Haas School of Business – University of California, Berkeley
Haas School of Business is one of 14 schools and colleges at the University of California, Berkeley and is located on the eastern side of Berkeley’s campus. In addition to its full-time MBA program, Haas offers an Executive MBA program and an Evening and Weekend MBA program. Haas’s MBA curriculum is centered on Berkeley Innovative Leadership Development, an approach to business education that emphasizes experiential learning and problem-solving in order to help students become innovative leaders. Haas also helps students shape their education by offering students the chance to design courses in conjunction with a faculty member.
FAQ
What is the tuition for Haas’s MBA program?
The tuition for Haas’s MBA program is $68,444 per year. The total cost of the Haas MBA program is $106,348 per year; this includes budgeted living expenses.
How hard is it to get into Haas’s MBA program?
The acceptance rate for Haas is 13.2% It is important to consider the acceptance rate in the context of the student profile of those who are admitted. For example the average GMAT score is 725.
What is the average GMAT score for admission to Haas’s MBA program?
The average GMAT score for the incoming class at Haas is 725. The GMAT middle 80% range is 680 to 760.
Does the Haas MBA program accept the GRE?
Yes. The Haas MBA program has accepted the GRE for a few years now.
What is the average GRE score for admission to Haas’s MBA program?
The average GRE score for the incoming class at Haas is 162 Verbal, 161 Quant.
What is the minimum number of years of work experience required for admission to Haas’s MBA program?
Haas does not state a minimum requirement for years of work experience. However, it is important for candidates to be aware that they are being considered against other candidates with an average of 5.3 years of experience.
What is the average number of years of work experience for admission to Haas’s MBA program? (or, What is the average age of a Haas MBA student?)
The average number of years of work experience among students in Haas’s MBA program is 5.3.
What is the average starting salary for graduates of the Haas MBA program?
The average starting salary for Haas MBA graduates is $137,819 median base annual salary. The salary will vary by industry, with consulting and finance jobs generally commanding the higher salaries.
How long is Haas’s full-time MBA program?
Haas offers a traditional 2 year MBA program.
What are the application deadlines for Haas’s MBA program?
The Round 1 MBA application deadline is September 24, 2020. The Round 2 application deadline is January 14, 2021. The Round 3 deadline is April 5, 2021.
What percent of Haas MBA students are women?
The percentage of the class at Haas that are women is 37%.
What type of interview does Haas use for MBA admissions?
Haas offers interviews by invitation. The interviews are blind. This means the interviewer has not had access to the application materials.
VIDEOS
MBA Spotlight 2020
Faherty joined the Full-Time MBA Admissions Office as an Associate Director of Admissions in January of 2020. Prior to joining the office, Nicole was Associate Director of Admissions and Recruitment, leading the graduate admissions team at Berkeley Public Health. Nicole has been working as a higher education administrator for over 15 years, specifically in the areas of admissions and program management. She has an undergraduate degree in political science from UC San Diego, and prior to working at UC Berkeley worked for 12 years at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth as Program Director for an undergraduate business program. Nicole is passionate about higher education and making the admissions process as accessible as possible for everyone. In her free time, Nicole loves hiking the beautiful trails in the Bay Area with her family and dog. Anthony Whitten joined the admissions team at Berkeley Haas in 2019. Prior to joining the team, Anthony served as the NextGen Media Outreach Coordinator at the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. In his work, Anthony developed and implemented pre-college and pipeline programs for prospective students. Before working in higher education, Anthony spent 12 years as a public high school teacher in Virginia. He taught courses including journalism, US history, and economics and personal finance. Anthony completed his Bachelor’s in History and African American Studies at the University of Virginia. Additionally, he holds masters degrees in Educational Leadership and Policy from Portland State and Teaching from the University of Virginia. Outside of his work in admissions, Anthony enjoys watching reality TV, visiting wineries, and hanging out with friends.
Does Enlightened Capitalism Have a Future?
In this very special Dean's Speaker Series Professor James O’Toole, Professor Emeritus at USC’s Marshall School of Business and author of The Enlightened Capitalists: Cautionary Tales of Business Pioneers Who Tried to Do Well by Doing Good, will discuss the future of enlightened capitalism with Professor David Vogel, Solomon Lee Emeritus Professor of Business Ethics at the Haas School of Business and author of The Market for Virtue: The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility. As corporate responsibility becomes increasingly mainstream, it’s easy to overlook the decades long journey that started corporate America’s path to social impact. From British industrialist Robert Owen to American and jeans maker Levi Strauss to modern-day entrepreneurs Anita Roddick and Tom Chappell, lessons abound for future business leaders refusing to make trade-offs between profit and virtue. This talk will explore the prospects for more-enlightened corporate behavior and ultimately address the question: is shareholder capitalism compatible with enlightened corporate behavior?
Admissions
The Class Profile
Admission to Haas is competitive, with the school receiving over 4,000 applications and enrolling 283 students in 2019. First-year Haas students scored between 680 and 760 on the GMAT, and the average GMAT score for the class was 725. The average undergraduate GPA for the group was 3.67, with the middle 80% having no lower than a 3.37 GPA.
While 45% of the Class of 2021 studied business, economics or engineering as undergraduates, a fifth of the class majored in the social sciences and humanities, and about 8% majored in finance. The group had an average of 5.3 years of work experience. Thirty-five percent of first-year MBA candidates are international, with the group representing 38 countries, and women make up 37% of the Class of 2021. Finally, 29% of first-year students identify as members of a U.S. minority group, which comprises students of African American, Hispanic American, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, Asian American and East Indian/Pakistani heritage.
Application Procedures
Applicants can elect to apply to Haas during one of three admissions rounds, which usually occur in September, January and April. Haas requires applicants to submit their completed online application along with a résumé, essays, GMAT and TOEFL or IELTS scores from students who received degrees from countries whose official language is not English, transcripts from all collegiate and post-collegiate academic institutions attended, and two professional letters of recommendation. Interviews are conducted on an invitation-only basis and are required for admission to the MBA program.
Application Requirements
The following material are required to apply for the Berkeley Haas MBA:
- Online application
- $200 application fee
- Current resume (submitted online)
- Admissions essays
- Two professional letters of recommendation
- University transcripts
- GMAT or GRE score report
- English language proficiency
- Interview
Essay Topic Analysis
University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business MBA Essay Topic Analysis
The following essay topic analysis examines the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business MBA admissions essays for the 2020-2021 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 / Haas MBA Essay Topic […]
Recommendation Questions
Haas MBA Recommendation Questions
The Berkeley Haas MBA recommendation questions are now available for MBA Class of 2023 UC Berkeley Haas School of Business applicants and their recommenders. No more than two letters of recommendation are required, and are strongly preferred to be from current or former supervisors. Recommendations may be submitted online or through the mail using a PDF […]
Interview Reports
Berkeley Haas Interview Questions & Report: Round 2 / Alum / Off-Campus
Context: My Round 2 Berkeley Haas interview occurred in mid-March 2020, was with an alum in the Boston area, and was blind, or i.e. the interviewer had only seen my resume. I was invited to interview in mid-February about 5 weeks after I submitted my application in January on the Round 2 deadline day. I […]
Berkeley Haas Interview Questions & Report: Round 2 / First-Year Student / On-Campus
The interview was on March 4th at the Haas campus, it was with a first-year student, and it was blind. The interview took place in a small study room at Haas. My interviewer was super friendly and she asked a few behavioral questions. Examples include: tell me about yourself, why MBA, why Haas, etc. I […]
Berkeley Haas Interview Questions & Report: Round 2 / First-Year Student / On-Campus
I signed up for lunch and classes before my interview with a Haas Student Ambassador. The whole day was very casual and informal. Interview lasted about 45 minutes, with about 30 minutes of questions and 15 minutes of asking the interviewer questions. I was asked a couple main questions: 1. Tell me about yourself. Why […]
Berkeley Haas Interview Questions & Report: Round 1/ Alumnus / On-Campus
I went on interview day at Haas. It was really great! I applied through Consortium so Consortium students hosted a breakfast for us to network, ask questions, and conduct mock interviews before the interview day began. Everyone from students, other applicants, and staff were extremely friendly. I was asked the standard questions: why Haas, why […]
Berkeley Haas Interview Questions & Report: Round 2 / First-Year Student / On-Campus
I interviewed on-campus, in a small room in the Executive MBA Suite. It was a warm room, and only got warmer throughout! The interviewer explained the process of the interview – there would be a few official questions, a few behavioral, and then I could ask questions. He was friendly and had a chill vibe. […]
Berkeley Haas Interview Questions & Report: Round 2 / Alumnus / Off-Campus
The interview was extremely conversational and she asked the typical MBA questions along with a few behavioral questions. We met at a coffee shop in Orange County. I believe the interview was blind. 1. Walk me through your resume. 2. Why MBA? 3. Why Haas? 4. What are your strengths/weaknesses? 5. What is the biggest […]
Berkeley Haas Interview Questions & Report: Round 2 / First-Year Student / On-Campus
I interviewed on campus, I was told it would be with a second-year student, but it was with a first-year student. The interviewer had only seen my resume prior to the interview, and typed notes as I spoke. The interview lasted 45 minutes. The interviewer had a list of questions to choose from and selected […]
UC Berkeley Haas MBA Interview Questions & Report: Round 1 / Alum / Off-Campus
Type: blind interview (interviewer only sees resume) List of required interview questions: 1. Walk me through your resume 2. Why an MBA? 3. Why Haas? How will Haas help you achieve your short/long-term goals? 4. Tell me about a time when you were on a team where others didn’t agree with you at the start […]
UC Berkeley Haas MBA Interview Questions & Report: Round 2 / Second-Year Student / On Campus
The visit was pretty fun, Haas and Berkeley in general are pretty nice considering the absurdly dense population of the San Francisco Bay area. The interview experience was really quite standard – my interviewer grabbed me from the MBA office and we went to a small study room to chat. He introduced himself and was […]
UC Berkeley Haas MBA Interview Questions & Report: Round 2 / First-year student / Campus
I interviewed with a first year student, on UC Berkeley Haas’ campus. All in all, it was a pretty relaxed, conversational and even fun experience. She started off by introducing herself and her background and explain how the interview was going to go. Then we jumped in the questions: Tell me about yourself Follow-up question: […]
Haas Q&As
Admissions Director Q&A: Berkeley Haas’s Morgan Bernstein
In this edition of our ongoing series, Admissions Director Q&A, we stop by the Bay Area of California. Morgan Bernstein is the executive director of full-time MBA admissions at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, and a 2009 alumna of the program. Bernstein is deeply passionate about helping prospective students navigate the business school landscape, and […]
Admissions Director Q&A: Morgan Bernstein of UC Berkeley / Haas
Clear Admit is delighted to share admissions insights from Morgan Bernstein, the Executive Director of Full-time MBA Admissions at UC Berkeley / Haas. Bernstein was part of the admissions team for five years before stepping into her current role, and she knows things from the other side as well. A successful applicant herself, she graduated […]
Real Humans of MBA Admissions: UC Berkeley Haas’s Morgan Bernstein
Morgan Bernstein is currently in her first year as executive director leading the full-time MBA admission team at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, having taken over last March for Stephanie Fujii, who held the role for four years before that. “I’m excited about growing my team, learning, figuring out what I know and what […]
Haas LiveWire and DecisionWire
Academics
Faculty
Haas employs 74 tenure-track faculty members. These scholars and practitioners help lead Haas’s more than 10 research institutes and centers, and participate in seven multidisciplinary programs, which cover topics ranging from business innovation to nonprofit and public leadership. The Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation, for example, enables faculty to publish articles, create teaching materials and lead research projects on “open innovation,” a more dispersed industry innovation model.
Curriculum
Professors at Haas make use of a variety of teaching methods, including case studies, seminars, simulations, group projects and guest speakers. Haas places an emphasis on hands-on learning, with certain courses providing students the opportunity to gain consulting experience by working in Silicon Valley firms.
Haas operates on a two-semester schedule, with MBA classes running from late August through early December and from mid-January through May; commencement takes place shortly thereafter. For first-year students, each semester is further divided into two quarters. Within the academic year, all students have short breaks for Thanksgiving and other holidays, as well as a one-month break between the fall and spring semesters.
During the first year, Haas students are required to take 12 core courses which account for roughly half of the 51 semester units needed to graduate. The core covers foundational business principles in accounting, finance, economics, marketing, operations, strategy, leadership, decision-making and management. Each of the required courses places an emphasis on team learning, with students working in small groups on projects and assignments. A core course may be waived if a student passes a waiver examination, and these are available for seven of the 12 core courses. These examinations are akin to the course’s final examination and are given the week before the start of each semester. All students must also fulfill an experiential learning, or “applied innovation” requirement by completing at least one of over a dozen programs. These include working in small teams on projects for both nonprofit and for-profit organizations, as well as developing socially responsible strategies for large corporations.
MBA students may begin taking elective courses in the spring semester of their first year. Haas provides a broad range of elective courses from which to choose, and students may even design their own courses together with members of the faculty. The school emphasizes hands-on learning and offers over 20 courses to satisfy the Applied Innovation requirement, ranging from international consulting projects to people development to strategies surrounding sustainable business practices. Haas also provides students with 11 Areas of Emphasis, which are high-level recommendations of courses, extracurricular activities and summer internships that students can follow to prepare for entry into related careers.
Other MBA Degree Options
In addition to the 21-month full-time MBA program, Haas offers a four-year JD/MBA program with either UC Berkeley’s School of Law or UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. Also available are an MBA/MPH program with the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and an MBA/MA program in Global Studies with various UC Berkeley Schools. Part-time options include an evening and weekend MBA program.
Areas of Emphasis at Haas
Finance
Marketing
Strategy/Consulting
Corporate Social Responsibility
Energy and Clean Technology
Entrepreneurship
Equity Fluent Leadership
Global Management
Health Management
Social Sector Leadership
Real Estate
Technology
Degree Options at Haas
Full-time MBA
http://mba.haas.berkeley.edu/
Concurrent Degrees
JD/MBA
http://haas.berkeley.edu/MBA/academics/concurrent-degrees.html
MBA/MPH
https://mba.haas.berkeley.edu/careers/healthcare
MBA/MA
http://haas.berkeley.edu/MBA/academics/concurrent-degrees.html#internationalandareastudies
MBA for Executives
http://mbaforexecs.haas.berkeley.edu/
Evening & Weekend MBA
http://ewmba.haas.berkeley.edu/
Applied Innovation Courses
- [email protected]
- Social Sector Solutions
- International Business Development
- Cleantech to Market
- Strategic and Sustainable Business Solutions
- Design Sprint for Corporate Innovation
- Design, Evaluate and Scale Development Technologies
- People Development
- Real Estate Investment Analysis
- Hedge Fund Strategies
- The Haas Socially Responsible Investment Fund
- Design and Development of Web-Based Products and Services
- Lean Launchpad
- Social Lean Launchpad
- The Startup Lab
- Applied Data Analytics
Campus Life
Clubs, Conferences & Competitions
Haas offers its students many opportunities for extracurricular involvement, including over 50 student organizations to choose from, with a wide array of professional, athletic and cultural groups on hand. Many MBA students become involved in Challenge for Charity events such as competitions, shows and auctions geared at raising money for the Special Olympics and other charitable organizations. In addition, a large portion of MBA students volunteer their time to the [email protected] program, where they act as mentors for underprivileged high school students.
Approximately ten conferences are regularly hosted by Haas faculty and students. These comprise both industry- and affiliation-related events, such as the Berkeley Energy Symposium and Women in Leadership Conference. Haas also sponsors the Haas Healthcare Conference, the UC Berkeley Startup Competition and the Global Social Venture Competition. Furthermore, MBA students have the opportunity to create their own competitions; recently, students organized the Patagonia Case Competition and the Haas Tech Challenge.
Campus Spaces
Designed by architect Charles Moore, Haas’s campus is comprised of three buildings—one each for classrooms, student services and faculty—linked together that face a main courtyard. Among the school’s facilities are a career center, a high-tech computer lab, a café and an economics and business library.
While most Haas students choose to live off campus, a fair number of students take advantage of Haas’s on-campus housing options. These include university residence halls as well as several apartment complexes devoted to housing UC Berkeley graduate students. The university also provides a housing service called Cal Rentals, through which students can receive counseling about their housing options. Students who wish to live off campus can refer to Cal Rentals for a listing of off-campus rental opportunities.
MBA Careers
Career Services
The Haas Career Management Group provides extensive support for MBA students by hosting on-campus interviews, corporate presentations and electronic job postings through CareerNet. The Career Management Group also offers students informal ways to meet employers year-round through career panels, alumni mixers, industry firm nights, job fairs and corporate visits. In addition, individual career advisors are available to aid students in developing their job search skills and tackling the recruiting process. Full-time recruiting for second-year students takes place in the fall and spring semesters, and internship recruiting for first-year students occurs in the spring.
Career Statistics
The mean base annual salary of 2019 Haas MBA graduates was $137,819, with an average signing bonus of about $29,141. Over 27% of the Class of 2019 went on to work in consulting positions, with marketing as the second most popular function at nearly 16%. Meanwhile, 15% of Haas’s 2019 MBA graduates accepted positions in finance, another 15% opted for business development/strategy roles, and nearly 8% of students entered general management.
Almost 33% of students in the Class of 2019 found jobs in the technology industry after graduating. This is not surprising given that the top recruiters in 2019 included technology firms such as Google, Tesla, and Microsoft. The next most chosen industry was consulting, at 25% of the class, and 15% of students accepted positions in financial services. Nearly 10% of students entered the retail industry and another 7% went into pharma/biotech/healthcare. The remainder of the class secured employment in energy and other industries.
Of the 207 graduates who reported regional placement, 89% settled in North America and 11% chose to work internationally. Nearly 74% of graduates settled in the West of the U.S. The Northeast claimed nearly 5% of graduates. Three percent or less settled in other regions of the U.S.
Financing
The tuition and fees for the 2020-2021 academic year is $64,246 for California residents and $68,444 for non-residents. However, Haas estimates that with additional expenses such as living expenses and textbooks, students will pay up to $102,150 as residents or $106,348 as non-residents in that time. Haas offers both merit- and need-based scholarships to help students with the program’s cost. While some merit-based scholarships are awarded to applicants at the time of admission, others require the completion of separate applications. Both two-year and one-year scholarships are available, and Haas requires that the recipients of two-year grants maintain at least a 3.0 GPA throughout business school.
Students also have an array of loan options at their disposal, including federal loan offerings for U.S. citizens and permanent residents. In addition, Haas publishes a compiled list of preferred lenders with different loan options for students to consider. For international students, a risk-share loan is available that does not require a U.S. co-signer.
Cost of Attendance
Tuition & Fees
CA Resident $64,246
Non-Resident $68,444
Health Insurance $5,682
Housing & Food $25,658
Books & Supplies $634
Transportation $3,186
Personal Expenses $2,744
Total
CA Resident $102,150
Non-Resident $106,348
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