significant reforms in the DC public school system. He gave a frank talk about the challenges he faced in implementing changes that led to rising graduation rates and enrollment there. Also this week, the Dean held town halls with MBA1s. (She held sessions with MBA2s before the holidays). She was joined by associate deans and senior administrators to update students on some of the school’s current priorities: globalization, entrepreneurship, defining what the next generation of action-based learning will look like, and expanding our already-broad array of inter-disciplinary (i.e., cross-campus) initiatives. The Dean is planning to release a strategic plan for the school by late summer. You can read more about these and other initiatives on the Dean’s blog.
Tomorrow evening, I will be joining our MBA students for the second annualRevitalization and Business Conference in downtown Detroit. The conference will feature prominent industry and city leaders and entrepreneurial change agents who will share their perspectives on how business issues contribute to Detroit’s progress and transformation. Last spring, I met with the students who organized the inaugural conference and was struck by their commitment to not just make an impact “out there” or in emerging countries, but also in making an impact in and around our community, and they weren’t even Michigan-born and bred. Another way in which our students impact our community is by serving on the boards of local nonprofit organizations. During a conversation with one of our newly admitted students from New York last March, he commented that many schools had social impact initiatives, but few were as focused on the local community as Michigan Ross is. He told me that this was one of the deciding factors for him to join our community this fall.
From The MBA Insider’s Blog:
Mid-January admissions update
Our office is on the home stretch finalizing Round 1 decisions, and we are also polishing up our iPad screens to gear up for some intense Round 2 file reading. The next several months are going to be extremely busy for us, especially given that applications for the full-time MBA program are up again this round! Not only are the numbers looking good, but the quality of the pool continues to impress us, and we’re definitely looking forward to meeting more outstanding candidates as we craft the Class of 2014 .
On that note, here’s an update on what our applicants can expect over the next few months:
- Round 1 decisions: The rest of our R1 decisions will be released on the morning of Wednesday, January 25th (Pacific Time). You can log into your online application for a status update then. Admitted students will also receive a phone call from the admissions office (or an email if we are unable to reach you).
- Round 2 applications: The vast majority of R2 files will be released to the admissions committee after round 1 decisions are out. Although the application deadline was a week ago, we want to make sure each R1 application gets adequate evaluation time by the admissions committee before focusing on R2. Which takes us to our next item…
- Round 2 interviews: Interview invitations will be sent via email starting next month. We anticipate most will take place throughout February and March, depending on how quickly the admissions committee can evaluate applications. Please note that R2 is our heaviest round by volume, so even though we will devote our time and resources into file reading, it will still take time to go through each one. We thank you in advance for your patience through this process!
- Cool happenings: We have some amazing executives coming up on campus this year, such as Vice-Chairman & CEO of McDonald’s Corporation Jim Skinner and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki. Off-campus, faculty member Jim Stengel will be a featured speaker at this year’s TED Conference in Long Beach. Stay tuned on Twitter andFacebook for updates on these and other upcoming events.
From HBS MBA Program Blog:
I realized that I had promised some news about this on January 15 and didn’t want you to have to wait over the long weekend to hear this (Note: We are closed on Monday, January 16 in observance of Martin Luther King Day).
Here’s the story:
Round 2 interviews will be conducted between February 15 and March 9. We will be in London, Paris, Shanghai, Mumbai, Dubai, San Francisco, Palo Alto, and New York in addition to the HBS campus. Skype interviews may also be an option for candidates located outside the United States who are unable to travel. Full details will be available in the interview invitations.
This is our plan for timing:
We will send out email invitations on the following 3 Tuesdays – January 31, February 7, and February 14. On February 14, all candidates not invited to interview will be notified of their “release.”
Now, please pay attention – this is a new level of transparency that I hope is helpful, but I need you to understand that I am talking about what happened in Round 1 vs. telling you exactly what will happen in Round 2 (which we obviously DON’T KNOW now).
The pattern of interview invitation volume in Round 1 was:
- Week 1 (first wave of invitations): 750 invitations sent
- Week 2 (second wave): 80 invitations sent
- Week 3 (third/final wave): 25 invitations sent
Round 2 won’t be identical, but I think it will be directionally similar. Please hear me when I say that the timing of the interview invitation is NOT a signal of the strength of a candidate. The only thing that it maps to is the ability of our Admissions Board to move through their (large) reading allocations.
I hope this is clear and helpful – if it’s not, call me at 617-496-6835 and tell me so.
