Haas revamps its MBA curriculum

Well, let me tell you why Haas before I go further. University of California, Berkeley was one of the best moment of my life. I visited Berkeley Campus during my official HQ trip to USA in the Bay Area. The campus visit was one of my memorable ones. Though it was a holiday and I did not find any students int he campus but the visit and 5 hrs at Berkeley campus was enough for me to be part of the b-school when I decided to go for my MBA. Yes, I am going to compete for the Haas Business School with all my power.

Now that you know Haas is one of prospective B-School, I was thrilled and excited when I heard about the news of Haas revamping its MBA curriculum. Anyone aspiring for Haas might know that the school defines innovative leaders as individuals who drive growth by putting new ideas into action in every corner and every function of their organizations, and who do so responsibly. The differentiaiting factor of Haas is Berkeley Innovative Leader Development (BILD) and it seems that it runs through the breadth, height and length of the amazing years of MBA at Haas. oNe interesting excerpt from the article was:

As part of the strategic planning process, the school codified its culture into four defining principles:

– Question the Status Quo: Being able to envision a different reality, to take intelligent risks, and to learn from failure, as well as having the courage to speak our minds.

– Confidence without Attitude: Being able to make decisions based on facts and analysis, giving us the confidence to act without arrogance, leading through trust and collaboration.

– Students Always: Having a mindset of curiosity and lifelong learning, seeking personal growth, and practicing behavior that tells others we can learn from them.

– Beyond Yourself: Considering the long-term impact of our actions and the facility for putting larger interests above our own.

These four defining principles will be used in the selection process of MBA students, as well as be integrated into the curriculum in various ways. “These principles have always been the Haas heartbeat, but we have never articulated them until now and have never used them so deliberately to shape our students and graduates,” said Dean Lyons.

Few questions that immediately came to my mind was whether there will be some serious changes in the application essays this year considering the fact that the curriculum has changed. But never mind, I am sure people like me who are genuinely interested in Haas will be able to pull it through. So, keeping my fingers crossed and awaiting the Haas application eagerly.

Source: Forbes Article on Haas

AWA 30

When someone achieves greatness in any field – such as the arts, science, politics, or business – that person’s achievements are more important than any of his or her personal faults.

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your point of view with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.

I completely agree that one’s achievements are more important than his or her personal faults especially when he or she achieves greatness in some field. A lot of people are born and then they die after spending a span of time on earth. But there are very few people who leave their everlasting marks on the sands of time, which pushes the life of the other people on this earth forward. It is this capability of those few people’s achievements that gives us the courage to face the realities of life every day. I believe that such people’s achievements are definitely more important than their failures due to the following reasons.

Firstly, there is no doubt that when someone achieves something great in any field, it shows a new path to the whole world. Sometimes, these paths are so strong that they change the course of the current world. For example, let us consider Abraham Lincoln. He changed the course of American history with the abolition of the slavery. It is his greatness that people in America are better people than anyone in this world today. Similarly, Mahatma Gandhi changed the course of Indian history with his beliefs on truth and non-violence. It is due to his sheer will that made the whole country run for the struggle of Independence unanimously. People like Dhirubhai Ambani led the Indian business to a new level by bringing Economic Liberalization in the country in early 1990′s. Narayan Murthy has led the country into a new blend of truth and ethics while creating one of the most successful IT services companies of thew world – Infosys. People like Thomas Elva Edison gave a new direction to the lives of people and science with his invention of Electric bulb.

Secondly, it is the achievements of the successful people that gives inspiration and motivation to the younger generation for more new innovations. One cannot ignore the fact that it is the failures that make the ordinary lives of great people extraordinary. But it is their achievements that draw people to look into their lives do closely to draw inspirations from. For example, even though Edison was thrown out of his class citing poor intellectuals, he went on to become a great scientist. Similarly, Abaraham Linclon failed miserably in his business and other ventures before going on to become one of the greatest leaders of the world and most influential President in American history. The point here is that we know the past of these successful persons only because they rose to become successful person and leaders in this world at some point of their lives. It is their achievements that took us to go into their past.

Due to the above said reason, I agree with the opinion stated earlier that a person’s achievements are more important than his or her personal faults.

AWA 12

It is unrealistic to expect individual nations to make, independently, the sacrifices necessary to conserve energy. International leadership and worldwide cooperation are essential if we expect to protect the world’s energy resources for future generations.

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your view with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.

To analyze whether individual nations need to make the sacrifices independently or with international leadership and worldwide cooperation to conserve energy, one needs to first analyze the below mentioned circumstances on how the world can be currently categorized to handle such a delicate issue.

Firstly, the world can be divided into developed, developing and under-developed countries. Developed countries use enormous amount of energy to sustain their consumer demands and keep the pace of their economy on the roads of growth. For, example, USA consumes almost a quarter of the fuel energy resources despite having a very small percentage of the population of the world. Developing countries like India and China, have almost half of the world’s population, try to meet their ever increasing demand to catch up the developed countries and hence, are more resistant to adopt the changes necessary to conserve energy. Under-developed countries like African countries, lagging in technology and reeling under poverty can hardly feed themselves daily adequately, so it is foolish to expect anything from them. In such a scenario, it is tough to accept that these countries will make, independently, the sacrifices to conserve energy; rather they may try to be more selfish and conservative according to their environments and demands.

Secondly, with international leadership and cooperation, a unified code of law can be adopted by all abiding nations. These laws can later be extended to other poorer countries with the aid and hep of powerful nations to adopt their growing economies to the energy demand properly. Probably, the approach like that of CTBT and Nuclear treaties, that helped in bringing down the nuclear arms race among nations and enhance cooperation in the development nuclear technologies for the mankind like that of the electricity, can be very useful in conserving energy too. Additionally, to abide by such a law, the timeline should be appropriately decided depending on the state of the country like developed countries like USA can abide quickly as soon as possible while poorer African countries can be given sufficient time to abide, in turn not affecting their growth.

Though one cannot ignore the importance of conserving energy for our future with frequent alarms of global warming, the realistic way of achieving the goal is to have a unified global code of law, which every country has to follow within a certain stipulated timeline with the help of global leadership like UN and cooperation.

Essay 13

There are many types of television shows:comedies, news programs, dramas, reality series, and so on. What is your favorite type of television shows?

I prefer comedies among all the television shows due to below said four reasons.

Firstly, comedies generally help in relaxing and getting energized again. For example, immediatley after The 70′s show, I generally feel out of the worries and tensions and feel afresh to take on the challenges of the daily life.

Secondly, watching shows as that of Friends, make the whole family to be together and enjoy each moment of it. They make me feel closer and understand the deeper meanings of the realtionships too.

Thirdly, comedies provide laughter among us, which has suddenly become one of the most essential ingredient in todays busy world. People have forgetten what is laughter and how to laugh. The enormous number of laughter groups is an example of this. SOmehow, I tend to get the most of the laughter from the funny dramas in the comedy serials.

Last but not the least, Laughing is said to be the best medicine to all the diseases of the world and comedies are the only one who tend to take us back to our childhood where we tend to laugh and live in our dreams and joy, which we tend to lose as we grow up.

Essay 12

If you could spend a year living in any city on the world, which city would you choose to live in?

I would like to choose New York. New York is famed to be the financial capital of the world and one of the busiest city. I choose New York due to four reasons.

Firstly, as I intend to work till the end of my life, New York can provide excellent opportunity to explore new challenges in the financial domain, win which primarily I am interested in. With the experience and mature financial market, I can not only impart my learnings but also learn from the changing markets.

Secondly, being in one of the main city, I can have all the facilities like health, entertainment, etc. at the highest level and efficiency.

Thirdly, the schools and universities like that of NYU Stern, Columbia, Buffalo, etc. help in imparting high class education to the people residing in the vicinity with ease.

Last but not the least, New York has the utmost infrastructure to support the communication and thus, enhancing the reach to any part of the world as and when required and with much ease than any other city probably in the world.

Essay 8

Imagine that you can talk for one hour with any person who has lived at any time in history. Which person would you choose to meet?

I would like to meet Abraham Lincoln. Apart from being one of the greatest man of his period and making history in the world, there are few things that I would like to sit with him to ask.

Firstly, what makes a man so special like him? It needs a lot of guts and courage to break the general conventions of one’s living time. Nad there can be no beter person than him to give this answer than Abraham Lincoln, who failed multiple number of times and despite his failures, he went on to finally become one of the greatest President and leader, the world has ever got.

Secondly, if he would have born in this time, what are the things he would have wanted to change or atleast would have fought for? This answer could give a lot of youngsters to live their lives for a cause rather than being lost in finding them for whole life.

Thirdly, though short, but his talk about his experiences would have given enthusiastic people like us, a light of hope of following a path to contributing their life for a good cause. Nevertheless, not to forget the quotes of a famous person “The purpose of Life is to have a Life with a purpose”.

Essay 7

Some university students prefer living in campus housing such as dormitories. Other students prefer living in off-campus housing such as apartments. Which of these two options would you choose?

I would prefer living in the campus rather than off-campus. Living in campus housing such as dormitories gives us the following advantages:

Firstly, being in close proximity to the university, there is no time constraints. Sometimes, commuting may take lot of time, which may be judiciously used for studying, extra-curricular activites, playing sports or making friends. Additionally, there is no headache of daily traffic woes and hence, we can free of strict time-oriented activities at the campus.

Secondly, it allows to mix with the blend of students of the other courses and may be of other countries in the dormitories, thus, allowing to expand the horizon of relationships, culture, hertitage and own social network, which comes fruitful during the testing times of our lives. It gives the opportunity to participate in the various university activities and mingle with the people.

Thirdly, it always allows us to use the university amenities like computer labs, research labs, gyms and libraries as and when required, provided there are no constraints to using them.

Last but not the least, other than generally being less costly than off-campus housings, university life comes for just a couple of years where we are free to have our lives with others, which could leave a long-lasting impact on our lives and we go on to make life-long friendships. After the university, everyone tends to move out to their families and jobs, eventually settling down at the apartments.

Essay 6

Failure often leads to success.

Thomas Elva Edison having failed 100 times to build the bulb once said “By failing 100 times, I came to know 100 ways not possible to build the bulb”. So, yes failure always shows the path not to be taken and try a different path that could give the solution to the problem.

Let us take the example of Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln became the Presidnet of the United States after a lot of failures in his life. His famous failure in his early career attempt to do business made him debted for almost 15-20 years but he once said, those failures made him more stronger to achieve success as Success was eluding him.

Similarly, failures are the milestones which one should always remember in their lives. They  demonstrate the real-life classrooms of the university which we call the LIFE. These are those mistakes and learnings, which become our experiences in our later part of our career and lives. These are the FAILURES only that have made people like Steve Jobs to come back to his own-founded company Apple after he was fired in 10 long years of struggle.

Moreover, its due to failures only that makes some people to stay and maintain their success levels after they achieve becuase they understand the pain and the hard work it takes to reach the level of success. Additionally, successful person tries to work for the major masses when they understnad what failures teach them and try to better the society by the experience is their failures.

Essay 4

Some people believe that zoos serve useful functions. Other people believe that it is cruel and wrong to confine animals in zoos.

Freedom is the most fundamental right of all the human beings in each and every independent country of the world. A lot of world wars and freedom struggles are fought just for the sake of FREEDOM. If FREEDOM is necessary for human beings, then it is also necessary for each and everyone who has life and can feel. And so, I strongly feel that it extends to the animals also and it is absolutely rubbish to confine animals in the zoos.

There are several reasons for this. Firstly, by confining animals to the zoos, we encourage them to be provocative against the boundaries to break them and set themselves free, thus, endangering the nearby human habitats. As an example, I remember when I was visiting San Francisco late last year, the day we planned to visit the SFO zoo, one tiger broke out of the zoo killing a man and injuring a couple others. How far can such an incident be justified when we ourselves are responsible of having the zoo in the city? Secondly, the reasons given for having a zoo is to protect animals and help save the endangered species. But just imagine what would we do when someone tries to enter our house forcibly or some other country tries to empower us? We actually try to defend ourselves and save out belongings and properties rather than just moving out to some other place, provided by our enemies as the safe Heaven. Now, the animals become endangered due to our excessive neglect, greed and so-called fast development. But we forget that we are disturbing the ecological development cycle in this process. If we don’t interfere in the activities of the wild animals, there is no reason why some species should become extinct. Thirdly, sometimes education is also given as a strong reason for having zoos, but can’t the same education be provided in a well-protected environment of animals such as sanctuaries, where people can visit once in a while, but not regularly, for study purposes, giving the animals the freedom of roaming and living their life in an open environment rather than confined cages of zoos. Moreover, now a days, the television channels like Animal Planet, Discovery and NGC are much more informative. due to the above said reasons, I strongly feel that it is absolutely cruel to strip any living thing of their basic fundamental right-FREEDOM just for the sake of few bucks and in the name of false-development of the humankind.