The following essay topic analysis examines the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business MBA admissions essays. The Berkeley MBA essays are for the 2022-2023 admissions season. You can also review essay topic analyses for other leading MBA programs as well as general Essay Tips to further aid you in developing your admissions essays.
Berkeley MBA Essays & Analysis 2022-2023
Preamble
Essays help us learn about who you are as a person and how you will add to our community. We seek candidates from a broad range of industries, backgrounds, cultures, and lived experiences.
Our distinctive culture is defined by four key principles – Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself. We encourage you to reflect on your experiences, values, and passions so that you may craft thoughtful and authentic responses that demonstrate your alignment with our principles.
Berkeley MBA Essay 1
What makes you feel alive when you are doing it, and why? (300 words maximum)
While an adrenaline-fueled answer like skydiving or race car driving may come to mind first, the response to this Berkeley MBA essay should be kept in the context of business school admissions. Essentially, the Haas adcom is asking what you are most passionate about and, ideally, you would ultimately connect to one of their defining principles. Though there are myriad potential topics to discuss here, applicants should consider the balance of subjects they cover across their essays and choose a topic that provides new insight into their overall candidacy. For example, if the majority of content in the next essay is focused on your professional life and accomplishments, this would be an opportunity to showcase and highlight your extracurricular passions or interests.
As you approach this Berkeley MBA essay, be sure to think broadly about themes in your background and the forces behind your decisions and involvements. This should allow you to arrive at a topic that is true to your passions and enables you to show the reader a side of yourself not covered in your other essays while tying your goals and/or previous experiences together to some extent.
Berkeley MBA Essay 2
What kind of leader do you aspire to be and why? (300 words max)
The heart of this Berkeley MBA essay is to show Haas that you have the ability to lead others, as well as insight into your own leadership abilities and the motivation to improve these skills. This question calls for a careful balance between the individual and external, and can be seen as a “why MBA” question with the nuanced focus on vision & adaptability.
Defining your leadership skills and then accounting for how you have demonstrated them with specific examples could make for a strong opening here. Then, you can touch on where you feel you have room for improvement and why these areas are so important (addressing the “why” of the prompt”). Your reasons behind the “kind of leader” you want to be can stem from the impact you hope to have on an industry or your colleagues. This is a fair chance to highlight how your leadership will be relevant in your career goals.
You may then dedicate some space to how a Haas MBA would enable you to hone the leadership skills you need. Applicants will need to demonstrate knowledge of the Haas MBA program, as well as thoughtfulness about how their potential leadership roles and community contributions align with Berkeley’s values. Speaking with students and alumni or attending information sessions will prove helpful on this front.
Berkeley MBA Essay 3 (Optional)
We invite you to help us better understand the context of your opportunities and achievements.
- What is the highest level of education completed by your parent(s) or guardian(s)?
- Did not complete high school
- High school diploma or equivalency (GED)
- Associate’s degree (junior college) or vocational degree/license
- Bachelor’s degree (BA, BS)
- Master’s degree (MA, MS)
- Doctorate or professional degree (MD, JD, DDS)
- What is the most recent occupation of your parent(s) or guardian(s)?
- Unemployed
- Homemaker
- Laborer
- Skilled worker
- Professional
- If you were raised in one of the following household types, please indicate.
- Raised by a single parent
- Raised by an extended family member (grandparent, aunt/uncle, niece/nephew, cousin)
- Raised in a multi-generational home
- Raised in foster care
- What was the primary language spoken in your childhood home?
- If you have you ever been responsible for providing significant and continuing financial or supervisory support for someone else, please indicate.
- Child
- Spouse
- Sibling
- Parent
- Extended family member (grandparent, aunt/uncle, niece/nephew, cousin)
- Other
- Please elaborate on any of your above responses. Alternatively, you may use this opportunity to expand on other hardships or unusual life circumstances that may help us understand the context of your opportunities, achievements, and impact.
(300 words maximum)
Overall, Haas is trying to get a better understanding of the context from which a candidate has evolved, both professionally, and personally. Moreover, these questions invite a sense of your attitude and resilience through adversity. While the opening five questions establish potential jumping off points, you are free to delve into another personal experience that defines you. The key to this essay is to quickly establish context and then elaborate on how you handled the situation and grew because of it. An important thing to keep in mind is to avoid a “blame game” and simply establish the circumstances that influenced you. Most importantly, you’ll want to account for your actions (to show) and briefly comment on why the situation was difficult for you. After all, resilience entails a struggle with an outcome of success.
Given the highly personal nature of the opening five questions, candidates should reflect more on circumstances that have informed their character, as opposed to digging into a setback at work in this Berkeley MBA essay. You may be able to incorporate how the lessons you learned from hardships and unusual circumstances have informed your approach to your career, but professional setbacks should not be the main focus of this essay. Also keep in mind that this Berkeley MBA essay is optional—do not feel pressure to make a mountain out of a molehill to deliver more content in your application. Take some time to reflect and tell the adcom how the circumstances from their queries or other situations influenced you.
Berkeley MBA Essay 4 (Optional)
This section should only be used to convey relevant information not addressed elsewhere in your application. This may include explanation of employment gaps, academic aberrations, supplemental coursework, etc. You are encouraged to use bullet points where appropriate.
Applicants should exercise discretion when responding to this prompt, as providing an optional essay creates extra work for the admissions reader. This will be a good place to address extenuating circumstances that have influenced one’s academic or professional history, to address weaknesses in one’s application, or to explain an unusual choice of recommender. The wording of this question is open enough that applicants may also choose to discuss an element of their background that is not reflected in their other materials (including data forms and résumé), though they will need to demonstrate sound judgment in doing so – i.e. the nature of the content should be such that it makes a material difference to one’s application – and should summarize the information as concisely as possible.
Short Answers
Briefly describe your immediate post-MBA career goal. (150 words maximum)
Haas has moved this from the work experience section to the personal data II section within the application. Still, it is a fairly standard career goals essay, requesting one’s post-MBA plans, Applicants should open this essay by describing their plans upon graduating from Haas. Due to the short length, the response should be concise in covering the particular role and responsibilities you are interested in. Next, identify your long-term goal so that the adcom knows where you are heading from the start. Then, you can delve into material that bridges the two goals together, It would be wise to close your response by tying together the Haas principles with your plans, and end on a note of enthusiasm about the program.
One of our goals at Berkeley Haas is to develop leaders who value diversity and to create an inclusive environment in which people from different ethnicities, genders, lived experiences, and national origins feel welcomed and supported.
Can you please describe any experience or exposure you have in the area of diversity, equity, and inclusion, whether through community organizations, personal, or in the workplace? (150 words maximum)
DEI is a popular topic among b-schools this year. Given the short word limit, applicants will first want to think through all of their potential examples. You will likely have room to develop one richly, or touch on 2-3 succinctly. Be sure to set the stage, establishing the context of your experience or exposure. Then walk the adcom through your actions (ideally) or perspective in relation to creating an inclusive environment. To really stand out, think beyond comments or campaigns shared on Facebook, and reflect on advocating actively. No matter the DEI situation selected, applicants should ensure they were active participants in achieving a positive outcome.
Clear Admit Resources
Thanks for reading our analysis of this year’s Berkeley MBA essays. As you work on your Berkeley MBA essays and application, we encourage you to consider all of Clear Admit’s Haas School of Business offerings:
- Berkeley Haas School of Business Profile on the Clear Admit website: up-to-date advice and admissions information
- Clear Admit LiveWire: admissions updates submitted in real time by applicants to Haas
- Clear Admit DecisionWire: school selections in real-time by admits to Haas
