GMAT Club Legend
Joined: 04 Jun 2007
Status:Um... what do you want to know?
Posts: 5456
Given Kudos: 14
Location: SF, CA, USA
Concentration: Technology, Entrepreneurship, Digital Media & Entertainment
Schools:UC Berkeley Haas School of Business MBA 2010
Q51 V41
GPA: 3.9 - undergrad 3.6 - grad-EE
WE 1: Social Gaming
Excellent Berkeley Haas Infosession
[#permalink]
29 Jul 2007, 14:38
Hey All,
Yesterday's Berkeley Haas Infosession was very well done. It was a 4 hour affair (went on for 5 because my tour guide was one of the most informative of the bunch). The adcom was very enegetic, wecoming, and exuded their excitement and passion for being at Haas. That was quite a contrast from Stanford, whose presentation was very professional, but didn't have the 'spark' that Haas did.
One can argue that Stanford doesn't need to try so hard to attract applicants as Haas does, but the Haas infosession is making me seriously consider spending more time making a decision IF I get into both schools.
The COO of the school spent 15 minutes or so welcoming the students. Then the adcom (4 ladies, 2 asian, 1 caucasian, 1 african american) told us why Haas is one of the top B-schools in the nation. They actually spent some time thinking about the reasons to differentiate themselves instead of just saying "We're the most innovative" or "we have a small class size". not all the reasons were perfectly good, but it showed that they spent time thinking about it. This is generally a complaint I've heard from people who have gone to multiple infosessions and said that all the presentations are the same and say the same thing. Haas was definitely trying to be different.
Then they spent about 30 minutes each on financial aid, admissions criteria, class profile, and an alum/student panel. We were running over the time limit as people had a lot of questions, but all the main points were addressed, and some new scholarships and other events were publicized (all can be found on the website, with a few other things that you can find through discussions on GMAT Club).
Finally we had a quick tour to see the 4 buildings that make up Haas. They mentioned that there isn't enough study space for teams, due to the small size of the UC Berkeley campus and nowhere to expand, but because there are only 240 students per class, all the deans and administrative people are very attentive to student needs.
You are split into cohorts of 60 people in your first year (as they mentioned on the website), but you're also assigned teams of 4 to do ALL your classwork together. Thus for the first semester, you'll know these 4 people very well.
Unlike Stanford, there are no "tiered" system to allow finance people to take more advanced finance classes, or managers to take more advanced managing classes. But you can opt out of the classes if you like.
The curriculum will not be changing in any drastic way anytime soon, but they often add new classes and professors based on student feedback, so it's an evolving thing instead of Stanford's major cirriculum change.
All in all, great experience, and I really hope I can get into Haas now! If you have any other questions, post and I'll try to answer.
Did anyone else go?