The INSEAD video assessment: the questions, the format and how to prepare

24 October 2026

If you're applying to INSEAD, there's a video assessment as part of the application. It's short, it's one take, and it makes a lot of people more nervous than the interviews do.

I've collected every question I could find from people who went through it. Here's the format, the questions, and the method that makes forty-five seconds feel like plenty.

The format

From INSEAD's admissions page:

Four video questions.
Forty-five seconds to think before each one.
A minute to answer.
One written question on top, with five minutes to answer.
About fifteen to twenty minutes in total.

You get practice questions first, but no re-dos on the real ones. And you have to finish it within 48 hours of the round deadline, so don't leave it for the weekend after you submit. Block the time in your calendar before the deadline, the same way you would for the essays.

What they're looking for

The video is there for the things paper can't show. How you think on your feet, how you come across, and whether you'd be good company in a study group.

It's not a test of what you know. Nobody's going to fail you for not knowing INSEAD's campus history. They want to see a clear, warm, real person who can make a point in under a minute.

The four kinds of question

The questions I've collected fall into four groups. Here are some from each.

About INSEAD

What are you expecting to learn during your INSEAD MBA?
How would INSEAD help you achieve your career goals?
What clubs will you participate in at INSEAD?
How will you enhance the diversity of the INSEAD class?
What contribution will you make to this programme that others will not?
Name three factors that motivated you to apply to INSEAD.

Teamwork

What do you do when one member of a group dominates the discussion?
You're starting a project with team members from different cultures and educational backgrounds. How would you help them get to know each other?
If you led a team and had a worker who constantly underdelivered, what would you do?
Tell us about a time a team member criticised you. How did you handle it?

Diversity and culture

If a boss from a different culture did something offensive to your culture, what would you do?
Tell us about a time you interacted with someone who did not speak your language. What did you learn?
What stereotypes define your country, and what do you think of them?
What kind of work environment or culture makes you most productive and happy?

Behavioural

How would you define success for your career?
If you had unlimited resources, what company would you create?
Describe a situation where you faced an ethical dilemma. How did you resolve it?
What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?

You won't know which four you'll get. But once you've practised a few from each group, you'll notice they all draw on the same handful of stories.

How to use the forty-five seconds

Don't try to write sentences in your head. You'll run out of time and sound like you're reading.

Pick three beats instead: a fact, a story and a point. Say those three, in that order, in under a minute, and stop.

For example. Question: "How will you enhance the diversity of the INSEAD class?" The fact: I'm an engineer who moved from India to Japan and works across three countries. The story: one moment from the office, one from outside it. The point: what that lets me bring to a study group. Three beats, under a minute, done.

An answer that ends early sounds confident. An answer that runs out of time sounds cut off. If you've made your point at forty seconds, stop there.

Use your stories, not new ones

By the time you record, you've already written your essays. You've picked six to eight stories and a theme that runs through them. Use them.

Almost every video question is an angle on a story you already have. "Tell us about a time a team member criticised you" is your failure story told from a different side. "How will you enhance the diversity of the class" is your moving-abroad story with a different ending.

If you find yourself inventing something new in forty-five seconds, it'll show. Go back to what you know.

How to practise

Practise out loud, against a clock. Reading questions in your head doesn't count. Set a timer for forty-five seconds, then a minute, and answer to your laptop camera.
Record yourself and watch it back. You'll hate it. You'll also notice the rambling, the filler and the face you pull when you're thinking, and nobody else will tell you about any of it.
Do it one take at a time. Don't redo a bad answer. Move on to the next question, like the real thing. You're training yourself to recover, not to be perfect.
Mark each answer. Did you make one clear point? Did you finish in time? Did you sound like you meant it? Come back to the ones that ran out of time.

What recording myself fixed. Watching myself back sorted out the mechanical things fast: my posture, how fast I was talking, how many ums were in every answer. What it couldn't tell me was which stories were landing. For that I needed people. My partner and my brother sat through the answers and told me which ones I was clearly passionate about telling and which ones sounded like I was reciting. The other thing they caught was that I was being too humble. This isn't the moment for it.

On the day

Test the setup the day before. Camera, light, background, sound. Not the hour before.
Look at the camera, not at yourself. It feels odd. It reads as eye contact.
Smile when you start. The first second sets the tone for the whole minute.
Keep water nearby and do the practice questions first, even if you feel ready.

Do this now

Pick three questions from the lists above, one from each of three groups. Set a timer, answer each one out loud to your camera, and watch them back.

Then write down which of your stories each answer used. If one story is doing every job, you've found your best story and your biggest gap at the same time.