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MBA students at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business are known to work quite hard amid the rigors of the case method. Each day, they are expected to read and complete their own analysis of a case (a narrative detailing of a business problem) and then compare and reason through their analysis with a diverse team of fellow students. Often students can spend two to four hours prepping on their own and then two to three more with these “learning teammates” to arrive at an answer (as opposed to the answer). And, what can be the reward for all of this? You may just be selected for a “cold call” to start off the class.

At Darden, most first-year classes and some second-year classes start with a professor randomly selecting a student to lead the day’s discussion with his/her case analysis. This student can be subjected to anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes of questioning, as the professor teases out key points of discussion for the broader class to explore. Many a student has sweated through a cold call, only to gain the applause of his/her peers at the end of the class. (Others, of course, may not do as well.) The cold call can be daunting, but it forces students to prepare thoroughly and think on their feet—a key feature of the Darden learning experience.

For more information on the Darden School and 14 other leading MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

When you select an MBA program, you are not just choosing your learning environment, but are also committing to becoming part of a community. Each Thursday, we offer a window into life “beyond the MBA classroom” at a top business school.

For the International Food Festival at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business Administration, sponsored by the International Business Society, students arrange themselves into teams according to their home country or culture. On the night of the festival, the teams set up tables with decorations representing their home countries and cultures and present home-cooked, authentic cuisine; in addition, the students often dress in their region or culture’s traditional clothing. A cultural showcase at the end of the evening allows participating groups to show off their region’s music and dancing. One alumna told mbaMission, “It is fascinating to see all of your classmates whipping up their own culinary decadence. Everyone makes a point to eat light the day before, and they gear up to taste foods from 30 different countries and regions—from Korea to Greece to Texas.” Most of the student body and their partners attend this event, as do many professors and alumni.

For in-depth descriptions of social and community activities at Darden and 14 other top MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday.

As interview decisions are released, do your best to remain calm and let the admissions committees do their work. Although becoming a little apprehensive is natural if you have not yet received an interview invitation, you will certainly not increase your chances by calling the admissions office and asking if they do indeed have all of your files or if an interview decision has been made. In fact, such calls can actually have a negative effect on your candidacy, inadvertently positioning you as pushy or even belligerent.

Admissions offices are increasingly transparent and should be taken at their respective words. If they say they are still releasing decisions, then they are in fact still doing so. If they say that the timing of your interview decision does not signify an order of preference, then it does not. As painful as it is, unless something has changed materially in your candidacy, all you can really do is wait patiently and try not to think about the decision or second guess your status.

Although putting yourself at the center of the stories in your application essays is certainly important, a common problem applicants have is beginning too many sentences with the word “I.” As a general rule, you should never have two sentences in a row that begin this way. Consider the following example:

“I worked for three years at ABC Plastics, a small injection molding company. I was responsible for overseeing the overall management of ABC Plastics, from day-to-day operations to strategic planning. I managed 100 people. I worked very long hours, but I learned more than I ever imagined.”

Now consider the same statement reworked to avoid using the word “I” at the beginning of subsequent sentences:

“For three years, I worked at ABC Plastics, a small injection molding company. My responsibilities at ABC included overseeing the overall management of the company, from day-to-day operations to strategic planning. Because I supervised more than 100 staff members, my days were long, but I learned more than I ever imagined.”

As you can see, the second example reads much better than the first—and none of the sentences in the second example begin with “I.”

Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday.

This time of year, business school candidates will start to interview with their target MBA programs. Many will inevitably fret and ask themselves, “What if I don’t know the answers to the interviewer’s questions?” The good news is that, as our title for this blog entry states, a business school interview bears no resemblance to a TV quiz show. The admissions officer, alumnus/alumna or student who interviews you will not ask you about esoteric topics and will not expect you to answer questions pertaining to management disciplines, about which you will learn more in the first year of your MBA program. The vast (vast!) majority of interview questions will pertain to your life and experiences—in other words, the interviewer will be asking you about you—so you will already have the answers in hand as you start the interview.

As your first step in preparing for your interviews, take time to reacquaint yourself with your own story, especially as you have thus far presented it to the school in question—go back and reread your essays, contemplate pivotal moments in your life and consider your major accomplishments and failures. By doing so, you will have the basic knowledge necessary to perform at your best during your interview.

For more guidance with your business school interviews, sign up for a mock interview session with us!