Short updates on my MBA applications:

Yale invited me to interview a week or so ago, unfortunately I declined as it would have invovlved traveling to New Haven which I can’t really justify.

Haas invited me to interview a few days ago and I am trying to schedule it with an alum based in Abu Dhabi. Looking forward to it as I’m keen on getting some more first hand accounts of the Berkely experience. I met Sarah Takesh at a dinner a few months ago through our mutual friend Suphala and she got me really excited about the Haas experience (even though she wasn’t completely positive about the MBA experience in general). Ideally I would look into the Columbia-Haas exchange program.

Chicago wrote to me informing me that I have been wait-listed. I thought my Chicago interview went pretty well, but perhaps I misread it! I interviewed with an ex-consultant who is now working as an advisor to the UAE government. He had a pre-mba engineering background which gave us quite a bit of common ground to talk about. He drilled down pretty deep into my CV probing into my various job experiences as well as asking me more general questions like what I thought the internet’s impact on the Middle East had been and how I saw the future of the media industry in the region (based on my post-mba ambitions). I felt there was a slight communication gap as my interviewer was french-educated. Some other questions:

• Why Chicago? He probed my answer pretty deeply here, I probably came off a little weak on this one.
• Where else have you applied? He said he didn’t see how Chicago fit in with the other schools on my list.
• Lots of questions about my entrepreneurial experiences, including questions about our strategy, successes and failures.
• Why an MBA? How will it really help you achieve your goals?
• Leadership questions
• Questions about my undergrad (drawn out of our common engineering background) specializations and general questions about Imperial.
• I spent about 15 minutes at the end talking about his experience at Chicago (he was very passionate about his time there), what classes / profs etc stood out, what the Middle East alum network was like and general questions about life in Chicago (I have never been).

Have yet to hear back from Stern and LBS.