How to ace Columbia SIPA's "Video Response" Interview

The School of international and Public Affairs (SIPA – pronounced “SEE-pa”) at Columbia University in New York City is one of the leading institutions in public administration and international affairs in the world. With research centers in Development Economics, Global Energy, Global Economic Governance, International Conflict Resolution, and War and Peace Studies, any student interested in international public policy can find a home for themselves at this Ivy League School.

Overview of the Video Response

Unlike many other graduate government programs, SIPA has included a video interview essay or “Video Response” as part of their application. The Video Response is only available to applicants on their application portal after they have submitted their application and paid the application fee.

The response is high-stakes in that you only get one 60-second opportunity to answer a random question and the question could be on ANYTHING!

What is SIPA Looking For?

The Video Response is not a job interview. It is not an opportunity for SIPA to fill-in gaps in your application, nor is it an avenue for you to learn more about SIPA. The question you answer is not one that the admissions committee serves up specifically for you after reading your application. Given that the questions asked range from softballs like “how was your summer” to real stumpers like “Would you detain or kill a terrorist suspect without a trial?” it is also not a controlled experiment to see measure the knowledge of applicants or understand how they think on their feet.

Instead, SIPA’s Video Response is a way for you to put a literal face with your application. And so you want that face to look as professional and poised as possible.

Tips for perfecting the SIPA Video Interview

1. Expect to be flustered.

The questions could be on ANYTHING. Which means the likelihood that you will prepare for exactly the right question are nil. Instead, make it your priority to practice the act of answering questions, rather than to memorize responses to specific questions.

2. Remember the 7-38-55 Rule.

Pioneered by psychology professor Albert Mehrabian at UCLA and popularized through books such as Never Split the Difference by FBI Hostage Negotiator Chris Voss, that 55% of meaning in conversation is communicated by body language, 38% by the tone of your voice, and just 7% through the actual words that come out of your mouth! There is a reason why many politicians including Donald Trump replay their TV appearances on mute – that’s how people get most of the meaning.

If you just practice the words to say, you are missing out on 93% of the meaning! Instead practice looking and sounding excited, open, and friendly by rehearsing answers to questions in front of a mirror or by video recording yourself.

3. *Lights*, Camera, Action!  

Remember that you need to set your stage. That means having good lighting (to show your face), a good camera (ideally at eye-level), and a professional non-obtrusive background. Do a screen test in different locations to find the one with the best lighting, acoustics, and ambience!

Sample questions.

For a full list, including actual questions from the past 3 years, please check out our interview prep service.

Personal Background

• What are your most formative memories as a child?

• What is the leadership experience at work that you are most proud of?

• What is a piece of feedback you’ve gotten?

Why SIPA?

• How do you think your academic and professional experience has prepared you for SIPA?

• What are you looking forward to doing at SIPA?

• How will being in New York City help your short term goals?

Behavioral Questions

• How do you handle multi-tasking?

• What are you unusually good at?

• Who do you turn to for advice?

Areas of Interest

• What course did you enjoy the most as an undergraduate student?

• Where do you get your news?

• What policy issue has changed the most in your lifetime?

Head Scratchers/ Current Events

• Should government policy provide equity or opportunity?

• What responsibilities do companies have to incorporate environmental sustainability into business practices?

• How should western countries balance their immigration policies with the economic needs of their social safety nets?

Review: Getting off the Harvard Waitlist with Ivy Admissions Group

This client was a pleasure to work with. He worked with a different consultant on his application and landed square on the waitlist where he agonized for months. After he reached out, I walked him through out social-science driven process and he suddenly saw all the deficiencies in his original application. He decided to work with us because he liked the idea that we offer more than just a series of worksheets — we offer a partner to help you co-create your narrative. After some hard work, we found the winning argument and presented it to HBS. It’s a good thing too, because HBS reduced the size of its class by 200 students. He was one of the just 20 students to be admitted off the waitlist this year!

“Working with Nate (IAG) was a truly exceptional experience. IAG had a particularly strong ability to understand my relatively unique background and encourage me to undergo a process of deep introspection -- that eventually pulled forth a narrative that was effective in representing who I was as a professional, and as an individual. I would recommend IAG to those considering the, what can be, very daunting prospect of applying to business school.“

- Male, Finance, White

Purchased: Conquer the Waitlist

Review: Slam dunk at Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan

While our complete school package is by far our most popular and powerful service, some applicants don’t have the wallet or bandwidth for it. In those cases, our essay editing service is an excellent option to get expert help on the cheap. We make sure to fill client essays with comments on exactly how they should tell certain parts of their story and brutally honest feedback on where certain examples are not working. We are so glad to have been able to get this client on the right track to Ross!

“Your ability to take my personal experiences and help tailor my essays to what the admissions committee was looking for is a big reason why I was admitted into Ross.”

- Biotech, State University, male, Caucasian

Purchased: Essay Editing

Review: Dreams come true at Yale

It was really great to see this person finally get into his dream school. Like so many of our clients, he had an amazing story inside of him. The trouble was that he didn’t share it on his MBA application! Using our unique approach grounded in social science pioneered at Harvard, we analyzed his background and helped him co-create the narrative he eventually used to get in!

“I was desperate when I got waitlisted again and the Ivy Admissions Team was exactly what I needed. I had no clue what I was supposed to do and he provided the guidance and structure that led me out of the limbo, and his quality of work was beyond my expectations. He helped me avoid sending a bunch of boring update letters and helped me truly improve my candidacy, and he was always there when I needed him. At the end of the day, I got into my dream school with a scholarship offer!!!”

- Non traditional applicant, Asian

Purchased: Conquer the Waitlist

Wharton's 2020-21 Application is Now Open

Today, Wharton opened up its application portal for the 2020-21 season. As we’ve noted earlier, we are expecting the upcoming admissions cycle to be a year-long “shark week.” As the recession deepens, wages stagnate, and other employment opportunities become less attractive, we expect that the applicant pool to Wharton will be larger and more impressive. At the same time, we also expect many business schools to potentially follow Harvard’s lead in reducing the number of students in their incoming class.

Here are the deadlines:

How will the MBA experience at Stanford GSB be affected by the Coronavirus?

Stella is a member of Ivy Admissions Group and went to Stanford GSB for her MBA.

Unlike HBS, Stanford did not give people the option to defer unless there are special circumstances. 

When I read the news, my head was spinning with questions. How will I bond with my classmates? Will the networking be different? Will the virtual class experience be subpar to in person instruction? Will we get to move into housing?

After attending many Q&A live sessions with the dean of admissions, housing and my fellow classmates, I am starting to get a picture of what the MBA experience at Stanford will be like. I am actually optimistic and excited for the year to start.

Here’s why the Stanford MBA Experience will still be worthwhile during COVID19*:

1.      The fall quarter will be a hybrid approach. This means that large lectures will be remote while small group discussions will be in person. Many classes were already flipped classroom pre-COVID where lectures are delivered online and in-person time is used for problem solving. With restrictions around crowd size this is easier to deliver.

2.       Discussions with professors and others are still happening now. These interactions may just be 1:1 on campus walks with masks on.

3.      There will still be chats with industry leaders. They actually expect that it will be easier to get people to speak to the class because it’s easier to jump on a zoom than fly to campus.

4.      The NPS score for MBA students right now is currently 73 which is high. The school’s priority is to maintain this going forward.

5.      Experiential courses will be prioritized to be among the first to be offered in person.

6.      Alumni have been very supportive and finding opportunities for current students.

7.      While pre-MBA international trips have been cancelled, there’s many students self-organizing National Park and Lake Tahoe trips. There will just be a smaller group size and coronavirus specific rules to follow. 

*These details may change. I would check here for the latest.

Dealing with the “New Normal”

While the situation is not ideal, I’ve been impressed by how my future classmates have made the most of it. I’ve met most of the class before school even started because of the donut app we use in slack where it randomly matches people in the channel to have a virtual hang out. There have been many entrepreneurial programs to address the impacts of the Coronavirus – I joined a team (1 out of 50 teams) who launched a website to help aggregate financial resources for gig workers. Every week GSBers join Sunday Trivia where we battle it out on random facts in music, sports and history. People also prepare presentations on pain points in their industry during the “Real Problem Is…” webinar series so we can all learn from each other. The list goes on.

The Coronavirus pandemic is a once in a lifetime disruption to the way the world lives and works. If you are thinking through whether or not to apply, there’s no better time than now to head to an MBA program with the world’s best and brightest to think through these challenges and opportunities.

What NOT to wear in your Zoom MBA video interview

Whether it is Zoom, Vast, WebEx, Skype, Facetime, or GotoMeeting, video conferencing is the name of the game for business meetings, jobs interviews and MBA admissions interviews, at least until the COVID-19 pandemic subsides. People are having to grapple with the balance to strike between the business formal of the in-person workplace and pajamas at home.

That’s probably why I got served up this advertisement in my inbox a while back.

This guy is walking into a trap

What’s Wrong with this Picture?

This is what can happen.

In a word: Moiré. Moiré occurs when repetitive details in a photograph that exceed the sensor resolution. When wearing patterned fabrics such as stripes, dots, checks and the like, the camera can produce a strange-looking wavy pattern that is very distracting to the viewer. When your goal is to project a professional image to the admissions committee, the last thing you want are thinks like your clothes detracting from your presentation and undermining your confidence.

What to wear?

We recommend solid color fabrics whenever possible. They always look professional, they match one another other, and they avoid weird camera distortions such as moiré. You can’t go wrong with a light colored shirt, dark colored jacket, and (for men) a solid colored tie. You’ll want to keep distracting jewelry to a minimum, but otherwise you should look the same way over Zoom as you would during an interview in person.

How to apply to HBS as an Indian

Hari is an admissions expert at Ivy Admissions Group. He attended graduate school at Stanford, Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School despite despite not coming from a well known school in India and advises clients on how to do the same.

Over 9,000 people typically apply to Harvard Business School ever year, but only about 10% matriculate resulting in a class size of about 900 students. For Indian candidates, the situation is much more challenging. While Harvard Business School does not publish detailed incoming class details – it is known that Indians are one of the largest groups on campus with about 50 students every year. The South Asian Business Association is the hub of Indian activity on campus and the annual Bollywood night is something that the entire campus looks forward to.

It is reasonable to assume that there at least a few thousand applicants from India every year resulting in an acceptance rate of 1-3%. So, what makes that 1-3% of student so special?  Based on our years of experience working with Indian candidates and several members of our team having gone to school there here are our thoughts.

Table Stakes to be Considered

It is clear from the HBS website and that there are some minimum table stakes you need to meet in order to gain admission 

GPA/GMAT/GRE: How does the average GPA of 3.70 translate to an Indian context? There is no easy conversion mechanism and the admission committee understands an 80% from Mumbai University is much more challenging to achieve than an 80% from a less known university. IIT students that were admitted typically had a GPA of greater than 8.0 on a scale of 10. A large portion of the Indian students at Harvard went to college at prestigious institution such as IIT, BITS, NIT etc. However, there are also students who went to arts college and other not-so-well-known institutions. The median GMAT score for the class of 2021 is 730 and the median GRE verbal and quantitative scores are 163/163.  However, this belies the fact that Indian students typically achieve higher scores on these standardized tests. 750 or 760 is a standard score that we come across for successful candidates

Work Experience: The average years of work experience is 4.7. This is true also for Indian candidates. Most Indian candidates that we have worked with have at least 3 to 4 years of experience at a minimum. It is also pertinent to note that students in India matriculate and complete college at an earlier age than American counterparts. We often hear enquiries from students who would like to apply after 1 or 2 years of experience. We strongly encourage you to wait for a few years to have a stronger profile before applying.

Previous Industry: HBS does not care which industry you came from pre-MBA. A disproportionately large portion of the Indian students at Harvard have an engineering background – and this is likely driven by the pool of applicants and not any choice the school makes.  The previous employers of Indian students are from the usual well-known consulting, finance, banking and other leading blue-chip firms in India (ITC , Tata group etc.). Having said that the school does look for diversity and we see candidates who work in nontraditional industries also successful make it to Harvard.

But I was a gold-medalist at IIT, and I worked at BCG and Sequoia – why did I get rejected?

A quick perusal of MBA forums will reveal candidates from India posting their incredible stats and profiles – including their 800 GMAT score, along with their rejection results from Harvard.

What will put you over the top

Here is the truth – there are way more people who apply to schools like Harvard Business School and meet the minimum table stakes than there are spots. Especially for Indian candidates as we alluded to earlier the acceptance rates are likely 1-3%.  What sets apart those who get accepted and those who do not?

One factor is of course standing out from the pool of candidates with a unique set of achievements in your chosen field or Industry. We have also historically seen candidates with less impressive stats but meaningful leadership experiences in uncommon fields make it to Harvard. But there is one other key ingredient we have seen that helps candidate stand out in the pool.

Ivy Admissions Group originally started out by helping Waitlist clients, and over the years we have had the opportunity to see hundreds of profiles that clearly meet the minimum table stakes, but were missing something to push them into the accepted zone. What we’ve been able to figure out is that special ingredient that moves the application from Waitlist -> Accepted. What is that special ingredient? Narrative. It’s a simple word, and quite frankly, a simple concept. But it is often misused, forgotten, or implemented haphazardly. A narrative is a story arc that connects your personal inspirations and motivations to your career aspirations. In the case of an MBA application, a personal narrative will inform the admissions committee how you ended up on your current life story arc, show where this arc will take you by projecting it into future, and then argue why business school is the logical next step in your career because it is the perfect bridge to connect the two. Why are you better positioned to use an HBS MBA to solve the world’s important challenges and another Indian candidate whose resume and profile look remarkably similar to yours?

It is crucial that your personal narrative be authentic and reflected in every component of your application, something that takes a lot of deep personal introspection and reflection. For many people, this is a struggle, and it can help to have an objective third-party work with you to try and distill your personal narratives.  If this is something you might need help with, please feel free to reach out to discuss.