After stints at Columbia Business School and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, Terry Taylor (“Operations Management”) came to the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley in 2007. Considering that Taylor, who has a PhD from Stanford in management science and engineering, is often named in student blogs and online student chats as a favorite among students, he not surprisingly won the Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2009. Taylor’s academic interests include the economics of operations management and supply chain management. His core “Operations Management” course looks at operational issues confronted by manufacturing and service companies. In addition to reportedly having a well-organized curriculum and classes—which, according to a second-year student with whom mbaMission spoke, have “no down time”—Taylor, who sometimes uses references to Seinfeld episodes to illuminate concepts, can make technical subjects very interesting. A second year told mbaMission, “He’s pretty young and has a style that mixes high energy with a dry sense of humor.”

For more information on the defining characteristics of the MBA program at UC-Berkeley Haas or one of 14 other top business schools, please check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

Tuesdays and Thursdays have set agendas on the UC Berkeley Haas social schedule. On Tuesdays, MBA students gather at Berkeley’s popular pub the Bear’s Lair, and on Thursdays, students gather at the current “Bar of the Week.” The Bar of the Week is chosen from among bars in San Francisco and Berkeley each week by the VP of Social (an elected student position.)

For in-depth descriptions of social and community activities at UC-Berkeley Haas and 14 other top MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

Cameron Anderson (“Power and Politics in Organizations”), who received his PhD from UC Berkeley in 2001, came to Haas from New York University’s Stern School of Business in 2005. His teaching awards include Professor of the Year (at Stern) in 2005 and the Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching at Haas in 2008. “Power and Politics in Organizations” was described to mbaMission by a second year with whom we spoke as “easily one of the most sought-after classes at Haas.” According to the course abstract, Anderson shows students how to “diagnose organizational politics in order to form and implement new strategies.” A second-year student we interviewed said the class “teaches students how to gain power and influence people without formal authority” and added that Anderson “teaches applicable skills based on academic research and case studies of great leaders from history. He uses assignments to force students to uncover their own tools of influence and develop strategies for acquiring power in our immediate careers after Haas. I think his class is popular because it’s academic, directly applicable and introspective all at once.”

For more information about Haas and 14 other top-ranked business schools, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

The Partners Club at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, caters to the needs of MBA students’ significant others and children and is reportedly very active on campus. Beginning when students are just new admits, the club helps answer questions on everything from housing issues to community life, and throughout the academic year, the club organizes game nights, dinners, happy hours and other social events for the partners. Haas partners are also invited to attend all student social events and club activities. Said one second-year student in a November 2010 online student chat, “Honestly, I think partners have the best time in business school—they get all the fun without those pesky classes!”

For in-depth descriptions of social and community activities at UC-Berkeley Haas and 14 other top MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

1. What brings you the greatest joy? How does this make you distinctive? (250 word maximum)

This question will no doubt bewilder a lot of candidates: “What do they want to hear?” “What is a reasonable answer?” “How do I make myself distinct?” We suggest that you think about (surprise!) what truly brings you the most joy in your life and then focus pointedly on a single experience or a group of experiences within that area of interest. Perhaps you are happiest when you are indulging your imagination through art or pushing yourself physically in some kind of athletic activity. Although both of these options can be interesting, neither is necessarily “distinctive,” so you will need to determine—and then communicate—the way in which your particular passion for the activity in question is unique. This could entail how you engage in this interest or perhaps the circumstances in which you first developed an affinity for this aspect of your life—or another angle on the topic altogether. Obviously, conveying a sense of the joy you obtain from this thing or activity is important, but revealing how that joy is manifest in a way that is specific to you will mean the difference between a successful essay and one that is commonplace.

2. What is your most significant accomplishment? (250 word maximum)

Your most significant accomplishment can be from any sphere—professional, community, academic, personal—but when you are choosing which to feature for this essay, be sure to maintain a sense of balance among these spheres in the totality of your application. In short, try to represent as many dimensions of your candidacy as possible as you respond to these short-answer questions. So, whichever aspect of your profile you choose to highlight here, it should not be represented elsewhere in your application. This means that you will have to exercise judgment. The key to this essay is to choose an experience that is simple but powerful—one that speaks for itself and draws the reader in, allowing him/her to draw a clear conclusion about your capabilities. Even with just 250 words, you can sufficiently recount a story that accomplishes this goal.

3. Describe a time when you questioned an established practice or thought within an organization. How did your actions create positive change? (250 word maximum)

To successfully respond to this question, you do not need to present yourself as some kind of rebel or rabble-rouser—you can challenge authority while still acting diplomatically. What is important to Haas’s admissions committee is whether you have the strength of character to stand up for what you feel is right. So, if you have a story about a time you blew the whistle on a fraud, this would of course be a fitting experience to share, but we expect that most candidates will instead have relatively simple stories about instigating less dramatic—yet still meaningful—changes within their companies. Maybe your firm originally had a “trial by fire” culture that left newcomers floundering and you launched a system of training modules that facilitated and standardized the process of bringing new hires up to speed. Again, much as you should also do for essay one, you will need to spend some time focusing on the manifestation of your actions—the change itself is not nearly as important as how you brought about that change.

4. Describe a time when you were a student of your own failure. What specific insight from this experience has shaped your development? (250 word maximum)

Haas’s questions are not getting much easier—four short questions in, and the admissions committee wants to hear about a failure you have experienced. Many applicants feel that failure is the most difficult topic to write about, because few have had “heroic” failures (e.g., you left your job to start a nonprofit that could not raise the necessary funds and had to fold)—which are relatively easy to write about and reflect well on the candidate—and instead have had embarrassing failures (which applicants typically should avoid sharing). So, what is the right kind of failure to discuss, if you do not have one of the heroic variety?

The first thing to do when trying to identify which failure experience to share is to analyze your successes. Most successes that are worth discussing were hard earned, meaning that they most likely involved some failures along the way—you may have simply forgotten about some of the failures you experienced as part of the successes you ultimately achieved. For example, the popular new product that you launched may have initially been mispriced; you may have encountered production delays that you should have been able to avoid; you may have had trouble convincing a single retailer to sell it or originally targeted the wrong venues. Of course, these are just examples, but the nature of business is that projects are revised, deals are delayed, efforts are stymied. To write a strong essay response to this question, you must clearly convey your specific actions and intentions, thereby revealing a sincere effort on your part that simply yielded unexpected results in the end. You will also need to identify and share key learnings from the experience that caused you to change your overall approach going forward.

5. Describe a time when you led by inspiring or motivating others toward a shared goal. (250 word maximum)

In essay two, Haas’s admissions committee is interested in learning about how you operate as a “lone wolf.” In this essay, the school wants to understand that you can also be a team player—that you can rouse others to aspire to greater heights and to work toward (or more likely achieve) a team goal. One can certainly generate inspiration and motivation via fiery speeches and grandiose displays, but these are not the only ways. Humbly setting an example for others to follow can be just as effective. In the end, though, the particular manner in which the inspiration was produced is not that relevant, but you will need to demonstrate a clear cause-and-effect relationship between your actions and the reactions of others as you worked together to achieve your goal.

6. a. What are your post-MBA short-term and long-term career goals? How have your professional experiences prepared you to achieve these goals?

6. b. How will an MBA from Haas help you achieve these goals? (1,000 word maximum for 6a. and 6b.)

Because Personal Statements are similar from one application to the next, we have produced the mbaMission Personal Statement Guide, which helps applicants write this style of essay for any school. We offer this guide to candidates free of charge, via our online store. Please feel free to download your copy today.

For a thorough exploration of UC-Berkeley Haas’s academic program/merits, defining characteristics, crucial statistics, social life, academic environment and more, please check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guide to the Haas School of Business at the University of California–Berkeley.

Winner of the 2004 Earl F. Cheit Excellence in Teaching Award (an annual award determined by students) for the full-time MBA program, as well as the 2010 Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award, Teck H. Ho (“Pricing”) is the William Halford, Jr. Family Chair in Marketing at Haas. With the school since 2002, Ho also serves as director of the Asia Business Center and chair of the Haas Marketing Group. Ho consults with such firms as the Campbell’s Soup Company, eBay and Intel on pricing and new product development. A second-year student with whom mbaMission spoke liked that Ho “takes complex ideas and makes them easier to understand.” mbaMission learned that Ho’s “Pricing” class—part case and lecture format, part group presentation—is one of the most popular electives on campus, often a “sellout.” Students quickly learn to bring $1 bills with them to class—Ho often requires students to chip in money to participate in course games, and after matching the amount out of his own pocket, he gives the money to the game’s winning team.

Group projects in Ho’s course can range from studying pricing for a BART station to discussing the feasibility of a half-day pass at a nearby ski resort. Ho described his teaching philosophy in an April 2010 post on The Berkeley Blog by saying, “My vision is to have students leave the class with the ability to think strategically about pricing and with the practical tools they need for their future careers.” Noting how dynamic Ho’s classes are, one second year praised, “An hour-and-a-half class feels like it takes 30 minutes!”

For more information about Haas and 13 other top-ranked business schools, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

Students at UC Berkeley Haas take advantage of life as part of a large public university not only academically, but athletically as well. On Saturdays when the UC Berkeley football team has a home game, Haas’s courtyard becomes the site of a large tailgate party, complete with cookouts, music and cheer competitions. A second-year student told mbaMission, “The business school is the best place to tailgate on campus.”

For in-depth descriptions of social and community activities at Haas and 13 other top MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

John Morgan (“Game Theory”) has been at Haas since 2002 and won the Earl F. Cheit Excellence in Teaching Award in 2006. In an admissions podcast (“Game Theory and Strategy”), Morgan discusses how he has grown his “Game Theory” course, which studies how nations and industries interact strategically with each other. Morgan recommends that all Haas MBA students take the course, which is designed to cover all functions and industries, in their last semester at the school so that they apply the “mindset to think strategically” to what they have learned in the program. Resorting to the default name “Emily” for students who forget to bring their name card to class, Morgan expects the teams in his class to be ready to defend their strategies, but plenty of laughter is part of the course as well. As one student wrote in his April 2007 blog entry, “Game Theory” is “sooo worth the 8 a.m. start time.”

For more information about Haas and 13 other top-ranked business schools, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

Held in the courtyard of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Consumption Functions take place five times a semester and are sponsored by various student organizations in conjunction with the MBA Association. Clubs who wish to host a Consumption Function provide music, food and alcohol (the total cost of which is typically matched by the MBA Association), as well as a crew for setup, cleanup and crowd control.  Running from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday evenings, each Consumption Function typically has a theme, such as a chili cook-off or a celebration of the Chinese New Year, and is free to all Haas students, faculty and their families (even dogs!). The International Consumption Function celebrates the diversity of Haas’s student body, as students set up tables of traditional food from their home countries and regions—including Boston and Texas!

For in-depth descriptions of social and community activities at Haas and 13 other top MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.