Greatest Weakness: How to Answer in a University Interview
The greatest-weakness question is borrowed from job interviews, and most of the advice about it is too. An admissions interviewer is not deciding whether to hire you. They are deciding whether you know yourself well enough to survive first year, where nobody will chase you for a late assignment and the first 55 on a midterm arrives without warning. That changes the answer: a real weakness, evidence that it has cost you something, and proof that you are already working on it. Business programs that interview, Sauder, Ivey, Queen’s Commerce, ask it directly or as “what would you improve about yourself,” and it shows up in Kira sets on a sixty-second clock.
What an admissions interviewer is listening for
In a job interview the question is partly a trap: name something the role needs and you have talked yourself out of it. In an admissions interview the trap is smaller and the question is more sincere. The program is going to take you anyway if the rest of the file is strong; what they want to know is whether you have looked at yourself honestly, because students who have are the ones who ask for help in October instead of March. They’re listening for three things:
- A weakness that is real. Not a strength in disguise, not a personality label. Something that has an observable cost when it shows up.
- Evidence. A specific time it cost you something: a mark, a deadline, a friend’s patience, a place on a team. The evidence is what separates self-awareness from self-description.
- A fix that is already running. Not “I am trying to be better,” but a rule or habit you started on a nameable day, with a way to tell whether it is working. The fix in progress is the actual answer; the weakness is just the set-up.
That is the same three-part shape the failure question scores, and for good reason: a weakness is a failure that keeps happening, and your best evidence for it is usually a failure story you already have.
The structure, in four beats
- Name it, plainly, in the first sentence. “I put off long projects until they are urgent.” No wind-up, no “I would say that perhaps.”
- One time it cost you. A specific week, a specific mark or outcome. Ten to fifteen seconds.
- What you do about it now. The rule, when you started it, and one example of it working. This is the longest beat.
- An honest last line. The weakness is not gone; you catch it sooner. This sentence is what makes the previous three believable.
Three example answers
I put off anything with a deadline more than a week away. Tests I’m fine with, because the date is close and the fear kicks in. But in Grade 11 I had a six-week English ISU, and I did almost nothing for the first four weeks because it never felt urgent, and then wrote 2,000 words in two nights and got 74 on something I could have done much better on. What I’ve done since is fake the urgency. When I get a long assignment I split it into pieces that are each due to me on a specific day, and I write those days in the same place as my actual test dates so they look the same. For my Grade 12 history ISU that was five dates over five weeks, and I hit four of them and was a day late on one, and I got 88. I still feel the pull to leave it. I just don’t get to, because the Tuesday date is sitting there next to a chemistry test.
My weakness is that I say yes to things before I’ve checked whether I have time for them. In the fall of Grade 11 I was on student council, in the school musical, tutoring twice a week and working Saturdays, and by November I was doing all four of them badly. The specific cost was that I missed two musical rehearsals in one week because of council, and the director moved me out of a speaking part, which was fair. The rule I made in December is that I don’t say yes to anything on the day I’m asked. I say I’ll answer tomorrow, and that night I write out my week in hours. It sounds like a small thing, but it has made me say no to three things this year that I would have said yes to before, and I’m doing two activities properly instead of four halfway. The honest part is that I still want to say yes every time. The twenty-four hours is doing the work, not me.
I don’t say my idea in a group until I’m sure it’s right, and by then the group has usually moved on. Last year in a business class group, we spent the whole first meeting planning a product that I was fairly sure had already been done by a company I’d read about, and I said nothing because I wasn’t certain. I checked that night; it had. We lost a week of work and started over, and I had to tell them I’d suspected that in the first meeting, which was a bad conversation. Since then I have a rule that if I’m more than half sure about something, I say it and put the “I might be wrong” at the front instead of using it as a reason to stay quiet. I’ve counted, actually: I’ve done it about a dozen times this year and I’ve been wrong three of those. Three is fine. What I can’t get back is the week we lost because I was waiting to be certain.
Weaknesses that work for a Grade 12, and why
- Procrastinating on long projects. Real, common, and directly relevant to first year, where everything is a long project. Works if the fix is concrete. Example one.
- Over-committing. The most believable weakness a strong applicant can have, and the fix (a rule about saying yes) is easy to make specific. Example two.
- Not speaking up, or speaking up too much. Either direction works, as long as you can name the time it cost the group something. Example three.
- Not asking for help. Programs are full of people who need to learn this, and an applicant who has already started is exactly what they want to hear.
- Losing interest once the hard part is solved. Honest and slightly risky; works if the evidence is a project you abandoned and the fix is how you now finish things.
The answers that quietly backfire
“I’m a perfectionist.” Every interviewer has heard it a hundred times, and it is not a weakness; it is a strength you have been told to disguise. The same goes for “I work too hard,” “I care too much” and “I’m too honest.” If the sentence would fit in a job reference, it is not your answer. There is a real weakness underneath perfectionism, usually that you miss deadlines or cannot delegate, and if that is true of you, say that instead, with the evidence.
The weakness that is the program. “I struggle with math” for an engineering interview, or “I find presenting hard” for a commerce program built on case presentations. Not because honesty is punished, but because you have picked the one thing they cannot help wondering about, and the fix beat will not be enough to cover it. Choose something adjacent.
The one with no evidence. “I can be a bit disorganised sometimes” and then straight to the fix. With no specific cost the interviewer cannot tell whether the weakness is real or whether you picked a safe word. The evidence beat is the one students skip most and the one that matters most.
How it sounds on a sixty-second Kira clock
Sixty seconds is about 140 spoken words, and this question is often given sixty rather than ninety because it is not a story question. The budget that works: the weakness in one sentence (five seconds), the cost in two sentences (fifteen seconds), the fix with one example of it working (thirty seconds), the honest last line (five seconds), and a few seconds spare so you are not cut off mid-word. Notice that the fix gets half the time. Students reverse this and spend forty seconds describing the weakness in increasingly apologetic detail, then run out of clock at “so I’m working on it.” If your prep window is thirty seconds, use it to pick the weakness and the one example of the fix; the rest of the shape is fixed and you should know it by heart.
Example one above is about 170 words, which is a ninety-second answer. To fit sixty, cut the second cost sentence and the last detail about the chemistry test, and it lands.
Other ways the question gets asked
- What is one thing you would improve about yourself?
- What is a weakness you are working on?
- What is the most useful criticism you have received?
- What would your teachers say you need to work on?
- Tell me about a habit you have tried to change.
- What do you find hardest about school?
Same answer, same four beats. “Working on” and “improve” are invitations to spend even more of the answer on the fix. “Criticism you have received” wants the weakness delivered in someone else’s words, then the same evidence and fix. “What your teachers would say” is a test of whether you know how you look from outside; answer it with something a teacher has actually said to you, if one has.
Where to go from here
The weakness question and the failure question share an answer bank, since the best evidence for a weakness is usually a failure you already own. The thirty-question guide puts it beside the other self-knowledge questions that get asked in the same set, and the tell-me-about-yourself guide is the opener that usually comes just before it. Then say it on a clock: AcceptMe’s interview tool will ask you one of the variations above unseen, with the sixty-second timer if that is what your program uses, and the transcript will show you exactly how many seconds went on the weakness and how many on the fix.
Keep reading
- Tell Me About a Time You Failed: Example Answers for Students Three Grade 12 failure answers built on ownership, diagnosis and what changed, how it differs from the resilience question, and which failures to pick.
- University Interview Questions and Answers (30 Questions) Thirty real university interview questions grouped by what they test, with sample answers and the mistake each one is designed to catch.
- Tell Me About Yourself: University Interview Sample Answers How to answer 'tell me about yourself' in a university interview: a 60-second structure, three sample answers, and the openers that lose the room.