Haas - Why I Applied.

Any other Haas applicants out there? Love to hear about your decision to apply.

Hi Mayo,
I haven't applied to Haas (yet) but I will certainly do so. I'm targeting Aug 2010 entry so i've got some time to prep my application.

Anyway, my reasons: I know a few people at Haas and was even able to sneak into a student-run seminar series last semester on renewable energy. It was great and since I'm in renewables, I got to see first hand Haas' dedication to socially conscious ventures. (Although, it upsets me that there are a lot of people who look at renewable as a mere money grab, not something that is capable of creating real change. but that's another topic). There is a lot of awareness and forward thinking in the bay area.

I also am deeply interested in entrepreneurship. But I want to learn about it without the narrow perspective of only making money. Something much more beneficial to society and with long-lasting impacts (again, in the field of solar energy since that is my interest and strength). Haas has several social entrepreneurship courses and seminars, along with tons of student run clubs that push this even further.

The faculty has pretty solid business experience and teaching capability.

The school is in an area filled with extremely smart people. No question, the Bay is one of the best places i've ever lived in and would love to go back. There are many conferences and TONS of networking opportunities. People are super cool and the weather is great too!

My question for you: you metioned entrepreneurship in your "Why i applied to UCLA" post. I'm struggling to find resources on schools which offer quality, socially conscious entrepreneurship studies. Do you have any pointers on how you researched schools with this interest? For my part, I've used the beyond grey pinstripes website as a starting point: https://www.beyondgreypinstripes.org. There are also the other rankings as well. But there must be more... and I've found a lot of crap websites too, basically marketing fronts for the crapy b-schools. yours/anyone else's Take?

Social entrepreneurship wasn't my focus - entrepreneurship in general was so I did not look for that specifically. If I were to look into that, here's what I would do:

1) Look at the course schedule and see how many classes relate to social venture and green topics. Also, pay attention to what types of classes - are there classes dealing with marketing social ventures? Funding them? Or are the socially conscious things just thrown into one class?

2) Center research/support. What research centers are associated to the school? Entrepreneurship? International Business? Go to the centers that interest you and see if how much focus they give on social ventures. For example, going to Mexico on a study trip to consult for a large corp is very different than going to Africa to study ways to bring safe water in a sustainable way to a village.

3) Go over the website and marketing materials again. How often is social entrepreneurship mentioned?

Those are some ideas, let us know if you find other ways to do some in-depth research as it will help everyone find their perfect school.

That's the first time I've ever heard of that site - an alternative ranking system is quite an interesting idea. Thanks for bringing that site to our members' attention!

Those are good questions - I'll view schools with that perspective. Thanks.

There is a tool on the beyond grey pinstripes site that I found quite useful. It is a coursework search. You can search through the course catalogues of several schools by keyword. It also lists elective courses. That might be helpful to others.

https://www.beyondgreypinstripes.org/sea ... sework.cfm

mayonnai5e wrote:So I'm just going to talk about the big points of attraction for Haas - relative to my interests of course. I'd love to hear from others who have or will be applying and hear about their motivations.

Haas has a very strong focus on innovation - it's marketed very clearly as such. Innovation and entrepreneurship are closely interconnected and that is the main reason why I chose Haas. Although innovation is often thought of as purely product based, Haas splits innovation into three areas: product, organizational and strategic.

Teamwork and collaboration are very important for my personal style of work. Haas seemed to place a big emphasis on this and I appreciated that. Berkeley has a non-disclosure policy that encourages and fosters teamwork.

Small class size fixed at 240. Some people like a big class size, but one of the benefits of business school is the ability to network and build a nice social circle. A class size of 240 means you can and probably will meet everyone else. Although the alumni network may be smaller as a result, you can argue that the network is more close knit.

International business. Haas was one of the few schools to have a joint MBA & international studies degree. This means that I can study the business aspects of international business and at the same time study the other aspects (culture, history, language, people). I worked abroad for two years and if there's one thing I learned, it's that these "other" things greatly influence the working environment and your personal fulfillment and success.

Did you get a chance to visit Has and see for yourself what it is like. i am also thinking of applying there for fall 2010.
Any tips for someone who is preparing the applications?
Does meeting current students help?