Fall 2010 Berkeley/ Haas Essay Topics

Listed below are the supplemental questions, short answer questions, required essays, and optional essays for the fall 2010 application.

Supplemental Essay Questions:

1. If you have not provided a letter of recommendation from your current supervisor, please explain; otherwise, enter N/A.
2. List in order of importance all community & professional organizations and extracurricular activities in which you have been involved during or after university studies. Indicate the nature of the activity or organization, dates of involvement, offices held, & average number of hours spent per month.
3. List full-time and part-time jobs held during undergraduate or graduate studies, indicating the employer, job title, employment dates, location, and the number of hours worked per week for each position held prior to the completion of your degree.
4. Please explain all gaps in your employment since earning your university degree.
5. Beyond the courses that appear on your academic transcripts, please discuss other ways in which you have demonstrated strong quantitative abilities.
6. If you have ever been subject to academic discipline, placed on probation, suspended or required to withdraw from any college or university, please explain. If not, please enter N/A. (An affirmative response to this question does not automatically disqualify you from admission.)

Short Answer:

1. What are you most passionate about? Why? (250 word maximum)
2. Tell us about your most significant accomplishment. (250 word maximum)
3. At Haas, we value innovation and creativity. Describe a time when you created positive change in a group or an organization. (250 word maximum)
4. What steps have you taken to learn about the Berkeley MBA program, and what factors have influenced your decision to apply? (250 word maximum)

Required Essays:

1. Give us an example of a situation in which you displayed leadership. (500 word maximum)
2. What are your post-MBA short-term and long-term career goals? How do your professional experiences relate to these goals? How will an MBA from Berkeley help you achieve these specific career goals? (1000 word maximum)

Optional Essays:

1. (Optional) Please feel free to provide a statement concerning any information you would like to add to your application that you haven’t addressed elsewhere. (500 word maximum)

Berkeley/ Hass Fall 2010 Application Deadline & Decision Schedule

Further Readings:

• Business School Profiles
• MBA Essays & Deadlines

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1.  What is the purpose of an optional essay?
2.  Is optional essay actually optional?
3.  What if other candidates write an optional essay and I don’t?
4.  What do I write in an optional essay when I have already written so much about myself in my previous essays?
5. Can I address only my weaknesses in an optional essay?

Well! after receiving all these questions regarding optional essay, I decided to choose ‘Effective Ways of Writing an Optional Essay’ as our topic for the day.

Business Schools give you an option to write an additional essay so that you can provide more information about you that you could not tell in your previous essays. The only rule is that this information should be the one that can enhance your candidacy, and not ruin it.

You must decide wisely whether you want to write an optional essay or not. Writing an extra essay has its own merits and demerits. The merit is that you are provided with an extra space to tell about yourself and about your unique candidature. The demerit is that if your main essays were not strong enough to hold reader’s attention and you have already wasted the reader’s time, you are going to irritate the adcom member by making him spend more time on reading the extra information provided by you. A shallow essay would put you in trouble. Your essays should be interesting enough that the reader should be willing to know more about you. An easy way to decide whether you want to write an optional essay or not is that you complete all the main essays first without worrying about writing an optional essay. Write the main essays effectively and efficiently. Then ask yourself whether there is any room for providing an extra information or not-the one that you could not cover in any other essay. If the answer is yes, then go ahead with writing an optional essay. If the answer is no then do not force yourself in writing a sketchy essay, which would be a repetitive information of all that you have already covered in your previous essays. Do not sacrifice the quality of your essays for the sake of quantity. Decide to write an optional essay only if that essay would add value to your application.

How to write an optional essay?

Generally business schools give you word limits for writing essays but if the word limits are not mentioned, don’t go overboard by writing endlessly. A 300-400 words are good enough to provide relevant facts supported by real life experiences/anecdotes to write a good optional essay.

If you are stating a weakness such as low GPA /low GMAT score or an inconsistency in your application, make sure that you don’t end up writing a 400 word sob story. Keep your essay to the point, state the facts, take responsibility for your actions and explain how you have matured since then. For example, if you are addressing your low GPA, just state the reasons- was it because of your over participation in extra curriculars/ some family responsibilities that time/ some medical challenges that you couldn’t avoid etc. If there was something that you learnt from those experiences, state that. If you scored high in an extra course that you took, state that. If some extenuating circumstances made you a strong person, state that. The examples and situations can be numerous, it depends on how well you are able to put your experiences in words.

You can also use an optional essay to show other aspects of your personality and ones that have not been covered in your other essays. You can write about your experiences that have played a formative role in your personal development or something that you have learnt and would be a great contribution to the school. You can also write about your personal values that are aligned with the values of school. Your essay need not necessarily be a ‘business-focused ” essay but it should show how your learnings/ experiences/ cultural values etc. can be gelled with the school values.  For example, if someone has a passion for travelling and he is applying to Kellogg, he can relate his travel experiences with how he would his travel experience be a good contribution to KWEST (Kellogg Worldwide Experiences and Service Trips (KWEST) are one of the most popular student activities at Kellogg, bringing together incoming students and four or five second-year trip leaders through a variety of outdoor and community service activities on a domestic U.S. or international trip.)

Unless school does not specify some specific guidelines regarding optional essay, this essay is actually optional. For example, take a look at this year’s NYU Stern’s optional essay question:

Please provide any additional information that you would like to bring to the attention of the Admissions Committee. This may include current or past gaps in employment, further explanation of your undergraduate record or self-reported academic transcript(s), plans to retake the GMAT and/or TOEFL or any other relevant information.

Three things that you must consider before writing this essay:

1. Do you have any gaps in employment or low GPA or low GMAT?
2. If yes, then the explanation for low grades MUST be given. In this case, your optional essay is no more an optional essay. This essay is an important part of your application and you must provide the reasons and what all you have done to overcome your shortcomings.
3. If no, then this becomes an optional essay. You must choose whether you want to write this essay or not.

Now take a look at Chicago Booth’s optional essay.

If there is any important information that is relevant for your candidacy that you were unable to address elsewhere in the application, please share that information here.

An open ended question with no specifics or word limits given. If you check the overall application , you will notice that there are 4 main essays and a slide presentation. Now after providing all this information if you think that there is some significant aspect of your personality that you would want to share with admissions committe, only then you must write an optional essay. Do not write it just because it is there. A good essay can be written in 350-400 words.

Myth busters about optional essay.

• Optional essay is optional. Decide wisely whether you really want to write an optional essay or not.
• Optional essay is not a summary of your previous essays.
• Addressing weaknesses is not the only purpose of optional essay.
• A good optional essay can be written in 350-400 words.

An optional essay might look like a tempting option but resist the urge unless you don’t have something noteworthy to share.

Watch this video by Sara Neher, Director of Admissions at Darden School of Business. She gives an insight about what topics all a candidate can pick to write about in his/ her essays:

Further Readings:

• Admission Secrets Of Top 5 Business Schools
• What Everybody Ought To Know About Work Experience
• How To Write A Career Goals Essay?
• 8 Ways To Commit Essay Writing Mistakes

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2009-2010 MBA Application Essay Questions

Darden MBA Essay 1. How have the changes in the global economy over the last 18 months affected you and your plan for the future? (400 words)

Darden MBA Essay 2. What will you contribute to an MBA program and what are your personal and professional expectations of the program you attend? (600 words)

Deadlines are yet to be posted on Darden’s website.

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Further Readings:

MBA 2009-2010 Essays and Deadlines

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UCLA Anderson’s 2010 MBA essay questions.

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS: Please be introspective and authentic in your responses. We value the opportunity to learn about your life experiences, aspirations, and goals.

All responses to essays must be on double-spaced pages that are uploaded in document form, except for Essay 4 for first-time applicants, which may be submitted as an audio or video file instead. (Please note the word limits in parentheses.)

First-time applicants — 4 required essays:

UCLA MBA Essay 1: Describe the ways in which your family and/or community have helped shape your development. (750 words)

UCLA MBA Essay 2: Describe the biggest risk you have ever taken, the outcome, and what you learned in the process. (500 words)

UCLA MBA Essay 3: Describe your short-term and long-term career goals. What is your motivation for pursuing an MBA now and how will UCLA Anderson help you to achieve your goals? (750 words)

UCLA MBA Essay 4: Select and respond to one of the two following questions. We would like you to respond to the question by recording an audio or video response (up to 10Mb maximum) for upload in the online application. (Please note: The supported file types for audio files are: .avi, .wav, .mp3, .wmv, .midi, .wma, .aiff, .au, .mp4; the supported file types for video files are: .mov, .avi, .wmv, .mpeg). If you are unable to submit your response via audio or video, then please prepare a written response instead. (250 words)

• (a) Entrepreneurship is a mindset that embraces innovation and risk-taking within both established and new organizations. Describe an instance in which you exhibited this mindset.
• (b) What is something people will find surprising about you?

5. OPTIONAL: Are there any extenuating circumstances in your profile about which the Admissions Committee should be aware? (250 words)

The deadlines are yet to be posted on UCLA’s website.

Click the correct answers!  For detailed solutions, please post your queries in GMAT Verbal Forum

More Quizzes:

• Friday GMAT Quizzing- Verbal Ability
• Friday GMAT Quizzing 2- Quantitative Aptitude
• Friday GMAT Quizzing 3- Verbal Ability
• Friday GMAT Quizzing 4- Quantitative Ability
• Friday GMAT Quizzing 5- Verbal Ability
• Friday GMAT Quizzing 6- Quantitative Ability
• Friday GMAT Quizzing 7- Verbal Ability
• Friday GMAT Quizzing 8- Verbal Ability
• Friday GMAT Quizzing 9- Data Sufficiency
• Friday GMAT Quizzing 10- Reading Comprehension
• Friday GMAT Quizzing 11- Problem Solving

Subscribe to get more such weekly quizzes in your email. For Free, of course.

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Remember Sindhoor’s last article on ‘ How to Prepare for GMAT Verbal Section‘? Here comes his second contribution in the form of a quant article ‘Time and Work’.

Read on:

Problems on Time and Work are a common feature in most of the standard MBA exams. If you are well versed with the basics and have practised these problems during your preparation, they give you an easy opportunity to score and also save time. Here, I will try and give you the basic fundas with the help of examples. Let us start with a very basic problem:

Problem 1: A takes 5 days to complete a piece of work and B takes 15 days to complete a piece of work. In how many days can A and B complete the work if they work together?

Standard Solution: Let us consider Work to be 1 unit. So if W = 1 Unit and A takes 5 days to complete the work then in 1 day A completes 1/5th  of the work. Similarly B completes 1/15th of the work.
If they work together, in one day A and B can complete (1/5 + 1/15 = 4/15) of the work. So to complete 1 unit of work they will take 15/4 days.

New method: Let us assume W = 15 units, which is the LCM of 5 and 15.

Given that total time taken for A to complete 15 units of work = 5 days

–> A’s 1 day work = 15/5 = 3 units
Given that total time taken for B to complete 15 units of work = 15 days

–> B’s 1 day work = 15/15 = 1 unit
–>(A + B)’s 1 day work = 3 + 1 = 4 units
–>15 units of work can be done in 15/4 days.

Many solve Time and Work problems by assuming work as 1 unit (first method) but I feel it is faster to solve the problems by assuming work to be of multiple units (second method). This would be more evident when we solve problems which are little more complex than the above one.

Problem 2: X can do a work in 15 days. After working for 3 days he is joined by Y. If they complete the remaining work in 3 more days, in how many days can Y alone complete the work?

To read full article, please visit TotalGadha.Com

Time and Work: http://totalgadha.com/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=5551

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I will have lemonade instead of/ rather than shake.

How would you determine which one is correct?

The confusion between rather than and instead of continues to linger among the GMAT Takers. Let’s clear this GMAT Sentence Correction query once and for all.

Rather Than vs Instead Of

Instead of: Keep the following tips in mind whenever you see “instead of” creeping in your sentence correction questions.

1. Instead is never used alone as a preposition. We use the two words “Instead of”.

I will have lemonade instead of shake.

2. Instead of is not usually followed by an infinitive (-to).

TG worked all day instead of taking rest (not instead of to take rest)

3. When instead is used as an adverb, it is used without of. In that case, the sentence usually starts or ends with ‘instead’.

He didn’t buy shoes after all. Instead, he bought flip flops .

Don’t buy shoes. Buy flip flops instead.

4. Instead does not show preference, it shows replacement.

I was about to give the presentation, but I fell ill, so TG gave the presentation instead of me. (meaning: TG replaced me)

Rather Than

The biggest difference between instead of and rather than is that ‘instead of’ shows replacement while ‘rather than’ shows preference.

1. Rather than is generally used in parallel constructions: with two nouns, adjectives, infinitives, adverbs or -ing forms.

I’d prefer to marry in February rather than in June.

I’d call him a smart worker rather than a hard worker.

2. When the main clause has to-infinitive, rather than is usually followed by an infinitive without to or an -ing form.

I decided to write a post rather than surf/surfing the internet.

Rather than complain/ complaining, you should try to make changes.

Practice Questions on Rather Than Vs Instead of

Friday GMAT Quizzing 8- Instead Of vs Rather Than

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Before we say goodbye to June, let us take a one final look at what all made the month so special.

1.MBA Essay Writing Tips:

As we are moving deeper into the MBA essay writing season, I thought I would cover some topics that would help you in your tread carefully with your applications.

1. 8 Ways To Commit Essay Writing Mistakes
2. The 1-2-3 of MBA Reapplication Process
3. How to Write a Teamwork Essay

2. GMAT Problems and GMAT Verbal Preparation:

While we posted Friday GMAT Quizzes as a routine, a TGite added cherry on the cake by contributing an article on GMAT Verbal Preparation

1. How To Prepare for GMAT Verbal Section
2. Friday GMAT Quizzing 8- Verbal Ability
3. Friday GMAT Quizzing 9- Data Sufficiency
4. Friday GMAT Quizzing 10- Reading Comprehension

3.Essays and Deadlines:

Seven Business Schools-ISB Hyderabad, Yale SOM, Chicago Booth, MIT Sloan, NYU Stern, Wharton, and Kellogg-posted their MBA application essay topics and deadlines for 2009-2010 season.

1. Chicago Booth MBA Application Essays and Deadlines 2009-2010
2. Kellogg School Of Management MBA Essay Topics and Deadlines 2009-2010
3. Wharton MBA Essay Topics and Deadlines 2009-2010
4. Yale SOM MBA Essay Topics and Deadlines 2009-2010
5. MIT Sloan MBA Essay Topics and Admissions Deadlines- 2009-2010
6. NYU Stern MBA Essay Topics and Deadlines 2009-2010
7. Indian School Of Business (ISB) MBA Essay Topics and Deadlines 2009-2010

4. Admission Tips from the Tuck School of Business:

We took some excellent MBA appplication advice from Dawna Clarke, the Admissions Director of Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. She spoke about MBA Application in general, Academic Credentials (GMAT/ GPA), Open Interview Policy at Tuck School, and Leadership & Team Skills.

5. Join us:

And finally after successful (atleast we think so! ) two years in the MBA industry , we have started hiring now. And undoubtedly, we found out some hidden pearls in our own DonkeyLand.

Stay tuned with us. There is a lot more coming up in the month of July. Subscribe, if you haven’t so far. July is going to be an exciting month.

Further Readings:

Click the correct answers! For detailed solutions, please visit our GMAT Quant Forum.

More Quizzes:

• Friday GMAT Quizzing- Verbal Ability
• Friday GMAT Quizzing 2- Quantitative Aptitude
• Friday GMAT Quizzing 3- Verbal Ability
• Friday GMAT Quizzing 4- Quantitative Ability
• Friday GMAT Quizzing 5- Verbal Ability
• Friday GMAT Quizzing 6- Quantitative Ability
• Friday GMAT Quizzing 7- Verbal Ability
• Friday GMAT Quizzing 8- Verbal Ability
• Friday GMAT Quizzing 9- Data Sufficiency
• Friday GMAT Quizzing 10- Reading Comprehension

Subscribe to get more such free GMAT Problems in your email.

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Yale SOM MBA APPLICATION DEADLINES

Round 1: October 8, 2009 (decisions due by December 18, 2009)
Round 2: January 7, 2010 (decisions due by April 2, 2010)
Round 3: March 10, 2010 (decisions due by May 7, 2010)

Yale SOM ESSAY Topics

SHORT ANSWERS
Please answer each of the four questions below with a short paragraph of no more than 150 words. This is an opportunity to distill your core ideas, values, goals and motivations into a set of snapshots that help tell us who you are, where you are headed, and why. (600 words maximum)

1. What are your professional goals immediately after you receive your MBA?

2. What are your long-term career aspirations?

3. Why are you choosing to pursue an MBA and why now? (If you plan to use your MBA experience to make a significant change in the field or nature of your career, please tell us what you have done to prepare for this transition.)

4. What attracts you specifically to the Yale School of Management’s MBA program?

PERSONAL STATEMENT 1
Describe an accomplishment that exhibits your leadership style. The description should include evidence of your leadership skills, the actions you took, and the impact you had on your organization. (500 words maximum)

PERSONAL STATEMENT 2
Choose one of the following topics and answer it in essay form. Please indicate the topic number at the beginning of your essay. (500 words maximum)

1. A central premise of our teaching about leadership at the Yale School of Management is that true leadership—leadership that helps to address a significant problem in a new way—is necessarily personal. It is only when personal passion aligns with meaningful aspirations that individuals are able to inspire others to act in support of an important goal or cause. What are you most passionate about, and how have you demonstrated a commitment to this passion?

2. What achievement are you most proud of and why?

3. What is the most difficult feedback you have received from another person or the most significant weakness you have perceived in yourself? What steps have you taken to address it and how will business school contribute to this process?

4. Describe a situation in which you devised and implemented a creative or unique solution to a difficult problem. What obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them?

5. Required for reapplicants: What steps have you taken to improve your candidacy since your last application?

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION (OPTIONAL)

If any aspect of your candidacy needs further explanation, please provide any additional information that you would like the Admissions Committee to consider. (250 words maximum)

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