Here's exactly what it takes to get accepted into the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, according to 4 alumni and 2 program directors in charge of admissions

• The Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, is consistently ranked among the top 10 graduate business schools in the world.
• Approximately 3,700 students apply to the MBA program each year, but only about 12% are admitted.
• Four alumni, the assistant dean of the full-time MBA program and admissions, and the executive director of the MFE program told Business Insider how to stand out and get in.
• In your admissions essay and interviews, they recommended connecting your personal story to the school's four defining leadership principles, as well as taking computer science and programming courses as an undergrad to prepare for the technically rigorous MFE program.
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The Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, nestled at the top of the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley, is consistently ranked among the top 10 graduate business schools in the world. Its full-time MBA program is ranked No. 6 in the United States by US News and World Report and No. 9 globally by education specialists Quacquarelli Symonds. Its Master of Financial Engineering (MFE) program is ranked No. 1 by The Financial Engineer Times. And Haas is the nation's oldest business school at a US public university, according to its website.

Students are drawn to Haas because of its curriculum focused on innovation, proximity to disruptive companies, and intimate class sizes - while some leading full-time MBA programs pack classes with around 900 students, the class size at Haas remains under 300.

Admission is highly competitive. Each year, about 3,700 applicants apply to the MBA program, according to the Haas website, but its acceptance rate hovers around 12%, Poets & Quants reported in 2018. (You can find an overview of MBA application requirements here.)

The Haas school also offers a Master of Financial Engineering (MFE) program: One of only two financial engineering degree programs in the US that is offered within a business school, rather than engineering or mathematics departments, according to the Haas website. In the rigorous, one-year program, MFE students learn about computational finance within the context of business applications.

For its 2019 class, the program received 565 applications; 79 students are enrolled, according to the MFE profile. (You can find an overview of the MFE application process here.)

Business Insider spoke with six Haas affiliates, including four alumni, the assistant dean of the full-time MBA program and admissions, and the executive director of the MFE program, about how to gain a coveted acceptance letter.

Haas focuses on developing business leaders who reflect the school's four defining leadership principles: "Question the Status Quo," "Confidence Without Attitude," "Students Always," and "Beyond Yourself."

These principles are the school's way of being "direct about planting a flag in saying these are the kinds of leaders we want to develop," said Peter Johnson, the assistant dean of the full-time MBA program and admissions. "We look for candidates that we feel reflect the defining principles in their professional work to date."

Allison Gigliotti - a 2011 graduate of the full-time MBA program who now works as head of marketing and growth for a seed-stage startup called Out of Office - has participated in applicant interviewing.

"Someone who is successful in the interview is thinking about stories that pertain to those different aspects of the Haas culture and how they fit into it," she said.

Tushar Patel - chief marketing officer at the software company Cleo and a 2009 graduate of the Haas evening-and-weekend MBA program - said that articulating his personal connection to Haas' values was instrumental in his acceptance. He was denied admission on his first try, but reapplied a couple years later with the same undergraduate grades and GMAT score and was accepted. What changed was how he conveyed his story of why Haas was the right program for him.

"I started digging into what Berkeley stood for. It also forced me to look at other programs in the same way," Patel said. In his application essay, he focused on the leadership principle of "Question the Status Quo" to discuss how he had taken initiative with his employer to gain more international experience in Asia. He described how his experience working with the company's counterparts in Taiwan, China, and Japan helped him accelerate his understanding of diverse business models and broadened his approach to problem solving.

Johnson said authenticity is key to creating an application that stands out. He advised candidates to use the application process as a way to reflect on what they value and their career goals, rather than write what they think the school wants to hear.

"A better perspective is to say, 'Here are the reasons why this program will help me move forward in my career - here are reasons why I will be a great addition to your class,'" Johnson said.

For Gigliotti, the most difficult part of her application essay was articulating how Haas would help her make a career change. She had been working on Wall Street and wanted to use her MBA to pivot into marketing in the outdoor apparel industry.

"It was not an easy story to tell; it didn't really make sense to people," she said. While putting her essay together, she reached out to people at the companies she wanted to work for and talked with current Haas students to learn about their stories. She researched classes and extracurricular clubs, and took an interest in the school's experiential learning courses, which offer students the opportunity to work on real-world projects with companies.

Now, when evaluating candidates, Gigliotti pays specific attention to their plans to use their MBA.

"You only have two years, and a lot of the important work you do is in that first semester to set yourself up for an internship your first summer," she said. "Can they come to Haas and completely change their mind? Absolutely. But I think having that plan on the onset makes them a more successful student."

The MFE is a distinctive program within Haas and focuses on quantitative finance. When considering applicants, the MFE application committee looks closely at candidates' academic preparation in mathematics, corporate finance, and economics, as well as in programming, coding, and machine learning.

Not only should applicants have excelled in rigorous undergraduate coursework, but they should also demonstrate "intuition in finance," said Linda Kreitzman, the MFE's executive director.

Having a strong background in at least three of these areas could be enough for the admissions committee to offer a contingent recommendation for acceptance. For some promising candidates, the school will consider designing a program for them and following their progress before offering an official acceptance letter, Kreitzman said. "In other words, I will say to the students, 'We want to recommend you for admission, but we are going to have some requirements, and [admission] will be subject to you fulfilling requirements,'" like select courses or internships that will address the candidates' skills gap, she explained.

Brodie Gay - who finished the MFE program in 2016 and now works as the vice president of research at Unison, a home-ownership investment company - became interested in the MFE program while he was an undergraduate engineering physics student at Berkeley. He looked into several MBA programs, but upon learning more about the Haas MFE program, felt that it was the best fit for him. He stopped by Kreitzman's office in person to introduce himself and to learn more about the program's offerings and requirements.

Of his classmates, Gay said, "We were all looking at MBA programs, but [the MFE] fit our skill set far more. It's often a different look at the same material. It's a look that's more of an engineer's perspective on finance."

Even for students pursuing the traditional MBA, being familiar with programming can give students a "way to think algorithmically through problems," Gay said. "You're going to be doing a lot of Excel modeling; it can help you think through a particular modeling challenge."

The Haas admissions team looks for applicants who will not only fit in with the community, but who will give back to their peers and the school - both while in the program and after they graduate.

In the last year, the application committee has been focusing on how "to develop leaders who understand how to lead in diverse environments, and how to create inclusive work environments," Johnson said. The current MBA class profile includes 35% of students who come from international backgrounds, and about 30% who identify as US minorities.

For Kira Noodleman - a principal at the venture capital firm Bee Partners and a 2017 graduate of the full-time MBA program - her international work experience as a product manager in Buenos Aires and San Francisco set her application apart, she said. In her essay, Noodleman highlighted her early product management experience at a Google innovation lab. She described how she'd led a development team spread across South America to build a type of smartphone for populations that didn't have internet access. She'd included how she could contribute her knowledge in software product management as a resource for her peers, but also discussed the missing pieces in her knowledge that she wanted to gain from others - more about business operations, marketing, and design innovations.

At Haas, Noodleman offered her experience as a resource for colleagues who wanted to pursue a career path in product development. She also took advantage of the option Haas gives for students to develop and run their own courses - she built on her personal interest in mindfulness meditation and created a one-credit class for other students, which continued to be offered after she'd graduated.

"There's so much trust baked into the way that culture is built and the way they bring people into the community. It feels like a family." Noodleman said.

Haas alumni have expressed that the school's commitment to its culture and community is one of the most valuable benefits they have gained from their experience.

"It really is a tight community," Kreitzman said. "We have a very close, personal relationship with the alumni. Many of them are personal friends."

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