She most likely was assessing your knowledge of
Struts and Spring. If you claim that you have experience with these frameworks and
don't understand the Model-View-Controller design pattern, then your experience is significantly limited.
It is not a good question though, in my opinion. The design pattern can be implemented in many different types of ways with a variety of programming languages. For example, if you are writing a C++ desktop application based on the MVC pattern, then this will be implemented differently than a Java-based desktop application.
In regards to Java-based, browser-based applications, there are a couple of "known" implementation styles (types). These are only implementation details and is not a part of the pattern itself. The question does not make this distinction between "implementation" and the pattern. Just throwing the
acronym in a sentence is not very concise.
Good luck with your studies!