Berkeley Haas School of Business

Here you go everyone!

BTW, ONLY Short Answer #1 is different. Everything else is the same as the Fall 2008 Essay Questions.

Again, for optional essays, ONLY write something if you have a major deficiency to address, or if you have another aspect of your candidacy you want to bring out. I wrote a 500 word essay discussing my volunteering activities for the optional essay (also for UCLA), just for your reference.

Fall 2009 Essay Questions

Listed below are the supplemental questions, short answer questions, required essays, and optional essays for the fall 2009 application.

Supplemental Questions:

1. If you have not provided a letter of recommendation from your current supervisor, please explain; otherwise, enter N/A.
2. List in order of importance all community & professional organizations and extracurricular activities in which you have been involved during or after university studies. Indicate the nature of the activity or organization, dates of involvement, offices held, & average number of hours spent per month.
3. List full-time and part-time jobs held during undergraduate or graduate studies, indicating the employer, job title, employment dates, location, and the number of hours worked per week for each position held prior to the completion of your degree.
4. Please explain all gaps in your employment since earning your university degree.
5. Please identify the course(s) you have taken or intend to take to demonstrate quantitative proficiency. Provide the course name, date, grade if any, and institution at which the course was or will be taken. If you wish, you may discuss other ways in which you have demonstrated strong quantitative abilities.
6. If you have ever been subject to academic discipline, placed on probation, suspended or required to withdraw from any college or university, please explain. If not, please enter N/A. (An affirmative response to this question does not automatically disqualify you from admission.)

Short Answer:

1. If you could change one thing you've done in your life, what would it be, and how would you do it differently? (250 word maximum)
2. Tell us about your most significant accomplishment. (250 word maximum)
3. At Haas, we value innovation and creativity. Describe an innovative solution you have created to address a specific challenge. (250 word maximum)
4. What steps have you taken to learn about the Berkeley MBA program, and what factors have influenced your decision to apply? (250 word maximum)

Required Essays:

1. Give us an example of a situation in which you displayed leadership. (500 word maximum)
2. What are your short-term and long-term career goals? How do your professional experiences relate to these goals? Why do you want an MBA from Berkeley at this point in your career? (1000 word maximum)

Optional Essays:

1. (Optional) Please feel free to provide a statement concerning any information you would like to add to your application that you haven’t addressed elsewhere. (500 word maximum)
2. (Optional) If you wish to be considered for the Haas Achievement Award (for individuals who have achieved success in spite of significant economic, educational, health-related and/or other obstacles), please use this space to address the obstacles you have overcome. (750 word maximum)

Do you get to choose how many questions you want to answer? Obiviously the required, but do you do all 6 sup and 4 short answers as well?

yes, you have to answer ALL the questions that do not say "optional".

The supplemental ones are simple, except for the one that asks you for your college and post-college activities. that one took me a few days of compiling...

Kry, 2009 applicant here. My target industry is food and beverage, and my long-term goal is to be an entrepreneur in the same industry. I did find more than few companies recruiting at HAAS. Can you please provide some more info on the prospects for me? Will HAAS be a good fit? I think yes because of its location(California), but your input matters more than any other source of information I have found yet.

hi anadimisra,

First of all, AWESOME that you're applying to Haas, yay!

But I'm not sure what your exact question to me is. Do you mean if Haas has good prospects for food and beverage industry, with an entrepreneurial slant? If so, then yes. Haas is pretty well connected with the consumer products and goods industry, generally on the marketing side. I'm pretty sure many of the biggest food and beverage companies (who also make all sorts of other consumer products these days) recruit at Haas.

As for the entrepreneurial slant, you'll DEFINITELY get that at Haas. Almost everything has an entrepreneurial/innovative slant to it due to the SF Bay Area/Silicon Valley culture and what Haas is known for.

Once school starts for me, I'll know more about the specifics of many industries and their hiring practices, and maybe I can answer your question better then. Keep in touch and feel free to post questions here.

Damn, I wish there was a kryzak for all the schools.

Thanks Kry. This was exactly what I was asking.

Once the school starts, I plan to visit and get your feedback in person. Please do post what would be the best time to visit so that I can meet the students, attend a class and steal some of your time too.

haha, thanks Kidderek, but we do have a "kryzak" for most schools, and they're much better than the kryzak here, haha (River for Northwestern, lanter1 for Yale, ncprasad for Ross, and of course, rhyme for GSB)

Best time to visit is after school starts. Visitations start September 2nd and go on to December 5th. Generally visits work this way:

Class visit from 9:30-11:30am (rough estimate, depends on class)
Lunch with Students 12-1pm (informal)
Small group infosession 1-2pm
Class Visit (optional) 2-4pm

You can go to 1, 2, or no classes, but that takes up most of the day. I'll be free to meet with people either for lunch or in between/after some of the events. Of course, PM me early on (give me at least 1 week's heads up) and I'll let you know if I'll be on campus or can pull time out to meet.

Here are some links for everyone's convenience:

Visitation:
https://mba.haas.berkeley.edu/visitation.html

Haas Student Ambassadors:
https://mba.haas.berkeley.edu/hsateam.html

Class Visits: No link yet, but SIGN UP EARLY!!! Classes only allow up to 4 visitors (the classrooms can't handle more) per class, and they go VERY QUICKLY. I would sign up 2-3 weeks in advance for the day you're visiting for the best choices.

Berkeley Haas Diversity Workshops for 2008:

These are GREAT ways to get to know the school if you're one of the minorities. They include student panels, mock classes hosted by professors, infosessions, and lots of Q&A. Sign up for them if you are interested in Haas!

https://mba.haas.berkeley.edu/workshop08.html

This is from the website, but the US News top ranked specialties (top 10) are the following:

* Entrepreneurship
* Executive MBA
* Finance
* International
* Management
* Marketing
* Nonprofit
* Part-time MBA

Other top ranked Fields (not included above) include:

- Healthcare (with UCSF, a top 5 medical school)
- Social Responsibility (we're all tree-huggers )
- Technology (this one's a no-brainer)
- Real Estate (based on an alum I spoke with, Haas has a very strong RE program)

Here's a link that will lead you to the centers which talk about the industry/field in depth

https://mba.haas.berkeley.edu/specialties.html

This may be useful, it's part of the "Best of Haas 2007" thing on their webpage. I haven't read through it yet, but it looked interesting just skimming through it.

https://www.haas.berkeley.edu/MBA/makingithappen08.pdf

This should give the Fall 2009 applicants a good insight on the big strides Haas has been making over the past year (and past few years), with more to come (we have a new dean now).

Things inside include:
- Haas@Work program with Sun and Cisco (hands on "consulting" during the school year)
- Peers@Haas - 360 degree leadership evaluation
- Innovation projects
- Non-Profit Entrepreneurship partnering with McKinsey
- 3-peat on "Elite Eight Brand Management Case Challenge", triumphs over Wharton and Kellogg, and other Brand competitions
- Digital Media Conference
- International Business Development Program in Ghana
- Responsible and Sustainable Businesses
- Conferences (Asian Business, Finance, LGBT, Women in Leadership, Asia business Center, etc...)
- Investment Banking Fellowships (first award ever)
- and more...

I'm thinking about applying to Haas this year. Am aiming to get into finance. A few things bug me though.
1. Finance isn't one of it's core strengths. Wouldn't UCLA be a better choice? It would also require a bit of creativity on the essays on "why Haas?"
2. I've got a 3.1 GPA which is outside of their 80% band. I've got a >700 GMAT score as well as other credentials that will mitigate, but am worried that this will be a dealbreaker.

Any thoughts?

thanks for the post Johnny.

While Haas isn't the "top" name in Finance, it is still in the top-10 based on US News. They also have dedicated 'account managers' who help students with recruiting on Wall Street and the financial sector, thus making your life a lot easier if you want to pursue finance outside of the SF Bay Area. I'm also looking into more info on finance for terp06 once school starts, so I'll have more info for all applicants interested in finance when that happens in a month.

So in short, Haas is strong in finance, albeit not as famous as the Wharton, Chicago, CBS, NYU out there.

UCLA is strong in finance too, probably a spot or two above Haas, just behind the other 4 I listed above.

I would recommend you apply to both Haas and UCLA if you're looking to work on the West Coast after school, or even if you're thinking of working in NYC. The benefit of Haas is that fewer students go for Finance jobs, so you probably have less competition and more attention from the industry when they recruit here (which all the top firms do).

As for the GPA, 3.1 is on the lower end, but if your GMAT score is higher than the Haas average (~720), then you should be fine. You may need to explain a few bad grades in the optional essay if it's very bad. I don't think it's a deal breaker, but you will need a lot of strengths in other aspects of your application, like work and EC leadership.

Hey kryz,

I remember you asked me why not Haas in a PM, well explain the 13.7% acceptance rate!!!

With the exception of Stanford (sorry, I know they're your rivals), no school has a lower acceptance rate!!! That's a scarily low number.

yes, but you do need to look at the applicant pool. While I love Haas and and hold them in high regards, they will probably NOT attract as high calibered applicants as H/S/W. Therefore, overall, I would believe the stats and background of people at Haas will not be as "crazy" as the H/S/W (where EVERYONE graduated from an Ivy+Stanford+MIT+Public Elite, or works at M/B/B/Google/Morgan Stanley). Thus, while the 13.7% acceptance rate is very low (actually tied with Columbia and Harvard), I would say it is definitely NOT as *hard* to get in as Stanford, probably slightly easier than Harvard, and on the same level as Columbia.

Again, don't drop a school just because the acceptance rate is low. If you are a good fit, if you have strong credentials (I can help you evaluate that also), and show a passion for Haas, you have a very good chance of getting in.

Oh yeah, and Haas is heaven for non-traditional backgrounds (a much lower percentage of people come from MC and IB, and lower numbers go into those fields too).

Kryzak, what can you tell me about the flexibility of the Haas curriculum? Specifically, do you have the option to take courses through other schools, like the College of Natural Resources, and still have it count towards your MBA degree requirements? I also remember reading about the option for any UC MBA student to study for a semester at Santa Barbara's Bren School of Environmental Science & Management but can't seem to pull up any recent news about that program.

Also, how badly would a mediocre to poor quantitative academic record hurt a Haas applicant? I feel like Haas especially stresses quantitative ability because they ask you to list all the quantitative courses you've taken in your application.

Hi YihWei,

Haas has about 40% of the curriculum taken up by core classes. These are 10 classes that are spread out during the first 2 semesters. Each of the first 2 semesters is broken up into 2 parts (Fall A&B, Spring A&B). You'll get 6-7 classes out of the way after your first semester, and the rest done in the 2nd semester. You can take 1-2 electives (full semester) in your 1st year Spring Semester, and all electives in the 2nd year. People can test out of classes like accounting, finance, and econ. You can either take an elective or just not take any classes in place of those you test out. I think this is the standard fare at most top schools except for Chicago and Stanford, where the curriculum is SUPER flexible. Based on what I've seen, Kellogg and UCLA is roughly the same (with 30-40% core classes and a similar testing out method).

As for the UC MBA taking classes at UC Santa Barbara, I've never heard of that. If you find it, let me know.

You can take classes outside of the school, I think 6 units count towards your MBA, which translates to 2 semester long classes, roughly 20% of your electives (or 12% of your entire curriculum) if you think about it (one takes 4-5 classes per semester). There are also many joint classes offered by Haas and the Law school, the engineering school, the life sciences school, and other professional schools which count directly towards your MBA.

As for quant, Haas does emphasize it a lot. Depending on how "poor" your quant background is, you may be able to rectify it by:

- Taking college level quant courses and getting A's in them (at community college or UC Extension)
- Get a kick-butt quant score on the GMAT

Either way, if the your UG quant grades are VERY low, you still might need to write an optional essay explaining it and showing WHY you will be able to handle the quant rigors in class at Haas.

Hope that answers your questions.