Haas (UC Berkeley) 2013 - Calling All Applicants

Hi Kapil, how did you do on your interview?

When I sent in my transcripts they sent me back an email confirming that they received the documents. You should definitely follow up with the admissions office if you never received a confirmation.

Thanks for everyone's input!

After spending significant time on the phone with the postal service's customer service, they discovered that my mail is stuck in the distribution center in the Netherlands, so it never even made it out of Europe and thus there is no way it will make it to Haas in time. Great job!

So now I have 24 hours to get another copy certified and send it via UPS or DHL express or whatever ($$$...) to get it delivered on Monday.

I really hope Haas appreciates my efforts... I had to take another TOEFL because my original one was a few days too old for their deadline and now this.

Went great . My advice to every1 . dont bother prepping questions just read plenty from the website , it will be very conversational.

Glad to hear it went well. All the best for the decision date.
I haven't received an interview invite yet so I don't have much hopes left. Probably wait-list but that's a distant possibility.
We will see.

Hi kapilhede17

Congrats on your Inteview.
Could you please let us know when you received your Interview Invitation.

Haas has the most spineless adcom ever ... They expect to create good business leaders who can take great decisions, but look at the school, they have all overlapping rounds so that they get an overview of all the candidates and yet cannot give out the results(atleast people they are not even planning to interview) in 3 months now(for round 2). This is the worst way to treat your applicants.
They keep saying we read each app twice but so does Wharton, Harvard and other great schools who will release you within a few weeks if they don't intend to interview you. And all this after they make you write tons of essays.
Hope people who have been admitted this year speak some sense into the admissions committee.

Mine changed to "Stage 2" just 3-4 days ago. Seems weird to me that only now they read my application, and makes me extra nervous, since only 5 days are left till the deadline.

2nd Feb

Nothing says "Someone ELSE is spineless" than an anonymous criticism on an internet forum. Haas gives all of the application and decision dates with a clear description of the interview invite period to everyone prior to application. Sure, I think a lot of applicants prefer an approach like Booth's where all of the interview decisions go out on the same day, but again...everyone who made the choice to apply to Haas should have been well aware of the process beforehand.

As far as rounds overlapping, one of the other two schools I applied to has rounds that overlap...and to be honest I wish the third did as well. It makes sense from both the school's and applicant's perspective. For the school, it obviously lets them gauge the overall strength of each round a bit and use that to shape acceptance, denial and waitlist pools in the earlier round. For the applicant, this only hurts you if you're a weak applicant. For the strong applicant, if you're in the later round you want them taking a peek at your application before they finalize round 1 decisions so that they know you're coming. If you're in the earlier round and you're strong you want them to know that they can reserve that place for you because you compare favorably to the pool coming after. It's only in the case of a weak application that you want to be compared to the smallest, most silo'd pool possible.

How much time did you spend putting your applications together? How much time do you want adcoms devoting to reviewing it? Personally, if I got dismissed from a process a week or two after I submitted an application that I spent months preparing for (gmat/essays/recs) I would feel like I had been denied on some kind of arbitrary technicality (age/gmat/GPA/industry etc) without a holistic review of the package I put together.

1. There's no reason to get so testy about someone expressing an opinion on an internet forum. I don't know where you are from, but in US people are entitled for their opinions. And being anonymous is totally fine, given that a person might not be comfortable revealing it before the results are announced, but they still might want to rant, being frustrated.

2. Agreed, that on their website they state their deadlines,etc. But think about people who have submitted their applications in early-mid nov, who have admits from other schools and who are still waiting from the school to hear back whether they are even going to be interviewed. They need to make a decision to put down their deposits. Now you can argue you knew this before you applied, true, but as a customer who has paid 250$ and a ton of work into those essays, I would like to see the process to be a bit more transparent. Is there anything wrong in that?

3. I see you don't mind that school has overlapping rounds, which is okay, but then this is a 2 way process. How can the school get entire benefit over the applicant? When you say you'd rather want them to read your app for 3 months than reject you over preliminary things, you are assuming other schools like Harvard, Wharton, Booth are doing that which is funny because even their adcom claim that they read the app twice. Now the only difference is they do not have applicants from 3 rounds in front of them!!!

4. Lastly, they make these rounds and encourage people to apply as early as possible and then take their own sweet time. So what advantage do I get by applying in round 1(in Oct) vs later rounds, because they take their own time to review applications. If you know you are going to reject some one, let them know. This is just a very stupid way of managing their yield and trying to get as much as possible, giving least benefit to the applicants.

Don't get me wrong, the school is great, it's just that the adcom does a very bad job of selling it. The process is very frustrating and every person that I spoke with who has applied to Haas said the same thing. Clearly, I don't expect you to agree with it; you might have a different opinion and I respect that.

When does Haas start sending R3 interview invites?

Supposedly around a month after the R3 deadline which was 16 January - so hopefully some time this week. Then again its a staggered process so...its just a waiting game.

Considering that they'll be busy contacting R2 applicants this week with decisions, I think next week is more likely.

Doesn't it seem far fewer people were interviewed in R2 than R1? With three days left I don't think the numbers will change much. Have they filled most of their class already?

Many people who received an interview invite may report it later. Not everyone reports it right away so you will see that number change.

It is so silent. Only three days remain until the R2 final decision. You guys think the decisions will be released today or tomorrow?