What made you curious about bus arrival times?
Explain an observation to an alumnus outside your field.
The question
You have an invitation to a fictional undergraduate alumni interview. You are interested in how people plan trips when bus times are uncertain. You kept a two-week log on one route. Your notes label the app’s listed times “schedule.”
| Trips | |
|---|---|
| Trips you observed | 12 |
| Arrivals more than 10 minutes after the listed time | 3 |
The listed times came from an app export. The log covers only one route.
“Explain what you learned and why you want to study it.”
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A strong answer, step by step
Open each step in turn. This is one strong answer, not the only one.
Step 1: Start with the question
What would you do here? Open the move you’d make.
Explain the real decision that made you keep a log.
The strong move. A familiar decision gives the listener a way into the topic.
Lead with a list of forecasting methods you might use.
Tempting, but it misses something. The listener has no reason yet to know which trip problem those methods would solve.
See how a strong candidate says it
“I wanted to know how much I could rely on the arrival time I saw when deciding when to leave home.”
Why it works: A familiar decision gives the listener a way into the topic.
Step 2: Give the evidence
What would you do here? Open the move you’d make.
Give the count and say which trips you observed.
The strong move. The number makes sense with its denominator, route and time window.
Say a quarter of buses across the city are more than ten minutes late.
Tempting, but it misses something. The log samples 12 trips on one route and compares them with listed times. It cannot establish a citywide schedule result.
See how a strong candidate says it
“On one route over two weeks, three of the 12 buses I observed arrived more than ten minutes after the times I wrote down.”
Why it works: The number makes sense with its denominator, route and time window.
Step 3: Clarify the baseline
The interviewer asks what “late” means. The app field records its predicted arrival time when you checked. The log has no published timetable times.
What would you do here? Open the move you’d make.
Say which time you measured against and what you would need for a schedule comparison.
The strong move. A changing prediction and a published timetable are different baselines.
Use “behind schedule” because the app gave an arrival time.
Tempting, but it misses something. The app field was a prediction at the time of the check. It gives no scheduled arrival time.
See how a strong candidate says it
“I compared actual arrivals with the app’s prediction when I checked. I would need the published timetable to say how far those buses were behind schedule.”
Why it works: A changing prediction and a published timetable are different baselines.
Step 4: Make it a conversation
What would you do here? Open the move you’d make.
Ask about how students combined subjects on a problem.
The strong move. The question connects your interest to the alumnus’s experience of learning at college.
Ask the alumnus which forecasting model the city should buy.
Tempting, but it misses something. The conversation gives you access to the alumnus’s campus experience. The packet gives no evidence that they evaluate transit models.
See how a strong candidate says it
“I’d like to learn how people make decisions with uncertain information. Did you ever work with students from another subject on a local problem?”
Why it works: The question connects your interest to the alumnus’s experience of learning at college.
The answer, in short
- Decision
- Explain the question, describe the 12 trips and name the actual comparison time.
- Because
- The interviewer can understand the interest and the limit of the evidence.
- What would change it
- Matching each trip to the published timetable would let you test schedule delays separately.
Common traps
- Generalising one route to the whole city.
- Calling an app prediction the timetable.
Check your answer
- I started with an everyday question.
- I named the sample.
- I clarified the comparison.
- I asked about the interviewer’s experience.
Last reviewed Nov 11, 2026