Required Haas MBA 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)
Objective: Which of the three Berkeley Haas DEI objectives are met by this sample essay – Increase Diversity & Representation, Integrate DEI Skills, and Cultivate Belonging?
Objective Met: Integrate DEI Skills and Cultivate Belonging
Objective Met (Explained): The challenge for the applicant – a designer was to break down impairments from the most affected to impairments that were specific and offered a larger perspective on design issues that affected the silent majority, who typically don’t voice these concerns.
Applicant’s Ethnicity: Irish American
Profile: App Designer
Industry: Technology
Skills: Research
Traits: Empathy
Beneficiary: Visually Impaired, Physically Impaired
Theme: Design
Theme (Explained): Sometimes the DEI experience traverses outside the confines of demographic, age, gender, and socio-economic status. Addressing impairment is still a big gap in many organizations. Although traditional impairment challenges are now mitigated by larger organizations, Web & App design professionals are only understanding the many challenges of impairment in accessing the right menu or using the ubiquitous swipe function.
The applicant - a design prodigy faces this aha moment while designing an App for senior citizens. In addition to the traditional ergonomic roadblocks, the applicant also had to overcome an impairment emerging from visual and color blindness. The DEI moment changes the applicant's value in understanding the diverse challenges users face while suffering from a permanent or temporary impairment.
Opener: I wanted to start with the applicant’s unique skills and pivot to a problem he was trying to solve – faster prototyping.
Strategy: Highlighting the applicant’s strengths early on was a strategy that I adopted.
The middle of the essay is a learning experience for the applicant that he shares with the admissions team.
Also, I didn’t want the reader to feel that the applicant didn’t consider obvious design choices that address the concerns of the differently abled. To avoid creating such an impression, the problem had to be explained with all its nuances. Then when the applicant shares his aha moment, the reader won’t find the gaps as obvious gaps.
While creating the narrative, I also had to be careful not to include too manage design jargon.
Simplify just enough for a general reader to understand.
Sample Haas MBA Essay on DEI (DEI in Design) (297 Words)
I was obsessed with App development right from high school when I won the Google Code Jam competition. Once I applied my skills to large tech giants, I explored ways to help non-profits with fast..
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