The First Coffee Chat In Chengdu

Coffee chats are informal gatherings that enable prospective students to meet and network with existing MBA students and alumni. Generally, MBA programs host coffee chats only in China’s tier-1 cities. This is due to two reasons:

1. The hosts themselves came from a tier-1 city
2. There is a perception that most MBA applicants come from tier-1 cities

Not true. Last year, when I was applying for business schools, I was actually serving a secondment posting in a tier-2 city! Yes, I felt restrained by what limited resources I had at that time. That is, I had no test-prep classes, no essay-writing workshops, and no alumni to contact!

I’m glad to have successfully hosted the first Haas coffee chat in Chengdu, a tier-2 city where the population of study-abroad students has been growing.

I initially wondered if any attendees would show at all. In China, there’s a perception that people in tier-2 cities tend to settle down once they have a job and focus exclusively on their family life. Again, not true. Over 10 prospective students showed up!

Each of them told me that their friends wanted to come too but could not leave their work! I was thrilled to learn that these prospective students had all made extraordinary achievement in their respective companies. More importantly, they expressed strong desire for continued learning.

Despite the aforementioned lack of resources, these students showed initiative by establishing a QQ (a popular Chinese social networking tool) group to help one another with the MBA process. Together they already reached out to many current students and alumni.

I made friends with each one of them through this event. I’m happy to report that many have made follow-up meeting requests to learn more about Haas. Hopefully we can continue expanding the coffee chats to even more cities in the future!

-Isabel Feng

The Beginning Of My Journey At Haas

Hi everyone, this is my first post on the Berkeley MBA students blog and I am so excited!

Welcome to Haas! I was reading these students’ posts one year ago when I planned to apply for Haas and at that time I was really attracted by the exciting life at Haas. So here I am, after one year’s preparation, from taking GMAT, attending schools’ info sessions, writing application essays, taking interviews and finally booking my tickets to SFO, a fresh first year MBA student arrived at Haas! I hope my post will help you in your application and understanding more about B-school life, especially for international students.

It has been over one month since I arrived at Berkeley. If there is anyone asks me, how do you like Berkeley? My answer is always: it is fantastic! Berkeley has unbeatable weather, unbelievably diversified restaurants, and extremely nice people!

So how about Haas? Even though I have only been to Haas for one month, I feel the spirit has already built into my blood. I am deeply impressed by the people surrounding me here.

– 2nd year students are awesome! Even though I heard that many activities at Haas are run by students, however, the extent of how broad and how deep our students are operating and running different organizations is really amazed me.  O-week, which is the acronym for “Orientation Week,” is mainly run by three 2nd year students, Kawai, Moritz and Mark! I can’t help telling others how amazing they are! For the entire orientation, all the activities, from our famous Cohort Olympics, to innovative speaker series, from taking us to contribute to community services to feed us with delicious food, is all their credit! It is just so unbelievable that three of them need to take care of 240 of us. Thanks again guys!

– My classmates are also amazing! Comparing to other top business schools, our class size of 240 students is one of the smallest. However, among 240 of us, you could find people from all kinds of different background, from working at Obama campus, to Coastal Guard,  from Olympic Athlete to Riding bicycles cross US, let along say other backgrounds, such as consulting, banking, technology, marketing, etc. Of course, Haas is most famous for its entrepreneurial spirit. So many of my classmates want to start their own companies or they have already done so. I even took a survey asking that what ranking among my classmates I would guess for myself regarding to the number of companies I will found in my life. Amazing?! Isn’t it!  This year, we have students from 39 countries. International students count for 40% of our total class. So as an international student, you can really feel it is your home here.

This is the beginning of my journey and I look forward to posting more soon!

the four weeks that just flew by – my winter break trek

“CAL” braving -15°C in the Forbidden City

They say that time waits for no one and it won’t wait for me. What seemed like for long weeks have quickly sped by as I start for my second semester at Haas.

Berkeley, CA
A little known fact: Berkeley has a low-cost, fairly broad student health insurance plan (SHIP).  Under SHIP, we not only enjoy $5 copay for eye exams, but also 50% discount on Lasik. Following my last final, I walked across the street from Haas to the UC Berkeley School of Optometry.  The next couple days were a bit dark.

Taipei, Taiwan
A week later, got onto a plane and headed to Taiwan. My wife and I got married right before school started and I wanted to take her to Taipei to meet the rest of my family. While in Taipei, I was able to connect with Haas alumni.  I was amazed at the loyalty of the alumni that they were willing to go out of their way to meet a stranger.  I learned more about what consulting, technology, financial services was like in Taiwan.

Taiwan Alumni dinner with a MBA ’11

Shanghai and Beijing, China
On the 5th, I flew from Taipei to Shanghai to meet up with 59 other Haas MBAs (combination of Full Time and evening/weekend) on a 10 day China Trek.  Treks are entirely student run and five of my classmates put together a truly memorable trek.

Balancing company visits, site seeing, and a lot of late night karaoke, it was a tour de force of activities.  We got the opportunity to visit companies including: Johnson & Johnson, GM China, Frog Design, Medtronic, Google China, Tencent, Huawei, Innovation Works, and LiNing. Beyond the company visits, we were able to meet up the alumni chapters who were able to provide great insights into doing business in China.  One alum stated that there are three rules of doing business in China:

1. Everything is possible
2. But, everything is hard
3. When they say that there it is not a problem, it is a big problem

Over the past four weeks there have simply been to many unforgettable times. It was a privilege to have Kai-Fu Lee (李开复) drop in and discuss his thoughts on China, innovation, and the Chinese psyche. It was incredible to see the passion and love of Haas from the alumni. It was pure bliss to sing “I want it that way” with 59 other classmates.

So what’s next? Study tonight for the waiver exam Friday afternoon, meet up with my wife to attend a SF MOMA 75 Anniversary event in the evening, and meet some prospective Haas ’12 at the Super Saturday I over the weekend.

New Years at Taipei 101 (the 2nd tallest building in the world)

Shanghai at night

—Vince