Calling all Berkeley-Haas Fall 2011 Applicants

This information would be helpful for many. Any takers?

I may sound stupid, but the recommender gets only 2 hours, can she logon once to know the promts that she has to answer, prepare answers offline and then log back to enter the answers?

By the way, is there a time limit of 2 hours or so for other schools too?

That's the first I've heard of it. Both of my recommenders completed their recommendations over the course of a couple weeks.

Are you sure it wasn't 2 hours before the session times out? That's a very different scenario.

Seesion time out makes more sense than time limit of 2 hours! Lets see what CyberC1 says about the actual issue faced by recommender.

Admittedly my recommender is NOT the most tech-savvy person in the world. Think index finger typing and needing to re-learn everything after a version upgrade to any software...

What he said to me was that "there was a timer that only gave him two hours, and it would submit after two hours." He conjectured that it was probably only the time spent on the application, aka he signed off after 30 minutes, so it should still leave 1.5 hours in the system for him to complete it. It could very well be system timeout and not "time to complete recommendation." It seems silly to me that they give our recommenders a time limit so I just wanted to check on here to see if anyone else had a recommender tell them about this issue. I don't have access to the recommender part of the site (clearly), but I was just really curious as to whether this is a UC-Berkeley thing, or whether my recommender's lack of tech-savvyness was playing a role...

Ok...we can consider this not to be an issue (I was scared too when I heard about the time limit from you) unless someone else has some explation to offer.

I was kinda like when I heard it from him. My skepticism led me here to confirm...

I want to submit application to R2. Is it a rolling review process here or can I take my time to write essays and then submit closer to the dealdine?

Session Time out for sure. One of my rec's was a tech guy, Masters in Compsci. I just double checked with him.

Sounds like your recommender attempted to type out everything in that two hours. For all of mine including Haas my rec probably spent less than 10 minutes total logged in - 1 minute to log in to download and copy and paste the questions, logoff, work offline for several weeks, login, copy paste answers back in. And in both instances the timer reset to 2 hours upon login.

To help with your R2 apps and this rec, I have noticed that most schools (all of mine at least) post their rec questions online somewhere on their official website, so recs can get a head start even before the official online forms were ready for entry.

eg.
Haas:

https://mba.haas.berkeley.edu/LORFall2011.pdf

Yeah my rec logged out and was working on the q's offline. I'll let him know it restarts so he's not all stressed out. Thanks!

There is some information I would like to share with you guys.
I have called the admission office today. Here is what I got.
The Adcom pick up applications for review randomly. Therefore, if your status still shows as "received", not "completed" (unfortunately I am one of them), don't worry it will be under review in the next couple of weeks.

The interview invitations for R1 applicants start to be sent out from today! And the Adcom will continue sending out invitatioins till Mid-January.

Thanks for sharing!

hi all,

i wish to apply E/W MBA At Haas with the following:
GMAT- 700 (V-31/71%, Q-50/95%)
GPA- 3
work EX-7 YRS

Could anyone suggest in which round I should Apply for the best chances to be admitted

Thanks All..

Is it okay to write about a hobby that I have in depth involvement in for the "Most passionate about" question or does it have to align with my career goals etc? I have read varying view points on this one and am wondering how to approach the qsn.

I was about to write about my hobby too..However, after extensive research and after I attended the Stanford Info session (they have a similar question), I realized that they want something more worthy(your community, religion, family, ...in no particular order etc)...So the best answer would be tying one of these. However, in the end, there are no wrong answers and if you are confident that your passion is best reflected in one of your hobbies, then go ahead and use that.

Thanks launchpad. That is useful to know.

Cheers.

My personal take, and the advice I've heard most often, is to write about whatever you're actually most passionate about. Berkeley has 6 essays, so you have plenty of space to talk about your career goals, and if you try to squeeze that into all the essays I think you run the risk of coming off as one-dimensional. And if you're trying to write a passion essay about something you're not truly passionate about, it's probably going to come off as a little hollow. If you can tell a good story about your hobby and why you're passionate about it, I think that's the best route.

has anyone heard from Haas yet? When I called them last, they said that they follow a rolling style of evaluating applications and that they would be sending interview invites throughout the wait period.