Berkeley / Haas MBA News
Get the latest MBA news from Berkeley / Haas.
Published: August 23, 2017
Berkeley Haas Welcomes Largest Ever Full-Time MBA Class to New Green Building
Like many top business schools this time of year, the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley is welcoming its incoming class of MBA students—but at Haas it’s a bigger group than ever before moving into brand-new digs that promise to be among the greenest in the nation. There are 284 students in the entering class—32 more than last year—which brings what has long been the smallest leading business school more in line with some of its peers. Plans for next year include additional expansion, to a class size of 300. The grand
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MBA ApplyWire Spotlight: Applying to Business School for Technology
As MBA applicants determine their choices of target schools, many interesting plans have arisen on ApplyWire, Clear Admit’s latest tool to aid in your admissions process. This week, we're setting the spotlight on a candidate considering five MBA programs for technology. We take a closer look at a post from an applicant considering Berkeley / Haas, Harvard Business School, MIT / Sloan, Northwestern / Kellogg, and the Wharton School. Read on for more details about the candidate’s background.
Concerns from the community immediately kicked off on the GMAT:
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Real Humans of MBA Admissions: Haas Dean Rich Lyons
Though we usually feature admissions officers in this space, we recently had a chance to sit down with Dean Richard Lyons of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and couldn’t resist learning a little bit more about who he is as a person and how that influences the school he leads. Lyons took over as dean of Haas in July 2008 after taking a leave between 2006 and 2008 to serve as chief learning officer at Goldman Sachs in New York, overseeing leadership development for the firm’s managing directors. He originally joined
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MBA Applicant Spotlight: Finding Fit at Cornell / Johnson
Welcome to another edition of MBA Applicant Spotlight, in which we share admissions experiences from the latest candidates for business school. This week, Mukul Aggarwal, a mechanical engineer from India, shares his journey to the S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University.
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“Manbassadors” Help Haas Address Gender Inequality
UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business recently profiled the Manbassadors, a student organization that provides men with tools to “better support their female friends, girlfriends, wives, and daughters when they’re no longer blind to how women often have to deal with unfair situations.” Dean Richard Lyons will present a “Question the Status Quo” award to Manbassadors Founder Patrick Ford ’17.
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Fridays from the Frontline: 5 Things I Learned About Succeeding in Silicon Valley as a Woman
Today’s post comes to us from Nancy Hoque, an evening & weekend MBA student at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. A former solutions architect designing mission-critical communications for the U.S. military, Hoque is also founder of a modest scarf fashion startup for Muslim women. At Haas, she’s played an active role, serving as vice president of Haas Tech Club and the Women in Leadership Club, as well as a Haas Lean-In Ambassador. She’ll spend her summer working in product marketing management for next-generation cyber security at Symantec. Longer term, she hopes her MBA will prepare her for a leadership role
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MBA Applicant Spotlight: Prioritizing Fit to Choose Between Haas, Booth, Kellogg, and ASU
In this edition of MBA Applicant Spotlight, we catch up with Michael Sahm, a healthcare professional who submitted half a dozen business school applications and found success at Chicago Booth, Northwestern / Kellogg, Berkeley / Haas, and Arizona / Carey.
Sahm has worked in the healthcare industry for seven years, first as a management consultant and now at Tenet Healthcare, one of America’s largest healthcare providers. He really enjoys the healthcare space and hopes to explore career opportunities in healthcare venture finance or healthcare tech after business school. As an undergraduate, he earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Southern California, where he was a Dean’s Scholar.
Where did you apply? What were the results?
I applied to six MBA programs—HBS, Stanford GSB, Chicago Booth, Kellogg, Berkeley Haas, and Arizona State. I was rejected at HBS and Stanford (no interviews) and accepted to Booth, Kellogg, Berkeley, and ASU.
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Smith School CLIC Lunch and Learn Series Promotes Experiential Learning
Learning doesn’t just happen in the classroom, especially in MBA programs. In fact, it’s the outside learning experiences that can be most valuable for many MBA students and graduates.
Most full-time MBA programs organize events, clubs, competitions and other activities to provide their students with an opportunity to apply and refine the skills and knowledge they’ve acquired in the classroom. Business problems aren’t typically cookie-cutter, so it’s in students’ best interest to attend schools that foster creativity, flexibility, and teamwork.
Krishna Erramilli, associate dean at Illinois Tech’s Stuart School of Business, had this to say to the Chicago Tribune. “Business problems have become a lot more unprecedented, a lot more complex. To train our students to be successful in the 21st century, they must be able to go into a company, look at that problem and analyze the problem from multiple functional perspectives.”
That concept is just one of the reasons behind the Center for Leadership, Innovation and Change (CLIC) at the University of Maryland R.H. Smith School of Business.
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Summer Before Business School: When and How to Quit Your Job? Then What?
“I quit!” How many of us have fantasized about saying those two words to a boss at some point in our career, turning with a flourish and marching out the door, never looking back? While that kind of dramatic exit could offer a certain kind of short-term satisfaction, it’s perhaps not the best way to leave a job to head off to business school.
So what’s a better way to let your employer know that your days at the company are numbered? Just how long before business school starts should you plan to make your exit? And what’s the best way to fill the time before you start? For those heading to campus in the fall, these questions are top of mind right now. To get some answers, we checked in with some current MBA students and recent grads to see what they did—and whether they’d do the same if they had it to do over.
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Published: April 17, 2017
April Is Jam-Packed with Admitted Students’ Weekends: What You Need to Know
Along with showers, April also brings dozens of admitted students’ weekends at business schools across the country—part of the schools’ efforts to convince top candidates to call their campuses home next fall. Anxious applicants who spent months with their eyes glued to LiveWire in a desperate attempt to foretell their futures are now packing their bags and heading off to meet potential classmates and see what life at Harvard or Stanford or Wharton or any number of other top business schools might really be like. Which means it’s now the schools’ turn to try to impress. Indeed, the month of
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MBA Applicant Spotlight: A Marathon 10 Applications Long
In our new series, "MBA Applicant Spotlight," we're bringing you the personal experiences and lessons of MBA applicants. The MBA application process may have the common thread of being challenging, but each person's journey is different.
To kick off the series, we start with Yansong Pang, who applied to 10 MBA programs. He is currently the global president at Global China Connection, one of the largest NGOs connecting Chinese students with young professionals around the world. He graduated from Carleton College and has worked both in buy-side equity research and strategy consulting. Read on for his experience with MBA admissions:
Where did you apply? What were the results?
I applied to HBS, Stanford GSB, Wharton, LBS, Berkeley / Haas, Cornell / Johnson, MIT / Sloan, Yale SOM and Duke / Fuqua and the Jefferson scholarship at UVA / Darden.
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Published: March 13, 2017
7 Takeaways from the 2018 U.S. News Business School Ranking
The schools making up the top 10 in this year’s U.S. News & World Report ranking of the nation’s best MBA programs—released today—were exactly the same as last year. That said, there are a smattering of surprises in terms of how top schools rose and fell relative to one another—and in movement among schools outside of the top 15. At quick glance, here are this year’s top 10, in order of their 2018 rank (2017 rank in parentheses): 1 Harvard Business School (1) 1 University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School (4) 3 University of Chicago Booth
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Haas Women in Leadership Conference Draws New Audience: Men
When the Women in Leadership (WiL) organization at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business hosts it annual conference tomorrow, things will be different than in years past. This year, every fifth person in the audience is expected to be male—up from the five to 10 men who have historically attended.
“When we got together to decide what we wanted the conference to be about, we just starting writing things down that were important to us—and collaboration and the involvement of men were both very high on the list,” says WiL Conference Co-Chair Shipra Agarwal (MBA ’17). Both she and the conference’s other co-chair, Chiaki Nakajima (MBA ’17), feel that they are where they are today because they had strong male support. “We thought, ‘Let’s make that the focus of the conference because we want men to be part of it as well and to understand how to be better allies,” Agarwal says. The theme they settled on was “Power of Us: Collaborate. Inspire. Lead.”
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UC Berkeley Haas Interview Questions & Report: Round 2 / Alumnus / Off-campus
The following Berkeley / Haas MBA interview questions & report were submitted to Clear Admit by a Round 2 applicant. Good luck to them! We met at a restaurant and after a small-talk he described what was going to happen: he told me about himself, then he asked me standard questions and I asked mine. Whole interview took 45 minutes. Contrary to many reviews here, interviewer did not ask any fit question, none about defining principles or extracurricular activities. Although I managed to insert my views on leadership and culture at Haas, I feel that he was not interested in anything except
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DecisionWire Data Suggests a Tiered Business School Ranking
As many of our readers know, U.S. News & World Report is scheduled to release its annual ranking of leading MBA programs next week. We wanted to use this time—ahead of the ranking’s release—to highlight some key insights from our MBA DecisionWire data, which we think will provide context for the upcoming rankings and perhaps even foretell some of the results. Our analysis of DecisionWire data yielded some fascinating findings that we believe support a tiered ranking system for schools, one in which the peer group a school finds itself in serves as a better indicator of
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Which Business Schools Produced the Most Unicorn Founders
Billion-dollar startups, affectionately coined “unicorns,” have become a benchmark that business schools around the world use to boast overall success. But which business schools actually produce the most successful startup founders? Earlier this year, U.K. software research firm Sage compiled data on billion-dollar startups, which also included the schools from which company founders graduated. The research, unsurprisingly, found two business schools standing taller than the rest of the competition: Harvard Business School (HBS) and Stanford University Graduate School of Business. HBS alumni produced 23 of these unicorn startups, as reported by Fortune. These
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Data Science Courses Increasingly Find Their Place in MBA Curriculums
Five years ago, MIT Sloan School of Management debuted a new course its professors believed to be the first of its kind. Called “The Analytics Edge,” the course gave students access to large quantities of real data that they could use to hone their analytic skills. “Our focus is on the application and the story, and how to use it in real life,” Allison O’Hair, one of the course’s co-instructors, said as part of a news article on the school’s website at the time. “To our knowledge, this is a new way of teaching ... the only class here that teaches analytics through applications. We let students get their hands dirty with real data and applications of analytics.”
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MBA DecisionWire Spotlight: Berkeley / Haas, Dartmouth / Tuck, Duke / Fuqua, NYU / Stern or Yale SOM for Finance
In this edition of MBA DecisionWire Spotlight, which highlights the admissions results of students and alumni posted to Clear Admit’s DecisionWire, we take a closer look at a candidate with a handful of options. This week, a candidate with acceptances to Berkeley / Haas, Dartmouth / Tuck, Duke / Fuqua, NYU / Stern, and Yale SOM asked for advice on where to head for investment banking, and potentially private equity.Before we get into the constructive feedback, let’s get what many people are likely thinking out of the way:Initial
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Published: February 28, 2017
UC Berkeley Haas Interview Questions & Report: Round 1 / Second-year Student / On-campus
The following Berkeley / Haas MBA interview questions & report were submitted to Clear Admit by a Round 1 applicant. Good luck to them! Met my interviewer in the admissions office on campus, interviewed in a small room in the same building. Second-year student interviewed me, seemed they had scanned my résumé prior to the interview. Interview ended up being very relaxed and conversational, but there were several distinct questions: Questions: Walk me through your résumé (included brief explanation of why MBA in response) Why Berkeley for your MBA? Tell me about how you prefer to work in teams Any questions
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Published: February 26, 2017
UC Berkeley Haas Interview Questions & Report: Round 1 / Alumnus / Off-Campus
The following Berkeley / Haas MBA interview questions & report were submitted to Clear Admit by a Round 1 applicant. Good luck to them! My interview was conducted by Haas alumnus off-campus for Round 1. My interviewer had only seen my résumé and was not aware of the contents regarding the other parts of my application. He had a set of questions in front of him, which he said he will go through and then give me some time if I had any questions. The interview was friendly and consisted of introductory, behavioral and career plan questions. “Why Haas” was a big
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Published: February 24, 2017
UC Berkeley Haas MBA Interview Questions & Report: Round 1 / Alumnus / Off-Campus
The following Berkeley / Haas MBA interview questions & report were submitted to Clear Admit by a Round 1 applicant. Good luck to them! Questions were: Self-introduction and your current job Why MBA? Why Haas? Why Now? Especially focused on the why question. A commitment question on Haas’s 4 principles. A situation where you deal with a problem in a team. A situation where you motivate others. How can you contribute to Haas? Alumni is super nice and sharing. She offered me advice on future plans of career development and life choices as well. For 1/3 of the time, we were chatting about
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Published: February 23, 2017
UC Berkeley Haas MBA Interview Questions & Report: Round 1 / Alumnus / Off-Campus
The following UC Berkeley Haas MBA interview questions & report were submitted to Clear Admit by a Round 1 applicant. Good luck to them! Overall a very seamless process. The interviewer asked me to come to his office after work hours. He was excited, and received me on time. The interview itself was the most conversational interview I have ever had. The interviewer interjected with his own experiences, and fortunately I was well prepared – I knew the faculty, the school’s recent efforts, the big advantages over peer schools, etc. The interviewer only asked me a few questions to understand who I
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Published: February 20, 2017
MBA DecisionWire Spotlight: MIT / Sloan or Berkeley / Haas for Technology
As acceptance notifications roll out, many MBA candidates are posting their successes and selections on MBA DecisionWire, a tool for applicants, students and alumni to share their admissions results. In this edition of MBA DecisionWire Spotlight, we take a closer look at a candidate with acceptances to Berkeley / Haas, Duke / Fuqua, MIT / Sloan, and UCLA / Anderson.
While the applicant had already pared down the list, he’s still seeking advice to determine where to pursue his MBA:
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Published: February 9, 2017
Anxiety Persists for International MBA Students Despite Appellate Court’s Rebuke of Immigration Ban
Last night, a three-member panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit refused the Trump administration’s call to reinstate a ban barring the entry of all refugees and visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries into the United States. Although the case could still advance to the Supreme Court, yesterday’s ruling means that, for now, the executive order signed by President Donald Trump two weeks ago remains unenforceable.
That’s good news for international students from the affected countries, some of whom were detained at airports attempting to return to campus from overseas travel, others of whom were forced to cancel plans to leave the United States for fear they might not be allowed back in.
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Published: February 9, 2017
Fridays from the Frontline: From Herat to Haas, An Afghan Student’s Journey
Today’s Friday from the Frontline is a bit of a departure from our usual practice of sharing first-person accounts—but the story of Sal Parsa on the Berkeley Haas blog so captivated us that we wanted to make sure the Clear Admit audience didn’t miss it. Below, learn how Parsa went from sewing clothes in a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan to serving as president of the Haas Data Science Club while also working to get a career guidance platform startup off the ground. It’s inspiring, to say the least. Our thanks to Haas and Parsa for allowing us to share the story here.
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