The Academic & Career Essentials Workshops are designed to facilitate a smooth transition into the first year of your MBA. The core courses will cover a lot of material in a relatively short time, so these workshops provide in-depth instruction on specific skills that are required for strong performance in the program.
We strongly encourage you to attend these workshops so that you can build these foundational skills, re-acquaint yourself with material you may not have worked with recently, and adjust to being back in the classroom.
Even if you took part in the virtual MBA Quantitative Skills Course that you were invited to participate in by Admissions, we recommend that you also take part in our in-person workshops. They provide a great opportunity to get to know the Haas faculty, your classmates and acquaint yourself with the Haas campus. While we hope that the MBA Quantitative Skills Course provides a critical opportunity to learn the foundational skills that you will need in the core, our workshops will provide further opportunity for you to review materials in the Haas context. We hope to see you on campus for these workshops in August!
Previous Schedule Overview (Updates Coming in Spring)
B-SCHOOL 101
Description: Unsure how to mentally prepare for your two-year MBA adventure? Nervous you don’t know the difference between Private Equity and Return on Equity? This workshop will give you the skills and knowledge to start your MBA experience off confidently.
We’ll learn frameworks on how to maximize the connections with your classmates and provide ways to ensure others learn from your background and experience. Part soft-skills, part factual, this workshop will help anyone who wishes to optimize their time at Haas. It will be especially helpful to those with a “non-traditional” background. Taught by Rob Shaye, CFP®, FTMBA 2014, Coast Guard Officer, Entrepreneur, and current Lecturer at Haas. Rob will share how he approached his MBA experience and how, looking back 10 years later, his time at Haas has propelled his career.
Excel Basics Workshop
Description: Familiarity with the basic functionality of excel is essential for all students. During this workshop we will illustrate most of these basics – how to structure and organize efficient worksheets, labeling and formatting, useful functions and tips, how to use goal seek, how to enable add-ins, pivot tables, common errors, etc. Students with little to no experience with excel are strongly encouraged to attend. Students with intermediate experience with excel may benefit too. Note that all exercises in this workshop are pre-recorded in short videos and these videos are posted on bCourses. They will remain available throughout the academic year. No preparation for this workshop is required.
Description: The Data and Decisions workshop is designed to help the students prepare for MBA200S - the Data & Decisions core course in Fall A. It includes a brief discussion of the theory and various exercises on the concepts covered in chapters 1-12 from the required textbook. The students are highly encouraged to review the pre-recorded content on this topic or review the chapters from the textbook prior to the live workshops. The pre-recorded content includes short videos and summary slides posted on bCourses. The workshop concludes with review of practice quizzes given in prior years.
Description: The standard excel package includes many functions and other tools helpful for a number of statistical calculations and data analyses. This workshop is designed to help students familiarize with these functions and tools before the Data and Decisions class begins. Examples: Data Analysis Toolpack, correlation matrix, regression analysis, t-values and z-values for normal distribution. Note that all exercises in this workshop are also pre-recorded in short videos and these videos are posted on bCourses. They will remain available throughout the academic year. No preparation for this workshop is required.
This session is designed to equip you with essential graduate school strategies and techniques for navigating your MBA journey over the next two years. Whether you've been away from academia for a while or need a refresher on balancing school with your schedule, Thao Valdez, one of your academic advisors and a recent graduate of her Master’s program in Public Administration, is eager to connect and discuss helpful ideas and tips before you dive into your first semester of MBA courses.