An overdue visit to Haas

Ahh, finally a cure for my bad case of writers-block-meets-lack-of-motivation!! Taking advantage of the fact that Berkeley is a quick 20 minutes away from SF, I decided to schedule a class visit & attend an on-campus information session.

(Please do not ask why I was more than willing to jet across the country for HBS/Columbia but had not yet done this at Berkeley or Stanford...)

First of all, I really like the people at Haas. That is one of the things that attracted me to Haas in the first place back in August when I attended a half-day information session. Second, I was reminded how much I like their curriculum & small class size.

The information session I attended was, uh, interesting thanks to some suspect characters in the back of the room. ie: One guy asked - 3 times, mind you - why they accepted 480 people but the class size is only 240. (nice job insulting the school's acceptance rate, buddy...)

Next stop was off to finance class. I must admit, it was quite a different experience than my visit to HBS, although comparing corporate finance to marketing is a bit apples/oranges... The class was taught as pure lecture, with a few cold calls in between. Everyone had their laptops out, and sitting in the back of the room, it was amusing to see what non-finance things people were doing! But, the professor was funny and interesting, and the small class size really does make a difference.

After the class, I met a guy who went to the same undergrad as me. He was more than happy to talk about his experiences at berkeley (positive, positive, positive!), and explained why he chose Haas over Wharton. It was definitely insights like this that got me motivated to work on my apps, and provide some real meaning to the "Why Haas?" essays.

In other news, I'm T minus 2 days for my Harvard interview. Lesson learned: Do not sing karaoke until you practically lose your voice a few days before your interview - makes rehearsing your answers even less enjoyable... :(