I will teach you how to bring your life stories to essays faster with F1GMAT's essay guides. Download below or subscribe to F1GMAT's Service and work with me - Atul Jose, Author/Editor/Founding Consultant, F1GMAT(16 Years of helping applicants gain admissions to M7 and Top 30 schools) Berkely Haas has published the essays for the Fall 2024-25 application, i.e.. the 2025 entering class.
The school has continued with its popular “What Makes You Feel Alive essay,” the standard short-term and long-term goals essay, and How Haas Will Help, the DEI leadership essay, and an example of adhering to Haas’ Defining leadership principles.
In this in-depth Haas MBA Essay tips series, I will capture:
• Haas Feels Alive Essay Tips
• Goals Essay Tips
• Haas DEI Essay Tips
• Video Essay Tips
• Optional Essay Tips
Berkeley Haas MBA Feels Alive Essay Tips
Required Haas Essay #1 Tips: What makes you feel alive when you are doing it, and why? (300 words maximum)
This is a lesson I learned while editing client essays and writing Sample Essays for F1GMAT’s Haas MBA Essay Guide. Most authentic narratives either affirm a stereotype of the applicant’s profile or break the stereotype.
Strangely, both work.
If the stereotype is positive, the catch should be to bring a twist that is less used in school applications.
Confirming Positive Stereotypes
A client chose to share the passion to learn a new art form as what makes her feel alive. And by sharing the struggles and the dip one experiences acclimatizing to a habit or a new learning curve, she could connect with the school’s admissions team.
The trick here was the phrase she used to express the struggle.
I have yet to see the metaphor she used to express the desperation to cross the first milestone in learning the new art form. But by the end of the narrative, I was glad that she feels alive doing what she loves the most – “Challenging herself and learning something new.”
The new art form was music and specifically learning Violin – a cliched narrative for Asian applicants, but not once I felt that her story was something I had read before.
It is all about the W-pattern in stories and using unusual expressions that a Bot or your competing applicants don’t use.
Breaking Stereotypes
The second style of Haas Feels Alive essay is about breaking stereotypes. It becomes a cliché when the narrative feels manipulated.
A soft spoken applicant in a predictable Technology career exploring Macho adventures felt manipulated when the whole narrative didn’t try to reconcile the choice of two diverse paths - A desk job interacting with a computer and a weekend persona seeking thrill.
Once we brainstormed and brought a mentorship angle, the rigid stereotype turned into a human story.
Most of the time, it requires small tweaking to turn a boring Haas Essay into an interesting narrative.
Berkeley Haas MBA Goals Essay Tips
Required Essay #2: What are your short-term and long-term career goals, and how will an MBA from Haas help you achieve those goals?
As a writer of Essay Guides, I must admit that the most boring part as a writer and useful part for F1GMAT’s Essay Guide readers is the Sample Goals essay.
It is boring for a writer like me because it feels like an Essay prompt I have attempted a hundred times as a writer and as an Editor for F1GMAT's Essay Editing services. But it is the most important question you must address.
Luckily, the Haas MBA admissions team has added an extra prompt to guide applicants on what they mean by long-term goals essay – “span a decade or more and encompass broader professional aspirations.”
So your long-term goals essay is “What you want to do in your early and mid-40s,” and your short-term goal is “What you want to do in your early to mid-30s.”
Achievable. Relevant. Motivated (ARM)
The number of times I have attempted to write a novel can beat any story on persistence. Then I read the short stories of Maupassant and got inspired to write short stories – an extension of Sample Essays I have been writing for over a decade.
It could be an interaction, an event, or a life experience that can motivate you to change careers, pursue an ambitious goal, or seek networks and learning opportunities that will make your dream come true.
Finding that one Moment is tough.
Spend most time brainstorming for that one moment. Then, narrate your long-term goal.
The short-term goal is the easiest part of MBA essays once you know how to do curriculum analysis and connect with your story.
Another error in perception I see is the use of overambitious goals to show fit for M7, T10, or T15 schools. This is not necessary if you are already working in an industry or function where your daily goals are ambitious.
The school will connect the dots.
Instead of ambitious goals, you can highlight an aspect of the pursuit where there is a clear gap. And the skills you are lacking.
The Berkeley Haas MBA’s clear bias towards leadership development in the curriculum should be highlighted.
Find at least one motivation that is aligned with the leadership curriculum at Haas.
Essay #3 and the Video Essay on Leadership Principle prove Haas’ inclination toward leadership development..
Berkeley Haas MBA DEI Essay Tips
Required Essay #3: 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. Describe any experience or exposure you have in the area of diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and belonging whether through community organizations, personal, or in the workplace? Candidates seeking consideration for mission-aligned fellowships may use this space to reflect on their commitment to the mission of those fellowships. (300 words max)
DEI narratives have been a regular feature for the past 2 years. Once I began reading the essays, I could correlate what worked and what is a cliché.
The cliché is spinning even a mild discomfort, standing up for someone in your team and antagonizing a person in power as a DEI initiative. Unfortunately, you are unlikely to experience opportunities to stand up for an underrepresented person if you don’t have wide or consistent volunteering or extra-curricular experiences.
This is where most applicants with limited experience outside work fail to convert the narrative.
The only exceptions are candidates from the military who have strong representation at Haas. They can afford to leverage other examples.
Another one are in roles that require traveling regularly – Sales & Marketing or Consulting, or staying in inhabitable terrain (Oil Rig).
Even in such constraints, applicants have highlighted initiatives in their companies that demonstrated their leadership to question flaws in the company culture.
Here, choosing examples and narrating incidents with sensitivity is the key.
Don’t create a caricature.
Berkeley Haas MBA Video Essay Tips
Video Essay Prompt: The Berkeley MBA program develops leaders who embody our four Defining Leadership Principles. Briefly introduce yourself to the admissions committee, explain which Defining Leadership Principle resonates most with you, and tell us how you have exemplified the principle in your personal or professional life. Please review the Defining Leadership Principles in advance and take time to prepare your answer before recording. You will be able to test your audio-visual connection before recording. Video essays should last 1-2 minutes and may not exceed 2 minutes.
For Haas, the Defining Leadership Principles are covered by four principles
• Question the Status Quo
• Confidence without Attitude
• Students Always
• Beyond Yourself
I have explained in detail how to use the Four Defining Leadership principles before even attempting a draft for the essay.
If you see the larger objective behind the four principles, it is about building leaders who are not selfish, ready to take risks, prioritize learning regardless of their age or role, and think of the whole of society and not just the customers or beneficiaries they will be serving.
Once you understand that this is another leadership essay, you will find interesting examples.
You may read the Sample Essays I wrote for F1GMAT’s Haas MBA Essay Guide.
Berkeley Haas MBA Optional Essay Tips
Optional Essays
The admissions team takes a holistic approach to application review and seeks to understand all aspects of a candidate’s character, qualifications, and experiences. We will consider achievements in the context of the opportunities available to a candidate. Some applicants may have faced hardships or unusual life circumstances, and we will consider the maturity, perseverance, and thoughtfulness with which they have responded to and/or overcome them.
Don’t fill this essay if you had a comfortable middle-income or upper middle-income and above childhood.
The most cliched examples are all around financial hardship that, on the second read, were just small roadblocks.
A few even tried to quote the hardship of their parents or grandparents to evoke sympathy.
You might not know what your competitors are writing. For help in brainstorming the right examples – Subscribe to F1GMAT’s Essay Editing Service.
The second information that the Berkeley Haas MBA Admissions team expects is the classic gaps in employment, grades falling out of range in academics, and other unusual career choices.
If you have such setbacks or gaps, share them here.
