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Because of its proximity to Silicon Valley, the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley benefits from an entrepreneurial halo effect, and many applicants therefore consider it a good location from which to launch careers in venture capital and private equity. Nonetheless, of Haas’s Class of 2009, only 1.7% entered these fields. Regardless of the small numbers (and we should note that this is relatively consistent with levels at many of Haas’s peer schools), opportunities abound at Haas for students who are targeting this field, via the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. One unique opportunity for a small number of students is the Haas New Venture Fellows Program, which offers three to five first-year students and one to two second-year students the opportunity to perform actual project work for local venture capital firms for academic credit. Students in this highly selective program have completed projects with such firms as Bessemer Venture Partners and Trinity Ventures. The New Venture Fellows also participate in the program’s Pitch Lab, in which budding entrepreneurs from within the UC Berkeley community can practice their pitches for feedback and advice. In addition, the program organizes events to facilitate networking between its fellows and practicing venture capitalists in the area. Although entering the venture capital world right out of business school can be quite challenging, attending a school that can get you in the door certainly helps.

Essay 1:
a) MBA Program applicants – Briefly assess your career progress to date. Elaborate on your future career plans and your motivation for pursuing an MBA. (600-word limit)

b) MMM Program applicants – Briefly assess your career progress to date. How do the unique characteristics of the MMM Program meet your educational needs and career goals? (600-word limit).

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 Kellogg’s academic program, merits, defining characteristics, important statistics, social life, academic environment and more, please check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guide to the Kellogg School of Management.

Essay 2: Describe your key leadership experiences and evaluate what leadership areas you hope to develop through your MBA experiences (600-word limit).

In your essay response to this question, you might offer two simple vignettes that showcase your leadership experience via narratives, and then evaluate yourself and denote certain areas in which you believe you can improve. Although you are expected to be critical in discussing these areas for development, take care not to deride your strengths. Rather than examining the ways in which you are lacking as a leader, focus on the ways you could become a more complete and capable one. In this essay question (much as in essay question three), specific reference is made to your future experience as an MBA student at the school. So, you should seize this opportunity to illustrate a connection between you and Kellogg by showing that you understand how certain resources at the school will directly facilitate your development as a leader.

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Applying to business school in 2011? 2012? By taking action now, you can dramatically improve your chances of gaining admission to a top MBA program in the coming years. Indeed, it is never too soon (and certainly not too late) to take several crucial steps to shape your MBA candidacy. Join mbaMission Founder Jeremy Shinewald as he leads prospective applicants through a Planning for Business School Seminar. Topics of discussion will include the following:

* Creating Your Ten-Month (and Beyond) Timeline
* Maximizing the Impact of Community Activities
* Accelerating Personal Goals
* Building an Alternative Transcript
* Taking and Retaking the GMAT
* Making the Most of Campus Visits
* Understanding the Differences Between MBA Programs
* More…

Date: Monday, August 1, 2011
Time: 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. EST
Location: Kaplan Midtown Center – 131 W. 56th Street
Price: Free!

To register for this event, please click here.

Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday.

These days, many in the financial industry take the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) study program to bolster their credentials and become more attractive to employers. Some candidates with the CFA designation subsequently worry that it undermines their need for an MBA and that the admissions committee will question their candidacy. Well, worry not.

One thing to keep in mind is that the CFA is a narrowly focused program. It teaches finance, accounting and economics, but it does not teach marketing, strategy, entrepreneurship and other such areas typically included in an MBA curriculum. So, your need for a broad general management education should still be evident if you were to move outside the financial field. Further, even if you were to return to finance, you could still benefit from specialized academic courses that the CFA does not offer (for example, a class in “Emerging Market Private Equity”). In addition, the CFA does not offer experiential opportunities that add value, such as speakers and internships. So, in short, the MBA admissions committees understand that candidates with their CFA have more to learn and experience after earning their charter.

In fact, far from being a negative, the CFA is actually a positive—the designation suggests that you are independently motivated and dedicated to learning, and that you have core competencies that will allow you to manage the MBA curriculum. Further, especially during an economic downturn, your CFA designation shows that you have achieved a certain standard, one that gives you an edge with many employers. So, is the CFA a help or a hindrance? We would say it definitely helps…

At the end of the day, you will write only three essays for your Yale School of Management application, but you may very well answer as many as eight questions. Yale’s first essay question involves a number of requirements, and among its various essay choices, one option includes three additional choices. So, before you start writing, take a step back and think about what differentiates you as an applicant and what message you want to send to the admissions committee. If you then move forward with a few key stories and attributes in mind, completing these essays should be a lot easier.

Short Answers
Please answer each of the four (4) 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 going professionally, and why. (600 words total)

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? (If you plan to use your Yale MBA to make a significant change in the nature of your career, please tell us what you have done to prepare for this transition.)
4. The intentions of our students to engage in a broad-minded business school community and to connect to an eminent and purposeful university greatly influence the Yale MBA experience. How do you plan to be involved in the Yale SOM and greater Yale communities?

These four questions encompass the primary elements of a classic Personal Statement essay question—short-term goals, long-term goals, why you want or need an MBA and “why us”—so we encourage you to consult our mbaMission Personal Statement Guide, which helps applicants address these topics in their essay(s) for any school. We offer this guide to candidates free of charge, via our online store. Please feel free to download your copy today.

The only anomaly in these four mini questions is the last, which requires you to explain how you will engage with the Yale SOM and larger Yale University communities. So, your first order of business is to think about the experience you want to have at the school while also considering the areas where you can contribute (and ideally, contribute something unique!). Then, do your homework on the school, perhaps by reading the mbaMission Insider’s Guide to the Yale School of Management or by chatting with SOM students or alumni or with those of other schools within the university. A brief list of clubs or activities will not constitute a solid answer to this essay question. Instead, make sure to reveal that you truly understand how a particular club (for example) functions and that you have a clear vision for how you would contribute to the organization.

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