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My decision to join Part-time MBA at Berkeley Haas

I recently started my MBA at Berkeley Haas. I wanted to share the reasons for my decision and give some insight into the benefits of EWMBA (Evening Weekend MBA) at Haas.

This image may be fake but my admission to Haas is real, I assure you.

I must start by sharing my background so that you could put my goals i n perspective with my previous experiences. I was born in the US, grew up in the Bay Area till 4th grade after which our family moved to Bangalore. I completed my high school and undergrad in India. During undergrad I went to a top 10 engineering college, majoring in Chemical Engineering. I did not find a lot of interest in my coursework or enjoy my educational experience in undergrad. I was always looking for something else. Through a few internships, I learned how to build mobile apps I started building my own app with a few friends. With that, I started my first startup, right out of college. Over the next 2 years, I learned a lot and did a lot of things I would never have gotten to do as a young professional. After I decided to shut down the startup, I chose to come to the Bay Area to start my career in product management. In the following 4 years, I worked at an early-stage startup trying to find product-market fit for a cool piece of technology and my current gig, at Walmart, where I am building microservice platforms that manage Walmart's 300M item catalog.

To make sense of the decisions I made, I am breaking this up into three parts:

Why MBA?
Why Part-Time?
Why Haas?

Why MBA?

This question haunted me for a long time. Almost immediately after graduating from college and wrapping up my startup, I began to get daily questions from my parents about pursuing an MBA. I wrote the GMAT without any plan to apply and kept deferring thinking about why I would actually want to pursue one. I had my turning point after working in the industry for a few years. I realized I wasn't learning as much and as quickly as I wanted to. I realized it's not my employer's responsibility for my continuous learning and that this is something I needed to take into my own hands. I also felt that the time was right. I didn't have family commitments and had saved some money that I could invest in myself.

Naturally, I looked for alternatives to a $200k over-marketed education. I tried different online courses from various providers. There were many things that didn't work for me with these options. First, since I didn't have a great experience as a student in my undergrad I forgot how to be a student. I didn't have the required motivation to kickstart my learning and was unable to connect with others who shared similar goals online. Second, I really enjoyed being a student on campus. I had a great campus life and enjoyed the freedom of trying anything which I felt changed after working.

Okay so I want to study, but why MBA? Surely there might be other courses that could give me a learning experience and student life. Looking at my interests in business and technology, I looked at various Masters of Information Science Management (MISM) programs. The curriculum looked appealing. The big detractor was the demographic of students who were attracted to this program. MISM programs have become popular destinations for international students (majority Indian and Asian) who come to the program after a maximum of a year or two of experience with their key objective to start their career in tech in the US. Being in the Bay Area, I was already surrounded by the same demographic that would be my classmates in this program. I wanted a program that attracted students from different industries which would broaden my educational experience.

Why Part-Time?

Once I zeroed into the MBA, I learned that a big reason people take 2 years from the workforce is that they are looking for a career switch in 3 dimensions:

A change in location. (ie: move to the USA from India)
A change in industry (move from tech to finance, finance to the social sector)
A change in role (engineer to PM, marketing to sales, finance to VC)

I already worked in the location, industry (Walmart is traditionally a retail company but our sub-organization is technology-oriented), and role that I wanted to work in. I want to continue gaining experience as a Product Manager and require more experience in my current role to reach my goals.

An MBA is essentially a study of business. What better way to make the most of my coursework if I am working in the industry while studying. I can apply my learnings immediately at work the same week. I can use my work as a testing ground for concepts that I learn in class and see the true application of them immediately.

The MBA tuition is approximately $150k. I didn't want to be put in a position where investing in this program would impact my ability to make life decisions in the near future. I liked the flexibility of completing the part-time MBA in a minimum of 3 years. That would give me time to enjoy student life and try out different career ideas. Along with that, having the security of a job will allow me to focus on the MBA experience rather than stressing about ensuring that I have a job at the end of a 2-year degree.

A part-time program is less competitive than full-time programs. Acceptance rates at the top 10 colleges for full-time programs are around 7–14% whereas acceptance rates for the part-time program at Haas are 47%. For me, getting into a top program without taking multiple attempts for acceptance at a top full-time program was a huge benefit.

There are a few more benefits of a part-time MBA that didn't occur to me at the time of applying but have become very clear to me since joining. At a part-time program, the average years of experience are higher than that of a full-time program; 5–10 yrs at part-time vs 4–7 yrs at full time. This helps immensely as I can learn from classmates who are more experienced than me. More experience brings better networks and clearer goals. The program also attracts people from different stages in life — folks early in their career (like me), folks looking to make a transition after 10 yrs in a career, parents of young children. Being a part of a group of driven individuals who are inspired to learn and grow despite all their commitments is extremely inspiring.

Which brings me to my final point. I've noticed that life is always an evaluation of tradeoffs. Balancing work with personal life, career with hobbies, family with friends. The part-time program challenges the student to operate under a lot of competing priorities. Learning how to balance them all and learning that it is okay when we don't excel in everything is a priceless lesson.

Why Haas?

On one level, this question seems a little unnecessary once I've made the decision to do a part-time MBA and work in the Bay Area. Berkeley Haas provides the best Evening Weekend MBA program in the Bay Area. (Chicago Booth's part-time MBA is ranked higher than Haas, but it operates through a satellite campus in San Francisco with minimal interaction in Chicago. Also, I preferred not to fly to Chicago monthly for classes. )

I looked at my goals for my MBA and the kind of career path I wanted to follow. I knew I wanted to continue to stay close to the technology industry, explore how I could leverage technology to solve problems for social good, and engage in the entrepreneurial community. I have no interest in pursuing a career in consulting or finance.

A lot of the east coast business schools struck me as more traditional schools that groomed students for consultancy or finance. The backgrounds of students they attracted and the jobs that students went into after graduating reflected the same. The proximity to the Bay Area influenced Haas' involvement in technology and there are many opportunities to explore entrepreneurship.

Haas has 4 defining principles which it asks candidates to think deeply about when applying. These principles resonated with me quite a lot. 'Beyond yourself' and 'Question the status quo' were two that really stood out to me and were unique at Berkeley. I could see myself embody these principles and being among others who felt the same appealed to me.

Haas does a really good job ensuring that the part-time program has a similar experience to the full-time program. All the professors teaching the part-time program teach full time as well. (One professor openly shared that he enjoying teaching the part-time more than full-time class due to the depth of experience in the part-time classes) Additionally, the part-time students have access to all campus clubs and the career management group which helps students get jobs.

By the end of the process, I was able to put down my goals for my part-time MBA at Haas.

I want to have a college educational experience in the US and enjoy learning in a classroom environment.
I want to meet people with different backgrounds and varying industry experience.
I want to gain knowledge about business fundamentals (finance, accounting, leadership).
I want to explore different industries and see how I could contribute to society by leveraging technology.

Starting an MBA during the pandemic is not ideal, but it's a great time to invest in myself. There are some unexpected benefits though, the part-time program adds a lot of workload onto a day already filled with work and personal commitments; not having to worry about commuting to work and school definitely makes it easier to balance everything. I hope that sometime in the next year I have the opportunity to come to campus and fully soak in the student experience.

I hope sharing my decision journey helps you get some clarity on your own goals. Not everyone has the same journey, so whatever you decide is specific to your own life. Don't let anyone (including my) advice change your decisions. If you have any more questions, feel free to reach out to me on Linkedin or send me an email at aayushxagrawal at gmail . com (you know how to put that together :))