Berkeley Haas recorded an acceptance rate of just 11.8% of applicants for its full time MBA, lower than any American school outside of Harvard and Stanford. Despite the school increasing its enrolment from 246 to 252 students, the school remains the smallest full-time MBA program among the top 15 schools.
However, in 2015-2016, applications reached a record high of 4,031, which is 439 more than the previous year, an 11% increase.
For the class of 2018, average GMAT scores have gone up from 715 to 717, with the average in the 680-750 range. The average GPA for incoming students was 3.64, nearly identical to the previous year’s 3.66. TOEFL scores settled at 110. The percentage of women, however, slipped from 41% to 38%. Interestingly, the highest percentage of women in any class at 43% has just graduated.
The number of international students fell to 38% from 43% in the past two years, despite having students from 41 different countries in the class. The percentage of American minorities dipped to 32% from 41% in the past two years.
As far as educational background is concerned, undergraduate majors in business comprised 24% followed by economics and engineering at 18%. Social sciences majors accounted for 13% of the class, with the humanities moving up four points to 10%. Natural sciences experienced a 2% rise to 7%. Like the previous year, 14% of the class holds advanced degrees.
In industry experience, Consulting constituted 22% followed by Banking & Financial services at 17%. T High Technology Electronics (10%), Consumer products (9%) and non-profits (9%) come next.
Class Diversity
The class has Anna Braszkiewicz from Poland, who had won multiple national championships in springboard and platform diving as an undergrad at the University of Utah. She had also coached a group of celebrities on a TV show “Celebrity Splash” with a viewership of 2 million people every weekend. David Middleton, formerly chief pilot and operations officer for the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station in San Francisco, was a lead actor in a commercial that played on the jumbo screen in Times Square.
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Then there are trekkers and travellers. Kasey Koopmans, a two-time Princeton in Asia fellow, with experience of having conducted field research in Nepal and Myanmar completed a hike on the 4265 km Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada, in just 145 days. Reginald Davis, formerly with JP Morgan, travelled across Europe in summer, even working as a bartender in Croatia.
Afghanistan-born Sai Parsa is a foodie who had travelled to more than 22 countries and tried many different cuisines. Parsa had also overcome odds after selling eggs as a boy in Afghanistan to move to the US and ending up training Fortune 500 executives on communication and writing strategies
Amanda Parker says she is one of the 600 odd Certified Cheese Professionals, industry recognized experts in all things cheese. She developed a national training program to equip other students to prepare for this certification exam. She was also responsible for opening 300 cheese shops in 30 states.(Image Source:wikipedia.org)
