Haas Releases Stats on MBA Class of 2020
The University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business’s MBA class continues to grow, according to the latest class profile from the school.
While last year’s cohort brought a record 284 students to campus, thanks to the opening of a new building, the increase this year is more modest, to 291. Still, those seven extra students are enough to make the Class of 2020 the largest ever at Haas, a school known for its small MBA cohorts.
Haas has been able to grow its number of MBA students apparently without sacrificing any academic quality. This year’s average GMAT is 726, up one point from last year, with the middle 80 percent of scores spanning 690 to 750.
As far as undergraduate grades, this year’s class doesn’t quite live up to last year’s average GPA of 3.71, but on the whole they still bring a respectable GPA of 3.66 to campus.
The Class of 2020 does turn out to be a little more diverse than latest year’s crop of Haas MBA students. Forty-three percent of the class are women, up three percentage points.
Meanwhile, the proportion of U.S. minorities has leapt from 29 to 38 percent. However, only 11 percent of students are underrepresented U.S. minorities, a group that doesn’t include those of Asian descent.
When it comes to work experience, Haas’s breakdown of their new MBA class by industry tells a familiar story for top U.S. business schools: consulting is the most popular industry (24 percent), followed closely by banking and finance (20 percent). Tech is a solid third at 10 percent.
As far as the functions Haas students held in those industries – well, logically enough, the top two are consulting (29 percent) and finance (12 percent).
But other functions like general management, corporate strategy and marketing are also represented at 7, 6 and 6 percent respectively. And a full 24 percent of incoming MBA students classified their job functions mysteriously as “other.”
What else we can we say about the typical Haas MBA student? They have 5.4 years of work experience, and they’re most likely to have majored in economics (21 percent) or engineering (16 percent).
But Haas itself is quick to point out that their students are about more than the numbers, and that their admissions process makes a point to “evaluate each application holistically, as interested in your motivations, purpose, and goals as we are in your professional and academic achievements.”
At a school like Haas, having stats that put you in the ballpark for admissions is necessary, but actually creating a successful application goes much further than that. It requires having a compelling personal brand that convinces the adcom you’ll add something to the community.
EXPARTUS can tell you whether your application as it stands meets that bar, and what you can do to focus your story as an applicant. If that sounds helpful, feel free to contact us for a free application assessment!