Will everyone else already know more than me? Who will be in my cohort? Will I be able to network?
Pretty much everyone considering an MBA program has questions like these. And it’s fair to say that being part of the inaugural Berkeley Haas Evening & Weekend MBA program’s Flex cohort amplified these and other questions.
“Will I be able to be in person enough to really feel like I'm part of the overall student body? The overall university?” Alecia Wall, MBA 25, a senior manager in channel acquisition with Atlassian in Austin, Texas, wondered. After just a few months, she had her answers: “I've been so pleased that, I can say yes to all of those things.”
Students who choose the Flex option take their core courses online from wherever is convenient for them, meeting twice a week at a set time with their professors and classmates. Electives, in the second half of the program, can be taken in person or online. And while the in-person WE Launch orientation gives everyone a chance to meet face-to-face, opportunities for serendipitous encounters in the courtyard or café are limited once the semester starts.
Nonetheless, Amanda Sultan, MBA 25, previously a strategic projects lead with Waymo in Detroit, happily realized that “everyone comes into this program being really, really open, and you feel like you have an instant family.”
Some of that sense of connection is due to the attention paid to the technology of the virtual classroom, which allows for plenty of interaction and discussion with the professors and classmates. But even more fundamentally, the connections are evidence of the collaborative culture nurtured in all of the Berkeley Haas graduate business school programs.
For Nour Abi Samra, MBA 25, a senior product solutions architect with Certinia, Berkeley Haas feels “like a safe space where you can give your thoughts, and be accepted, not feel judged.” Emily Harmon, MBA 25, who participates in classes from Seattle, where she is an HR integration program manager at Microsoft, describes being “surrounded by classmates and faculty who truly care about each other's success. It's a very collaborative, very supportive environment.”
That feeling extends to an 18-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Aidan Steele, MBA 25, who was “nervous about not having the language and not having the professional context to be in the business school environment” yet found a “universal” welcome from his cohort. Aidan joins classes from England, where he is now chief of staff at XLCC.
Universal is an apt way to describe a cohort that includes students from 17 U.S. states. Students share their professional insights of course, but “Beyond just hearing about people's different experiences at different companies or even in different industries, you're hearing about what they're seeing in the world around them, [things] that I would otherwise really never have a view into,” Alecia said.
Both online and in person, faculty welcome every opportunity to deepen relationships with Flex students. In addition to staying after class to continue a lively Q&A exchange, “we've had professors schedule small groups, little meetups, virtual meetups so that they can get to know other people in the class,” said Lisa Dalgleish, a manager of Talent Strategy & Innovation with Deloitte in Austin, Texas. Lisa and her fellow Texan, Alecia, agreed that whenever Flex students are on campus, faculty show up, say hi, and even join students for dinner, eager to get to know them in person.
Amanda sees the collaborative culture as a concrete example of the Beyond Yourself Defining Leadership Principle. “It's about, yes, growing in yourself and in your life, but doing it in such a positive way that you're helping those around you as well,” she said. “People are always thinking beyond themselves: How can we impact our community? How can we have a positive impact on the world through business? If you see yourself as someone who wants to learn more about business, but also have a positive impact in your community, Haas is a hundred percent the place to go.”
Interested in pursuing your MBA but worried about how it will fit in with your busy life? Learn more about the Berkeley Haas Flex MBA today!
