UC Berkeley Trustee Dato’ Sri Dr. Tahir has given $1 million to the Haas School of Business for a new endowment fund to provide scholarships to international MBA students primarily from Asia, the school announced earlier this week.

International students have had limited access to U.S. loans for the past three years, as most lenders now require a U.S. citizen or permanent resident as co-cosigner. The Tahir Fellowship Endowment Fund will help the Haas School attract more Asian applicants to its full-time Berkeley MBA Program.

The MBA admissions office will identify prospective scholarship recipients, and the amount of awards will be flexible and dependent on available funds. The school says that each gift will be matched by the UC Berkeley Graduate Fellowships Matching Program.

Tahir, who joined the Berkeley Board of Trustees as its first trustee from Southeast Asia in 2007, says Indonesians view UC Berkeley as one of the top business school destinations. “I hope that the fellowship fund will set an example of giving back, especially for students who benefit from the fellowship,” says Tahir. “When they graduate and become successful in business, I hope they will remember their appreciation for the fellowship and will give to support another fellowship fund.”

Haas School’s Dean Rich Lyons expressed his gratitude for Tahir’s contribution, saying, “Top business schools compete intensely to attract the very best students in the market, and diversity, including international student representation, is an important goal. Dr. Tahir’s gift will greatly improve our ability to achieve this goal.”

Approaching the new set of Haas Business School questions may be intimidating, as you are required to answer six questions that focus on a variety of attributes and accomplishments, while you are being judged upon “a strong cultural fit with our program and defining principles.” A clear understanding of your application strategy – particularly your career goals and strengths/weaknesses will be key to put together a cohesive application.

Haas Business School short answers require focus, at only 250 words you will need to answer concisely and clearly to make sure your point is communicated. While challenging, this is also an opportunity to demonstrate several different aspects of your personality to the admissions committee.

As Haas Business School asks for your career goals last, the admissions committee will be getting to know you as a person before they understand what you are planning to do with your future. Make sure your career goals aren’t a huge surprise at the end, and that they logically flow from your attitude, personality and experiences.

For more information on the question and deadlines, visit the blog post on the new Haas questions.

1. What brings you the greatest joy? How does this make you distinctive? (250 word maximum)
Similar to what matters most, and why, this question seeks to get at your core values. What do you wake up in the middle of the night thinking about? (You may want to keep a pencil by your bed to get your creative thoughts flowing!) What common threads have been woven throughout your life, whether altruistic, artistic or personal?

Haas asked a similar question last year, and a new aspect is the second part where you are asked how your passion or joy makes your distinctive. Your passion is inherently distinctive because it reflects your unique core values, though it may appear standard on the surface. Delve deep into your own motivations for what gives you the greatest joy, and anything in your background that has shaped your feelings. For example, perhaps your greatest joy is something fairly typical like spending time with friends and family. Take the time to think about WHY this is your greatest joy – perhaps you are part of a tight knit family with unique values that you can discuss, or maybe you moved a lot as a kid and so your friendships feel precious. Whatever unique aspects of your background inform your joy can be relevant to the question.

2. What is your most significant accomplishment. (250 word maximum)
Your accomplishment can be big or small, but it should be significant to you. While you have limited space, this is an opportunity to demonstrate what matters to you and to showcase one of your proudest moments.

While you are asked only about the accomplishment, the best essays will use this limited space to demonstrate clearly what the accomplishment was (be specific!) as well as commenting upon the significance of the accomplishment.

3. Describe a time when you questioned an established practice or thought within an organization. How did your actions create positive change? (250 word maximum)
The situational question would like to see your values in action as part of the question. When approaching a situational essay like this it’s important to provide both a concrete example and to explain what you thought, felt and did during the situation.

4. Describe a time when you were a student of your own failure. What specific insight from this experience has shaped your development? (250 word maximum)
This question asks you to think about a time you failed, and a time you learned from that failure. This essay is your opportunity to demonstrate your maturity, flexibility and leadership qualities. Leaders are not people who are always successful, rather they are people who are willing to admit to failure and learn from difficulty.

As you recount your failure it will be crucial to demonstrate what you have learned as concretely as possible. As a thought experiment, try thinking about a recent triumph. Trace your life events backwards until you find a failure, and think about how that failure directly led to your success. For example, perhaps you took a job immediately after college that was not a good fit for you. You may have felt like the job was a failure, but instead of despairing you took the time to think about what you really wanted, and subsequently found a job that led you success in your career. Perhaps your story isn’t career oriented but showcases learning from extracurricular or volunteer involvement.

5. Describe a time when you led by inspiring or motivating others toward a shared goal. (250 word maximum)
In this essay you will want to think about a specific leadership experience and what you did, said, felt and accomplished. At the same time, you need to focus specifically on how you motivated your team and inspired a group of people to accomplish a shared goal. You may not have *done* a great deal in the situation, but the key aspect is how you helped your team to be stronger and better through inspiration and motivation.

Leadership can be expressed in many ways in your life. Perhaps you lead a team of people at work, or in a volunteer capacity. If you do not have a formal leadership role you might have led a project or contributed as a strong leader from a team perspective. Whichever type of leadership experience you had, make sure to provide specifics of the situation. Strong results always stand out!

6. a. What are your post-MBA short-term and long-term career goals? How have your professional experiences prepared you to achieve these goals?
b. How will an MBA from Haas help you achieve these goals? (1000 word maximum for 6a. and 6b.)
This is a fairly typical career goals essay that asks for both short- and long-term goals and the background that led you to this juncture in your career. Think about what you hope to achieve with your MBA and the career opportunities it will reveal for you. You don’t need to recite your resume here – rather highlight the key experiences that will be relevant in your future career.
Be specific about why the Haas School of Business is the right program to pursue your goals as well. As you consider your past experiences and your future goals you will be able to see what you want to gain from the Haas experience to fill any gaps. If you have an advertising background and want to become a brand manager you’ll likely need classes in operations and finance to understand the analytical side of brand management. Other goals will require other skills and your own unique background will inform how you take advantage of the Haas experience. Make sure you have determined exactly what courses make sense for your career goals and the programs and clubs that you will participate in to reach your personal and professional goals.

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The Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley has released the essay questions for the fall 2012 application. Click here for the deadlines, posted on the blog last week.

1. What brings you the greatest joy? How does this make you distinctive? (250 word maximum)
2. What is your most significant accomplishment? (250 word maximum)
3. Describe a time when you questioned an established practice or thought within an organization. How did your actions create positive change? (250 word maximum)
4. Describe a time when you were a student of your own failure. What specific insight from this experience has shaped your development? (250 word maximum)
5. Describe a time when you led by inspiring or motivating others toward a shared goal. (250 word maximum)
6. a. What are your post-MBA short-term and long-term career goals? How have your professional experiences prepared you to achieve these goals?
   b. How will an MBA from Haas help you achieve these goals? (1000 word maximum for 6a. and 6b.)

The application goes live in August, so until then, visit the Haas admissions website for more information.

The University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business has announced the deadlines for the 2011-2012 MBA application season.

The four deadlines are:

Round One
Deadline: October 12, 2011
Notification: January 12, 2012

Round Two
Deadline: December 1, 2011
Notification: March 1, 2012

Round Three
Deadline: January 18, 2012
Notification: April 12, 2012

Round Four
Deadline: March 7, 2012
Notification: May 17, 2012

The application will be available in August. For more information about the Haas MBA, please visit the admissions website.

It’s been another busy week for our B-school Buzz bloggers, as they’ve been continuing their GMAT prep, sharing new projects and learning about the fates of their applications.

Start your timers! – Chitra at GMAT Prep Blog reminds us this week that finishing the GMAT test can feel like a serious race against the clock, writing, “The GMAT Quantitative section features 37 questions that must be answered in 75 minutes. That averages to about 2 minutes per question. In the GMAT Verbal section, you will find 41 questions that must be answered in 75 minutes—about 1 minute 50 seconds per question.”

He advocates answering questions with one eye on a timer, which is sound advice: This technique will help you become more familiar with the amount of time allotted each question and hopefully, more comfortable with answering questions within that short timeframe.

Research project blog – Time to get a little meta. One of Felish…da dish‘s recent posts was on the subject of blogging. More specifically, a new blog that is the result of a semester-long research project. She writes, “My awesome writing partner and I are looking into the concept of digital beauty. Specifically, we’ll be researching  digital marketing and L’Oreal: how to capitalize new digital and online marketing efforts to maximize ROI.” Part of their project includes a new blog, so fans of Felish’s lively prose (me included) are in luck.

Rejection – It’s been great following Ellipsing My Way to Business School and Random Wok on their application journeys, and I find myself hoping that every new post will be about them getting accepted. Of course, a 100-percent acceptance rate is rare indeed when applying to elite b-schools, and this week both candidates received rejections from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

Ellipsing, who has already secured admission to Cornell’s Johnson School of Management, took the rejection in stride and said he was “content” with the decision. Mako at Random Wok felt that he was a great fit for Berkeley, so the “unable to offer admission” message stung a bit more. Here’s hoping that the next post we see from Mako is about receiving an acceptance call instead.

Do you have a b-school-centric blog? Want it featured on B-School Buzz?  Email me at [email protected].

According to a tweet this morning from Dean Rich Lyons of the UC Berkeley‐Haas School of Business,  the MBA program is developing an even more innovative leader through the following recent advances:

1) Competency Model: Haas is linking all of its courses to a set of 10 capabilities that provide a compelling “competency model” for innovative leadership. These capabilities are highly valued in the marketplace and rooted in the social sciences.

2) Problem Finding and Framing: Haas has created a new required course and set of application opportunities for developing deeper‐thinking problem‐solvers who are more disciplined “upstream” at the problem finding and problem framing stages.

3) Supporting Culture: For the first time in Haas’s history, the school has articulated a set of four Defining Principles conducive to innovative leadership (e.g, “Question the status quo.”). They have coded these in all of their processes, including admissions, hiring, orientation, teaching, and events.

Follow these links to read more about the Haas School’s revamped curriculum, which features new required courses, an an experiential learning requirement, and coaching to hone team performance skills.