berkeley essay topic

Example of an Assessment Topic

Below is an example of an assessment reading and question in the style you can expect for the BWA. There are also some sample essays written in response, as well as some notes about them and their scores.

• Read the passage and the essay topic that follows. Respond to the topic by writing an essay that is controlled by a central idea and is developed by discussing specific examples.
• You will have two hours to read the passage and complete your essay. You may print out the passage, make notes, or highlight parts of the passage. Plan your essay before you start writing. Allow time to reread and proofread your essay to make any revisions or corrections.
• Your essay will be evaluated on the basis of your ability to develop the central idea, to express yourself clearly, and to use the conventions of written English. The topic has no "correct" response.Sample Reading Passage

Introductory Note

Daniel J. Levitin is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at McGill University, where he directs the Laboratory for Musical Perception, Cognition, and Expertise. The following passage is adapted from This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin, copyright© 2006 by Daniel J. Levitin. Used by permission of Dutton, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Expertise Dissected

How do people become expert musicians? And why is it that of the millions of people who take music lessons as children, relatively few continue to play music as adults? When they find out what I do for a living, many people tell me that they love music, but that their music lessons "didn't take." I think they're being too hard on themselves. Although many people say that music lessons didn't take, cognitive neuroscientists have found otherwise in their laboratories. Even a small exposure to music lessons as a child creates neural circuits for music processing that are more efficient than those of people who lack training. Music lessons teach us to listen better, and they accelerate our ability to discern structure and form in music, making it easier for us to tell what music we like and what we don't like.

But what about those classes of people that we all acknowledge are true musical experts--the Alfred Brendels, Sarah Changs, Wynton Marsalises, and Tori Amoses? How did they get what most of us don't have, an extraordinary facility to play and perform?

The scientific study of expertise has been a major topic within cognitive science for the past thirty years, and musical expertise has tended to be studied within the context of general expertise. In almost all cases, musical expertise has been defined as technical achievement--mastery of an instrument or of compositional skills. The late Michael Howe, and his collaborators Jane Davidson and John Sloboda, launched an international debate when they asked whether the popular notion of "talent" is scientifically defensible. They assumed the following alternatives: either high levels of musical achievement are based on innate brain structures (what people refer to as talent) or they are simply the result of training and practice. They define talent as something (1) that originates in genetic structures and (2) that is identifiable at an early stage by trained people who can recognize it even before exceptional levels of performance have been acquired.

It is evident that some children acquire skills more rapidly than others: the ages of onset for walking, talking, and toilet training vary widely from one child to another, even within the same household. There may be genetic factors at work, but it is difficult to separate genetic factors from factors with a presumably environmental component, such as motivation, personality, and family dynamics. Similar factors can influence musical development and can mask the contributions of genetics to musical ability. Brain studies, so far, haven't been of much use in sorting out the issue because it has been difficult to separate cause from effect. For example, studies of violin players by Thomas Elbert have shown that the region of the brain responsible for moving the left hand--the hand that requires the most precision in violin playing--increases in size as a result of practice. We do not know yet if the propensity for increase preexists in the genetics of some people and not others.

The strongest evidence for the talent position is that some people simply acquire musical skills more rapidly than others. The evidence against the talent position--or, rather, in favor of the view that practice makes perfect--comes from research on how much training the experts or high achievement people actually do. Like experts in mathematics, chess, or sports, experts in music require lengthy periods of instruction and practice the most, sometimes twice as much as those who weren't judged as good.

In one study, students were secretly divided into two groups (not revealed to the students so as not to bias them) based on teachers' perceptions of their talent. Several years later, the students who achieved the highest performance ratings were those who had practiced the most, irrespective of which "talent" group they had been assigned to previously. This suggests that practice is the cause of achievement, not merely something correlated with it. It further suggests that talent is a label that we're using in a circular fashion: when we say that someone is talented, we think we mean that they have some innate predisposition to excel, but in the end, we only apply the term retrospectively, after they have made significant achievements.

Anders Ericsson at Florida State University and his colleagues approach the topic of musical expertise as a general problem in cognitive psychology involving how humans become experts in general. In other words, he takes as a starting assumption that there are certain issues involved in becoming an expert at anything, that we can learn about musical expertise by studying expert writers, chess players, athletes, artists, mathematicians, in addition to musicians. The emerging picture from studies of high achievers in many fields is that ten thousand hours of practice are required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert-in anything. In study after study--of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you--this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or twenty hours a week, of practice over ten years. Of course, this doesn't address why some people don't seem to get anywhere when they practice, and why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

[Copyright© 2014 by the University of California. All rights reserved. Produced for the University of California.]

Essay Topic

According to Levitin, what roles do talent and practice play in enabling people to reach outstanding achievements in any field? What do you think of his views? Write an essay responding to these two questions. To develop your own position, be sure to discuss  our own specific examples. Those examples can be drawn from anything you've read as well as from your own observation and experience.

University of California, Berkeley | UC Berkeley

• Cost & scholarships
• Essay prompt

Want to see your chances of admission at University of California, Berkeley | UC Berkeley?

We take every aspect of your personal profile into consideration when calculating your admissions chances.

University of California, Berkeley | UC Berkeley’s 2023-24 Essay Prompts

Select-a-prompt short responses.

Please respond to any 4 of the 8 questions below.We realize that not all questions apply to all applicants, so be sure to select the 4 questions that you believe give us the best information about you.All 8 questions are given equal consideration in the application review process. Responses to each question should be between 250-350 words.

Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes or contributed to group efforts over time.

Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.

What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time?

Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.

Describe the most significant challenge you have faced and the steps you have taken to overcome this challenge. How has this challenge affected your academic achievement?

Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom.

What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?

Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you stand out as a strong candidate for admissions to the University of California?

What will first-time readers think of your college essay?

Stay on top of the latest insights.

Advice, tips and insights from the admissions dream team., table of contents, how to answer the new berkeley haas mba essay and video.

• By Sharon Joyce

When you apply to the University of California -Berkeley Haas School of Business, they want to know what makes you feel alive, how an MBA will help fuel your MBA goals and what kind of leader you are —and they want you to show them.

Haas has added a video essay as one of the required MBA application components for 2023–24 and changed its Essay #2. My colleague Peter Johnson , a former Assistant Dean for the Full-Time MBA and Admissions at Haas, and I have fresh advice on how to answer these essay questions. 

Haas introduces the essay section of its application with a statement of its Defining Leadership Principles (DLPs). The Berkeley MBA program develops leaders who embody these principles: 

• Question the Status Quo
• Confidence Without Attitude
• Students Always
• Beyond Yourself 

The new video essay asks applicants to “briefly introduce yourself to the admissions committee, explain which leadership principle resonates most with you, and tell us how you have exemplified the principle in your personal or professional life.” Videos must clock in under two minutes.

Acing the Video

Video replies are gaining popularity among all b-schools. It’s a useful way to assess poise and presence as well as the thoughts and information you share. It’s also a way to enhance authenticity. While essays can now easily be cranked out with ChatGPT (although we definitely don’t recommend it ), an effective and personal video is harder to automate.

Videos are also a great way to assess judgment. Is a reply TMI? Admissions committees want to get to know the real you, but it’s obviously important to be appropriate. And, finally, videos can be a fun and fresh way to express your excitement about Haas. The DLPs are a distinctive draw that attracts students to Berkeley, so it can be a creative way to share your enthusiasm.

Be succinct. Two minutes may seem like a lot when you’re staring into the eye of the camera with admissions on the line — but it’s really not. With only that short window to work with, don’t try to address all four of the principles. Instead, focus on one of the principles and demonstrate how you reflect it with clear and cogent examples. 

Once you’ve sketched out your thoughts and know what you want to say, practice!  As noted the evaluation of these responses are likely to be graded on communication skills and poise as much as on content. And if you’re a bit intimidated about talking on camera or mastering the technology, Fortuna has you covered. Our fellow coach Cassandra Pittman explains how to ace your video here , and Karen Hamou offers advice on what to wear . 

Advice for Essay #2.

Leadership was the topic of Berkeley’s second essay last year. Now that the video is covering that theme, the new Essay #2 asks, “How will an MBA help you achieve your short-term and long-term career goals? 

Last year, this was a question embedded within the application and was 150 words on immediate short-term goals. With the word count expanded to 300, this question is likely probing more deeply to see if applicants have realistic goals that can be met through the program at Haas.

Although the prompt asks, “How will an MBA help…,” this essay is really looking beyond the credential of the recognized degree. Berkeley wants to know what skills you will build or enhance and what experiences you will leverage in pursuit of career goals. It’s important to be specific. Make sure you call out what specific aspects of Berkeley ’s MBA program will bolster your success after graduation.

We sometimes suggest citing companies that heavily recruit at Haas when applicable as a way of showing your awareness of the school and the link between your goals and what is achievable. For the budding entrepreneurs, perhaps mention Haas alumni entrepreneurs who are working in a similar space.

Our take on the rationale behind this question is this:  The committee wants to know if your personal and professional goals are aligned with the program at Haas and how you will leverage the Berkeley MBA experience to achieve them.

Start with a Splash in Essay #1

Essay #1 remains the same: “What makes you feel alive when you are doing it, and why?”

As someone who has read thousands of applications, we love the wording of this question. Any opportunity to learn about what ignites the spark in a candidate is really exciting to read. (Remember that most Haas admissions readers will be plowing through some 2,000 application essays in a single cycle.)

This question is also evocative of the iconic Stanford GSB essay, “What matters most to you, and why?” –  which similarly gets personal and requires a profound level of self-reflection and sincerity. This question also underscores that Haas is looking for people who will actively contribute to the community and beyond, not just in the classroom. This essay prompt allows the admissions team to understand “what makes you tick,” above and beyond what they’ll glean from your academic record and work history.

Your intellectual acumen and accomplishments being a given, what are you passionate about and why does it ignite that spark of life within you? A successful essay will share a specific and personal experience that helps the reader get to know you better, giving insight into your character, values, or how you would uniquely contribute to the Berkeley Haas community. 

Given that you only have 300 words, the maxim to “show, not tell” is critical here. You want to bring the reader on the experience with you so they can smell, taste, feel and connect to whatever it is you’re describing – what it felt like to summit that mountaintop and peer into the volcano’s smoky belly, or the felt experience in a devotional act of creation that erased any sense of time. 

Unless it’s deeply sincere and absolutely rings true, a community service moment or tutoring exchange isn’t necessarily the experience to spotlight. Dig deep and dare to have a little fun here; your voice can convey your personality.

Short Tips for Short Answer Essay #4

The final required essay asks, “Can you please describe any experience or exposure you have in the area of diversity, equity, inclusion, justice and belonging whether through community organizations, personal, or in the workplace? (150 words max)

One of the goals at Berkeley Haas is to develop leaders who value diversity and aspire to create an inclusive environment in which people from different backgrounds feel welcomed and supported.

Some or many applicants will not have direct experience in supporting DEI, especially international candidates for whom the concept may be new.  Even so, it’s important to demonstrate awareness of the importance of diversity and inclusion and to share one’s own exposure to the concepts and perhaps how they hope their time at Haas will add to their ability to be inclusive leaders. 

Remember that diversity can be much broader than race, gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Feel free to explore differences in national origin, class or lived experiences and the lessons you learned from these experiences. 

The optional questions remain the same.

One final change this year is that Berkeley Haas has moved to using the Common Letter of Recommendation from GMAC : This change eliminates one additional question specific to Haas that asked recommenders to explain how applicants reflect the value of “confidence without attitude.” Haas explained to us that they adopted this change to streamline the process, making it easier on many fronts for applicants, letter writers and programs.

Sign up for our free consultation to learn how we can offer more personalized coaching.to optimize your MBA application. 

Fortuna Admissions coach Dr. Sharon Joyce is the former associate director of admissions at Berkeley Haas. Fortuna Director Peter Johnson is Former Assistant Dean for the full-time MBA Program & Admissions at Berkeley Haas.

• Posted on June 18, 2023

Share this article on social media

Sign up now for a free 30-minute discovery session to get personalized feedback on your profile and learn how Fortuna can help you secure admission to your dream school!

Sign up for a free consultation

Sign up for our free bi-weekly newsletter and get the best MBA admissions advice straight to your inbox.

First Name *

Last Name *

• Our Culture
• Our Location
• Developing Leaders
• Diversity & Inclusion
• Sustainability
• Academic Approach
• Career Development
• Learn from Business Leaders
• Corporate Recruiters
• Dean's Speaker Series
• Dean’s Hosted Speaker Events
• Our History
• Acclaimed Alumni
• Commencement Speakers
• Dean Ann Harrison
• Haas School Board

• Full-time MBA
• Evening & Weekend MBA
• MBA for Executives
• Compare the MBA Programs
• Master of Financial Engineering
• Bachelor of Science in Business
• Berkeley M.E.T. (Management, Entrepreneurship, & Technology)
• Global Management Program
• Robinson Life Sciences Business and Entrepreneurship Program
• BASE Summer Program for Non-business Majors
• BCPA Accounting Summer Program
• Berkeley Haas Global Access Program
• Michaels Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Business
• Boost@Berkeley Haas
• Berkeley Business Academy for Youth
• Executive Education

• Research & Insights
• Media Contacts
• Faculty Experts
• Faculty Directory
• Academic Groups
• Research Institutes & Centers
• Faculty Initiatives
• Case Studies
• Research Labs
• California Management Review
• Nobel Laureates
• Teaching Awards
• Visiting Executives & Scholars
• Faculty in Public Policy
• Faculty Recruitment

• Alumni Network
• Chapters, Groups, & Networks
• Slack Alumni Workspace
• Alumni Directory
• Email (Alumni Email Services)
• Student-Alumni Connections
• Professional Resources
• For BS, MA, MFE, & PhD Alumni
• For MBA Alumni
• Lifelong Learning
• Worldwide Alumni Events Calendar
• Give to Berkeley Haas
• Impact & Recognition
• Haas Leadership Society
• How to Give

Give to Haas

Your investments drive excellence

Evening & Weekend MBA Program

Essays help us learn about who you are as a person and how you will fit with our community. We seek candidates from a broad range of industries, backgrounds, and cultures.

We encourage you to reflect on your experiences, values, and passions so that you may craft thoughtful and authentic responses that demonstrate your fit with our program—professionally, academically, and culturally . Our distinctive culture is embodied in our Defining Leadership Principles - Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself.

Below are the required essays, supplemental essays, and optional essays for Fall 2024.

Required Essay #1 - Personal Story

To help admissions get to know you please share something about yourself that may not be evident in other parts of your application. Examples might include information about your family, culture, hobbies, and lived experiences. Please avoid professional topics. 

(300 word limit) 

Required Essay #2 - Professional Statement

Please summarize your primary area of professional expertise or knowledge. What do you do, and what are you known for? 

(150 word limit)

Supplemental Information

• Please briefly list how you have demonstrated strong quantitative abilities or plan to strengthen your quantitative abilities.
• If you have ever been subject to academic discipline, placed on probation, suspended, or required to withdraw from any college or university, please explain. An affirmative response to this question does not disqualify you from admission.
• For each of your recommenders, please list their name, company, the dates you worked with the person, and the context of your professional relationship.
• Please provide an account of any gaps in your employment since earning your undergraduate degree. If you are not employed full time, please explain your current employment situation and your career search plans.
• List up to five significant community and professional organizations and extracurricular activities in which you have been involved during or after university studies.
• If you are applying from outside the Bay Area, please explain your plans to attend classes on campus. Please include your employment plans and whether you intend to relocate or commute .

You are encouraged to use bullet points where appropriate. 

Optional Information

We invite you to help us better understand the context of your opportunities and achievements.

1. If you were raised in one of the following household types, please indicate.

• Raised by a single parent
• Raised by an extended family member (grandparent, aunt/uncle, niece/nephew, cousin)
• Raised in a multi-generational home
• Raised in foster care

2. Are you responsible for providing significant and continuing financial or supervisory support for someone else? Please indicate below:

• Extended family member (grandparent, aunt/uncle, niece/nephew, cousin)

You are welcome to use this opportunity to expand on hardships or unusual life circumstances that may help us understand the context of your opportunities, achievements, and impact.

Finally, you will have the opportunity to convey relevant information not addressed elsewhere in your application. This may include an explanation of academic aberrations, supplemental coursework, etc.

• REQUEST INFO
• EVENTS NEAR YOU

Haas School of Business University of California, Berkeley

• For Companies
• For Recruiters
• For Visitors
• Business Library
• UC Berkeley Directory

INTERNAL SITES

• bMail (Berkeley Email)
• For Current Students
• For Faculty
• Emergency Information

Copyright © 2024 UC Regents | UC Berkeley | Privacy Policy | Accessibility | Nondiscrimination

Back to Top

• Berkeley Haas School of Business Essay Tips and Examples

June 6, 2023

Jeremy Shinewald

Berkeley Haas 2023–2024 Essay Tips

Required essay #1: what makes you feel alive when you are doing it, and why (300 words maximum).

Perhaps you are familiar with the psychological concept of “flow,” which is a mental state people enter when they are completely immersed in and focused on something they enjoy and are enthusiastic about—it is also described as being “in the zone.” With this question, Berkeley Haas is basically asking you to discuss what puts you in the zone. If you are truly excited about something—and, we would assume, therefore engage in it on a regular basis—writing about it should not prove too challenging. Like all other application questions, this one has no “right” answer, so do not try to guess what you think the school wants to hear. Authenticity is key to your success here. Note that the prompt includes the words “when you are doing it,” so although you may feel strongly about certain causes or values, such as animal rights or environmental matters, for this essay, you will need to discuss an activity rather than an ideology.  

The school does not stipulate that your topic needs to come from a specific area of your life (e.g., professional life, community service, personal life). We appreciate that you are likely passionate about your career, but this is not automatically your best choice for a topic here, especially given that the school’s second required essay offers a better opportunity to discuss your professional side. What Berkeley Haas wants to learn from this essay is what gets your heart pumping and mind revving. Enthusiasm and intensity can be very inspiring and energizing and can lead to big ideas and actions. Sharing what incites such feelings in you gives the admissions committee an idea of where you might someday make an impression on the world, how you might leave your mark—especially once you are equipped with all you will gain and learn during your MBA experience.

That said, do not worry if the thing you feel so fervently about might initially seem commonplace to someone else. For example, perhaps you feel passionate about basketball. Because this is an interest anyone could share and enjoy, you might have concerns that it could sound pedestrian or unremarkable—and for many, this is a completely unremarkable pastime and one they should not write about. If, however, you can show that you have engaged with basketball in a way that takes the activity well beyond being a commonplace hobby and that it is something you connect with on a deep level and in various ways (perhaps having played for many years, you now coach youth teams from underprivileged neighborhoods in your community), then it most definitely becomes an acceptable discussion topic. In such a case, basketball could be used to reveal intensity, dedication, commitment to yourself and others, growth, longevity, and/or resilience. Of course, we are offering basketball here just for illustration purposes. We imagine you likely feel the flow when engaging in a completely different activity or even in disparate activities that are unified by a single behavior, such as when you are creating something or perhaps motivating others. The options are very much endless.

Once you have identified the passion you wish to discuss, avoid simply telling the admissions committee about it and instead illustrate how it manifests in your life. For example, rather than starting your essay by stating, “I have been watching and playing basketball since I was a child,” you need to create a more vivid impression of your dedication and involvement, such as “From playing with my brothers after school to varsity ball in college to now coaching a youth league in my community, I can hardly remember a time when basketball wasn’t an integral part of my life.” Or consider a more narrative approach, such as, “Dripping with sweat, I thrust my right arm up and knocked the basketball away, just as the buzzer sounded.” Once you have set the scene and presented the object of your fervor, you must then explain why you connect with it so strongly or so well. Perhaps it gives you a sense of peace or purpose, or it makes you feel connected with others in a meaningful way, or it allows you to challenge yourself mentally or physically. A successful essay response will not only paint a clear picture of your passion but also highlight the elements of your personality that make it significant to you.

Required Essay #2: How will an MBA help you achieve your short-term and long-term career goals? (300 words max)

With this rather no-nonsense query about your motivation to earn an MBA and expectations as to where you will go with it professionally after graduation, Haas simply wants you to spell out what you have in mind as you approach this phase of your life and career. With just 300 words, focus on presenting your answer as directly and thoroughly as possible. Keep in mind that the rest of your application needs to provide evidence that your stated goals align with your existing skills and interests, especially once they have been augmented by an MBA education. This will show that your professed objectives are achievable and thereby lend credibility to your statement. Also take care to present your goals in such a way that the transition from your short-term objective to your long-term aspiration makes sense. Although the school does not explicitly ask you to discuss your past experiences here or why its program in particular is the best one for you, succinctly touching on both of these points would be advisable and important to both providing context for your stated goals and demonstrating your fit with and need for a Haas MBA specifically.

This straightforward question basically constitutes the core of a typical personal statement essay. And because personal statements are similar from one application to the next, we created our mbaMission Personal Statement Guide , which helps applicants write this style of essay for any school. This publication is available free of charge and provides both detailed guidance and illustrative sample essays. Be sure to download your copy today.

Required Essay #3: (Video) The Berkeley MBA program develops leaders who embody our four Defining Leadership Principles . Briefly introduce yourself to the admissions committee, explain which leadership principle resonates most with you, and tell us how you have exemplified the principle in your personal or professional life. (Not to exceed 2 minutes.)

Start by taking a deep breath. We understand that video essays can make you feel like you are being put on the spot, but Haas is really not trying to stress you out. The admissions committee simply wants a more dynamic representation of your personality than a written essay can provide. So just deliver your response honestly, as smoothly as you can (despite any nervousness you might be feeling), and be yourself. 

If you have not done so already, you should of course start by familiarizing yourself with the four Defining Leadership Principles so you can determine which one you connect with most and should therefore speak on in your video: Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself. This question offers you incredible flexibility and is essentially an opportunity for you to share a strong relevant story from your past—one that relates directly to one of the four key principles. First you must “introduce yourself to the admissions committee,” and given that this part is about a topic you know very well (you!), the only real challenge will be keeping this portion succinct. (Remember that your entire video can be no longer than two minutes!) After that, launch right into your story. Absolutely avoid beginning your anecdote with a statement like “The key principle I have displayed is [fill in the blank].” Instead, let your actions speak for themselves and naturally reveal the connection with one of Haas’s four key tenets. If that connection is not clear on its own, you need to keep refining your story until it is. In a little under two minutes, you can absolutely convey a clear narrative with a distinct beginning, middle, and end that shows the admissions committee your strengths, rather than simply stating that you possess certain characteristics. Do not use any part of your video to pitch your candidacy, detail your career goals, or express your admiration for the program. 

Remember to bring energy and enthusiasm to your submission. You are trying to connect with the admissions committee as well as communicate information, so a little charisma is welcome.

Required Essay #4 (Short Answer): Can you please describe any experience or exposure you have in the area of diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and belonging whether through community organizations, personal, or in the workplace? (300 words max)

Without question, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are on many people’s (and companies’) minds these days, and Haas is certainly not the only top MBA program asking its applicants to discuss these topics. Some schools are asking candidates to discuss a time when they cultivated a more diverse community or encountered a challenge related to DEI or had their world view altered by a DEI-related experience, but Haas’s prompt leaves things a bit more open-ended: “ any experience or exposure” (emphasis ours). Given that this is a required essay—albeit a short one—this leeway will likely be helpful to candidates who might have less exposure to such issues or environments.

You can draw from any area of your life (professional, personal, community/volunteer), so truly reflect on the entirety of your background for possible stories for this essay. Consider your role in the different situations. Were you a leader of a diverse team? A participant or member of a diverse group? An observer? The object of someone else’s focus? Next, consider both your actions and the effect the experience had on you. Did you learn a valuable takeaway or change your mind about an issue, person, or group? Did you change someone else’s perspective? Were you inspired to act in some way—or to maybe cease acting in some way? Did you have to (or choose to) speak up or confront someone, and if so, why? 

You do not need to have led a revolution or camped out for days in protest to craft a compelling, effective response to this question (though such stories would understandably make an impression). Authenticity, honesty, and sincerity are all key here. Speak genuinely and directly about your personal experience in the DEI/justice/belonging space and share its import for you and the effect it has had on you, so the Haas admissions committee can understand your level of  familiarity and engagement with these meaningful issues.

Optional Essays: The admissions team takes a holistic approach to application review and seeks to understand all aspects of a candidate’s character, qualifications, and experiences. We will consider achievements in the context of the opportunities available to a candidate. Some applicants may have faced hardships or unusual life circumstances, and we will consider the maturity, perseverance, and thoughtfulness with which they have responded to and/or overcome them.

Optional information #1: we invite you to help us better understand the context of your opportunities and achievements..

1. What is the highest level of education completed by your parent(s) or guardian(s)? 

• Did not complete high school
• High school diploma or equivalency (GED), associate’s degree (junior college), or vocational degree/license
• Bachelor’s degree (BA, BS)
• Master’s degree (MA, MS)
• Doctorate or professional degree (MD, JD, DDS)

2. What is the most recent occupation of your parent(s) or guardian(s)?

• Skilled worker
• Professional

3. If you were raised in one of the following household types, please indicate.

• Raised by a single parent
• Raised by an extended family member (grandparent, aunt/uncle, niece/nephew, cousin)
• Raised in a multi-generational home
• Raised in foster care

4. What was the primary language spoken in your childhood home?

5. If you have ever been responsible for providing significant and continuing financial or supervisory support for someone else, please indicate.

• Extended family member (grandparent, aunt/uncle, niece/nephew, cousin)

6. Please elaborate on any of your above responses. Alternatively, you may use this opportunity to expand on other hardships or unusual life circumstances that may help us understand the context of your opportunities, achievements, and impact. (300 words maximum)

Optional Information #2: This section should only be used to convey relevant information not addressed elsewhere in your application. This may include explanation of employment gaps, academic aberrations, supplemental coursework, etc. You are encouraged to use bullet points where appropriate.

Although Berkeley Haas’s first optional essay prompt is somewhat elaborate, it is not necessarily all that complicated, and we imagine it will offer some applicants an easy way of highlighting particular elements of their background without having to try to fit them into a different essay. The school clearly wants direct information and basic explanation(s) from this option, so simply answer the questions and succinctly provide any necessary clarifications using the allocated word count. The second optional essay prompt asks applicants to focus specifically on information they deem most “relevant,” and the lack of a word limit means candidates can fully explain whatever they feel the admissions committee truly must know to be able to evaluate them fully and fairly, though the note about using bullet points implies that succinctness would be appreciated. This is not , however, a blank-slate invitation to dump every bit of remaining information about yourself that you feel the school is lacking. Also, avoid the temptation to simply reuse a strong essay you wrote for another program here or to offer a few anecdotes you were unable to incorporate into your other Berkeley Haas essays. Be judicious in your use of this opportunity, and submit an optional essay only if you truly believe a key element of your story or profile is needed for the school to have a complete and accurate understanding of you as a candidate. Consider downloading your free copy of our  mbaMission Optional Essays Guide , in which we offer detailed advice on when and how to take advantage of the optional essay (including multiple sample essays) to help you mitigate any problem areas in your profile. 

The Next Step: Mastering Your Berkeley Haas Interview

Many MBA candidates find admissions interviews stressful and intimidating, but mastering this important element of the application process is definitely possible—the key is informed preparation. And to help you develop this high level of preparation, we offer our  free Interview Guides ! Download your free copy of the  Berkeley Haas School of Business Interview Guide  today.

To learn more about the essays for other top business schools, visit our MBA Essay Tips and Examples Resources Page .

2023-2024 Berkeley-Haas Business School Essays MBA Essay Tips

Tags: Berkeley Haas business school essay MBA application essays optional essay

Upcoming Events

• Mar 26, 2024 Your 2024 MBA Application Action Plan (Online)
• Apr 25, 2024 Assessing Your MBA Profile (Online)

Upcoming Deadlines

• Mar 25, 2024 Dartmouth Tuck (Round 3)
• Mar 25, 2024 London Business School (Round 3)
• Mar 26, 2024 Texas McCombs (Round 3)
• Mar 26, 2024 Vanderbilt Owen (Round 4)
• Mar 28, 2024 Berkeley Haas (Round 4)
• Apr 1, 2024 Penn State Smeal (Round 4)
• Apr 2, 2024 Penn Wharton (Round 3)
• Apr 3, 2024 Columbia (Round 3)
• Apr 3, 2024 Northwestern Kellogg (Round 3)
• Apr 3, 2024 Virginia Darden (Round 3)
• Apr 4, 2024 Chicago Booth (Round 3)
• Apr 4, 2024 Michigan Ross (Round 3)
• Apr 8, 2024 MIT Sloan (Round 3)
• Apr 9, 2024 Stanford GSB (Round 3)
• Apr 9, 2024 Yale SOM (Round 3)
• Apr 10, 2024 Cornell Johnson (Round 3)
• Apr 12, 2024 UCLA Anderson (Round 3)
• Apr 15, 2024 USC Marshall (Round 3)
• Apr 29, 2024 Toronto Rotman (Round 4)
• Apr 29, 2024 UNC Kenan-Flagler (Round 4)
• Apr 30, 2024 Georgetown McDonough (Round 4)

Click here to see the complete deadlines

2023–2024 MBA Essay Tips

• BU Questrom School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Cambridge Judge Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Chicago Booth School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Columbia Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management Essay and Examples
• Dartmouth Tuck School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Duke Fuqua School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Emory Goizueta Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• Esade Essay Tips and Examples
• Georgetown McDonough School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Harvard Business School 2+2 Deferred MBA Program Essay Analysis 2024
• Harvard Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• HEC Paris Essay Tips and Examples
• HKUST Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• IE Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• IESE Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• INSEAD Essay Tips and Examples
• International Institute for Management Development (IMD) Essay Tips and Examples
• Ivey Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• London Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• Michigan Ross School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• MIT Sloan School of Management Essay Tips and Examples
• Northwestern Kellogg School of Management Essay Tips and Examples
• Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• NYU Stern School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Ohio Fisher College of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Oxford Saïd Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• SMU Cox School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Stanford Graduate School of Business Application Essay Tips and Examples
• Texas McCombs School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management Essay Tips and Examples
• The Wharton School Essay Tips and Examples
• Toronto Rotman School of Management Essay Tips and Examples
• UCLA Anderson School of Management Essay Tips and Examples
• UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• USC Marshall School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• UVA Darden School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• UW Foster School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management Essay Analysis, 2023–2024
• Villanova School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Yale School of Management Essay Tips and Examples

Click here for the 2022–2023 MBA Essay Tips

MBA Program Updates

• Berkeley-Haas
• Boston University (Questrom)
• Cambridge Judge Business School
• Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper)
• Columbia University (Columbia Business School)
• Consortium for Graduate Study in Management
• Cornell University (Johnson)
• Dartmouth College (Tuck)
• Duke University (Fuqua)
• Emory University (Goizueta)
• George Washington University (GWSB)
• Georgetown University (McDonough)
• Harvard University (Harvard Business School)
• IE Business School
• IESE Business School
• Indian School of Business
• Indiana University (Kelley)
• Ivey Business School
• London Business School
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan)
• New York University (Stern)
• Northwestern University (Kellogg)
• Notre Dame (Mendoza)
• Ohio State University (Fisher College)
• Oxford University (Saïd Business School)
• Penn State Smeal College of Business
• Rotman School of Management
• Saïd Business School
• Southern Methodist University (Cox School of Business)
• Stanford University (Stanford Graduate School of Business)
• University of California Los Angeles (Anderson)
• University of Cambridge (Judge)
• University of Chicago (Booth)
• University of London (London Business School)
• University of Michigan (Ross)
• University of North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler)
• University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
• University of Southern California (Marshall)
• University of Texas at Austin (McCombs)
• University of Virginia (Darden)
• Vanderbilt University (Owen)
• Villanova School of Business
• Yale University (School of Management)

Top Tips to Tackle the Berkeley Haas Video And Goals Essay

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on WhatsApp
• Share on Reddit

The University of California -Berkeley Haas School of Business has added a video essay as one of the required MBA application components for 2023–24. The video essay asks about leadership, so Haas has also revised its Essay #2, formerly on that topic. They also simplified its recommendation letter by moving to the common format.

We’ve  got fresh advice on how to handle all of this, so read on.

Your Video Introduction

Haas sets itself apart from other schools with its Defining Leadership Principles (DLPs). The Berkeley MBA seeks to develop leaders who embody these principles: 

• Question the Status Quo
• Confidence Without Attitude
• Students Always
• Beyond Yourself 

The new video essay asks applicants to “briefly introduce yourself to the admissions committee, explain which leadership principle resonates most with you, and tell us how you have exemplified the principle in your personal or professional life.” Videos must clock in under two minutes. 

This requires some careful reflection —and some practice. Your response should be smooth, succinct and show what kind of leader you are and aspire to be. 

Videos give admissions committees a direct and authentic way to get to know you. They also are a good way to assess judgment.  Is your reply TMI? Admissions committees want to get to know the real you, but it’s obviously important to be appropriate. And, finally, videos can be a fun and fresh way to express your excitement about Haas. The DLPs are a distinctive draw that attracts students to Berkeley, and this is another way to demonstrate your fit..

Two minutes may seem like a lot when you’re staring into the eye of the camera with admissions on the line — but it’s really not. With only that short window to work with, don’t try to address all four of the principles. Instead, focus on one of the principles and demonstrate how you reflect it with clear and cogent examples. 

Once you’ve sketched out your thoughts and know what you want to say practice!  As noted the evaluation of these responses is likely to be graded on communication skills and poise as much as on content. And if you’re a bit intimidated about talking on camera or mastering the technology, Fortuna has you covered. Our fellow coach Cassandra Pittman explains how to ace your video here , and Karen Hamou offers advice on what to wear . 

Advice for Essay #2.

Leadership was the topic of Berkeley’s second essay last year. Now that the video is covering that theme, the new Essay #2 asks, “How will an MBA help you achieve your short-term and long-term career goals? (300 words)

Although the prompt asks, “How will an MBA help…,” this essay is really looking beyond the credential of the recognized degree. Berkeley wants to know what skills you will build or enhance and what experiences you will leverage in pursuit of career goals. It’s important to be specific. Make sure you call out what specific aspects of Berkeley’s MBA program will bolster your success after graduation.

We sometimes suggest citing companies that heavily recruit at Haas when applicable as a way of showing your awareness of the school and the link between your goals and what is achievable. For the budding entrepreneurs, perhaps mention Haas alumni entrepreneurs who are working in a similar space.

Our take on the rationale behind this question is this:  The committee wants to know if your personal and professional goals are aligned with the program at Haas and how you will leverage the Berkeley MBA experience to achieve them.

One final change this year is that Berkeley Haas has moved to use the Common Letter of Recommendation from GMAC : This change eliminates one additional question specific to Haas that asked recommenders to explain how applicants reflect the value of “confidence without attitude.” Haas explained to us that they adopted this change to streamline the process, making it easier on many fronts for applicants, letter writers, and programs.

Essays 1 and 4 and the optional essays remain the same. For a deeper dive into our advice on how to answer all of these essays, please see our Fortuna Admissions blog here . 

Sharon Joyce is a director at MBA admissions coaching firm Fortuna Admissions and former Berkeley Haas Associate Director of Admissions. For a candid assessment of your chances of admission success at a top MBA program, sign up for a free consultation

Questions about this article? Email us or leave a comment below.

• Stay Informed. Sign Up! Login Logout Search for:

When To Start Your MBA Application

Six Tips For Getting Into Duke Fuqua’s MBA Program

GMAT Score: Understanding The New GMAT Focus Edition

HBS Deferred MBA: Top Tips For The 2+2 Essays

• How To Use Poets&Quants MBA Admissions Consultant Directory
• How To Select An MBA Admissions Consultant
• MBA Admission Consulting Claims: How Credible?
• Suddenly Cozy: MBA Consultants and B-Schools
• The Cost: $6,850 Result: B-School

Our Partner Sites: Poets&Quants for Execs | Poets&Quants for Undergrads | Tipping the Scales | We See Genius

We can improve your MBA profile and boost your candidacy. Gain insight into the review process and eliminate weaknesses from your MBA application.

Note: You must have javascript enabled to submit the form.

Tuesday Tips: UC Berkeley Haas Application Essays, Tips for 2023-2024

The Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkeley is a highly selective school with a small class to fill. Therefore, it’s crucial to stand out from the crowd and show how you will benefit the Haas MBA class. These tips for the Berkeley Haas application essays will help you create that positive impression.

According to one of the former Haas admissions officers on the SBC team, “Haas is really focused on its experiential learning and it’s four Defining Leadership Principles . Candidates need to know the principles (almost with the ability to recite them by heart) and talk about why at least one of the principles resonates with the candidate.”

The new Video essay specifically asks about the principles, and you should also consider them as you answer the other essays in this set. Likewise, keep these principles in mind when you interview with Haas and interact with students and faculty.

The Berkeley Haas Application Essays

Required Essay #1: What makes you feel alive when you are doing it, and why? (300 words maximum)

The Haas MBA admissions team has asked creative, open-ended questions for many years. Essay one exemplifies that style. As a first step, think about activities you find completely fascinating—for example, hobbies, sports, or artistic pursuits. Or, maybe there’s an activity at work that absorbs you. Above all, it should reveal something personal and go deeper than your resume.

After you have identified a meaningful activity, then you need to describe why. The “why” is more important than the “what” because it reveals who you are. For example, maybe you enjoy research projects. You like to solve problems at work and have the freedom to pursue the question wherever it takes you.

In that case, consider whether you enjoy research because it allows you to be creative or solve problems. Delve into your motivations to see what is driving you—being specific about the “why” will help you with all of your essays.

Required Essay #2: How will an MBA help you achieve your short-term and long-term career goals? (300 words maximum)

This is a traditional essay asking about your career goals and how an MBA from Haas will get you from here to there. While this question does not ask specifically “why Haas?” you should know what is most appealing about the program.

According to SBC’s Haas experts, “Haas can get a lot of entrepreneurs, engineers, and people with really untraditional paths because they think Haas is an untraditional program. Folks who want to transition to a start-up or do their own venture really need to have a clear idea why Haas and why now. Their path needs to be very specific and why their career trajectory is either right for a transition or continuing down the same path, but taking a breath for the MBA.”

This advice is great for any candidate. Be specific about your path and be very clear about why an MBA is necessary. A few reasons might include the MBA coursework, the network you will build, and the practical experiences you will have. Make sure you have researched Haas thoroughly and know what is available through the program and how you will take advantage.

Along with online resources, you can reach out to your personal and professional network. Talking to current and former students is always useful!

Are you curious about your chances of getting into Berkeley Haas? Contact us to talk strategy with a free 15-minute advising session  with an SBC Principal Consultant. 

Required Essay #3 (Video): The Berkeley MBA program develops leaders who embody our four Defining Leadership Principles. Briefly introduce yourself to the admissions committee, explain which leadership principle resonates most with you, and tell us how you have exemplified the principle in your personal or professional life. (Not to exceed 2 minutes.)

Begin preparation for this video by researching how Haas views leadership by reviewing its set of leadership principles . Question the Status Quo, Confidence without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself are the fundamental principles. For Haas, leadership is both inclusive and bold. Also, Haas prioritizes innovation, community, and collaboration.

Next, think about your personal definition of leadership. If you had to define your leadership principles, what would they look like? For example, perhaps helping is a core part of your identity. And, for you, leadership means driving the development of your team. Therefore, you aspire to be a leader who develops others.

Then, think about an example you can share in this video that illustrates the leadership principle. If you are focused on developing others, think about a story when you managed a team or project. Or even a mentoring experience either at work or through your network.

Once you have figured out what you will say in the video, rehearse a few times before recording. Make sure you are still coming across as conversational and expressing your personality. The reason to use a video instead of a written essay is to understand a bit more about your personality, style, and expression. finally, make sure to show enthusiasm for leadership and your future at Haas.

Required Essay #4-Short Answer: Can you please describe any experience or exposure you have in the area of diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and belonging whether through community organizations, personal, or in the workplace? (300 words max)

Diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and belonging are important aspects of business culture and MBA admissions. Aside from formal programs that many companies sponsor, being an inclusive leader is crucial for business results. Whether you are personally experienced in being part of an underrepresented community or not, you can be a champion for belonging. This essay is best answered with a short example or two that you can pull from any aspect of your life.

Think about when you have participated or led formal efforts to drive diversity or when you have supported justice at school, work, or in your community. For more resources to answer this question, don’t miss this blog post on how to address diversity essays and sample essays.

Check out B-Schooled Podcast #116: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and the MBA

Optional Essays

The admissions team takes a holistic approach to application review and seeks to understand all aspects of a candidate’s character, qualifications, and experiences. We will consider achievements in the context of the opportunities available to a candidate. Some applicants may have faced hardships or unusual life circumstances, and we will consider the maturity, perseverance, and thoughtfulness with which they have responded to and/or overcome them.

Optional Information #1 We invite you to help us better understand the context of your opportunities and achievements.

Berkeley Haas is committed to understanding applicants completely. Therefore, this question provides a chance to go deeper into your family background and your life circumstances. In addition, the admissions committee can understand your accomplishments in context.

For example, you might have a highly educated family, and your parents are professionals. But, you moved to another country for college or a job. An experience like that is essential to explain how you learned a new culture or language.

Or, maybe your parents are fully employed now. However, there was a period of unemployment in your family that impacted you. Therefore that information shows how you handle challenges at home.

Finally, think about times you changed course because of your circumstances. And, think about the areas of your life that asked the most of your resilience. As a result, how have you used those experiences to continue to achieve?

Optional Information #2 This section should only be used to convey relevant information not addressed elsewhere in your application. This may include explanation of employment gaps, academic aberrations, supplemental coursework, etc. You are encouraged to use bullet points where appropriate.

Applicants should note there is a specific place to indicate that you won’t have a recommendation from their current supervisor in the supplemental information section. Therefore, you do not need to explain that here in the optional essay.

Haas recommends using this space to address any information you could not adequately cover elsewhere. Specifically, any employment gaps or academic issues.

Otherwise, you can use one or two examples to demonstrate that you have an analytical mind. Use examples to show you take a quantitative approach to problem-solving and evaluating data. Alternatively, explain any supplemental coursework to improve your quantitative profile.

Any unexplained gap of several months between two jobs needs addressing. Therefore, if your resume has significant employment gaps, you should describe what you did between jobs. For instance, you can point to additional education, training, volunteering, or traveling during this gap.

In addition, re-applicants can describe hard improvements to their candidacy. For example, these could be an improved GMAT score, new grades from quantitative classes, or a promotion. Also, other improvements might include refined career goals and additional leadership opportunities.

Stacy Blackman Consulting has successfully coached applicants for the Haas MBA each admissions year. Now that you’ve seen these tips for the Berkeley Haas application essays, please contact us to learn more about how we can help you set a winning application strategy. Meanwhile, here’s a snapshot of the AdCom expertise on the SBC team:

Haas at Twilight image by Flickr user Wayne Hsieh (CC BY-NC 2.0)

With deadlines around the corner, you may be interested in the world-famous SBC Flight Test . Once a full set of application materials for your initial school have been drafted, but not finalized, the application will be sent to a former admissions committee member for a one-time review, adcomm style. You’ll have the benefit of a true admissions committee review while still having the ability to tinker and change.  You will receive written feedback within two business days after submitting.

You May Also Like

Berkeley Haas MBA Deadlines for 2023-2024

Face Off: Stanford GSB vs Berkeley Haas

Haas MBA Students Tackle Difficult Workplace Conversations

Haas launches accelerated access deferred admissions program, leave a reply cancel reply.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Learn About Our All-In Service

Meet the sbc consulting team.

(323) 934-3936 info@StacyBlackman.com

Latest Blog Post

Tips for the older mba applicant applying to b-school.

The average age of business school applicants has been trending downward for more than a decade. With that, work experience expectations have shifted as well. But not everyone is ready or in a position ... →

THE ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL BERKELEY UNDERGRADUATE PRIZE FOR ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN EXCELLENCE

The Berkeley Prize has been suspended for the 2023-2024 academic year.

Explore the past 25 years of the Prize through the pages below.

About the prize.

The international Berkeley Undergraduate Prize for Architectural Design Excellence (BERKELEY PRIZE) was founded by Raymond Lifchez , Emeritus Professor of Architecture and City & Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley College of Environmental Design (CED), through the result of a generous gift to the CED's Department of Architecture by the late Judith Lee Stronach.

Student Participants

Awards granted, individual winners, berkeley prize through the years.

Question To Past Winners: How do you think the Prize has influenced your professional life as an architect or in any other profession or career pursuit?

Benard Acellam, Assistant Architect at DE-ZYN FORUM LTD; Assistant Lecturer in Architecture at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda; BP Essay Prize Winner, 2015.

Essay Prize

Each year, the PRIZE Committee selects a topic critical to the investigation of the social art of architecture and poses a Question based on that topic. Full-time undergraduate students in an architecture degree program or majoring in architecture in accredited schools of architecture throughout the world, including Diploma in Architecture students, may submit a 500-word essay proposal responding to the Question. Entries by teams of two students are encouraged and the second team member can be an undergraduate studying in fields related to architecture.

Philipp Goertz, Graduate Student at RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; BP Travel Fellow, 2018

Travel Fellowship

Semifinalists who select this option are invited to submit proposals demonstrating how they would use the opportunity to travel to an architecturally-significant destination of their choosing, preferably to participate in a hands-on service-oriented situation. This is an exciting opportunity to explore a different part of the world and to participate in an organized project that will assist the winner in gaining a deeper understanding of the social art of architecture.

Past Fellowships

Community service fellowship competition.

Semifinalists who select to compete for a Community Service Fellowship are invited to submit proposals demonstrating how they would use the opportunity to initiate a program or join an on-going program that reflects the content of their Essay proposals. This is an exciting opportunity to explore how to start and/or to participate in an organized project that will assist in the overall understanding and application of the social art of architecture.

Architectural Design Fellowship

From 2008 to 2011 the BERKELEY PRIZE Committee offered students the opportunity to compete in the Architectural Design Fellowship Competition to foster the study of the social art of architecture by helping to sponsor local and regional architectural student design competitions that were run by students themselves. This competition challenged the candidates to produce a thorough and practical proposal for a design competition that would benefit their community and bring attention to the resources available to the community from their school.

Teaching Fellowship

From 2013 to 2014 a new BERKELEY PRIZE Teaching Fellowship was offered to undergraduate architecture studio design faculty from around the world. The primary goal of this Fellowship was to support innovative thinking by faculty as they work to focus their students' attention on the social, behavioral, and physical characteristics of the users of the buildings and spaces being designed.

Each year the Berkeley Prize Committee invites a distinguished professor or scholar in the field of architecture or the related social sciences to write about some aspect of the year's Berkeley Prize topic.

• They are meant to help focus students' thoughts on the issues surrounding the year's Question.
• They are a model for excellence in writing.
• They exhibit both how defined and how broad the range of possible response to a Question.

The social art of architecture encompasses a large field of inquiry that links design studies to people studies. In an ever-growing corpus of published work, researchers from a variety of disciplines work with architects to investigate how to make architecture better for all people. The various topics of the history of the BERKELEY PRIZE give a glimpse into the range of these studies. Each year, the PRIZE publishes "resources" to help participants further understand the specific topics. Included in The LIbrary is a selection of these resources as well as other articles and links that detail why architecture is and must be, first and foremost, about people.

Committee Members

Click on the individual photos to see the member's full profile.

Benard Acellam

Elaine Addison

Andrew Amara

Sangeeta Bagga

Erick Bernabe

Aleksis Bertoni

Paul Broches

Himanshu Burte

Thea Chroman

Benjamin Clavan

Roddy Creedon

Howard Davis

Charles Debbas

Lynne Elizabeth

Teddy Forscher

Dorit Fromm

Thomas Gensheimer

Ann Gilkerson

Alex Gonzalez

Nicole Graycar

Zachary Heiden

Ocean Howell

Neelakshi Joshi

Rachel Kallus

Daniel Karlin

Thomas-Bernard Kenniff

Barbara Knecht

Aboubacar Komara

Scott Koniecko

Malini Krishnankutty

Raymond Lifchez

Ian Mactavish

Christine Macy

Padma Maitland

John Q McDonald

Jason Miller

Anusha Narayanan

Maire O'Neill Conrad

John Parman

Helaine Kaplan Prentice

Ushna Raees

Clare Robinson

Daves Rossell

David Salazar

Magdalena Saura

Corey Schnobrich

Anthony Schuman

Murray Silverstein

Avikal Somvanshi

Preeti Talwai

Philip Tidwell

Robert Ungar

Leslie Van Duzer

Jan Wampler

Matt Werner

Cynthia Whitehead

Keith Wilson

Friedner Wittman

Bahram Hooshyar Yousefi

Ghina Kanawati, Architect and Researcher at CatalyticAction, Beirut, Lebanon; BP Essay Winner, 2018

Berkeley Prize In The News

Conversations on social justice and design.

The College of Environmental Design and the Department of Architecture hosted a day-long symposium in April 2022 titled Conversations on Social Justice and Design , to honor Professor Emeritus Raymond Lifchez, Founder and Chair of the BERKELEY PRIZE. The symposium featured a spectacular list of speakers who have been instrumental leaders in shaping contemporary practices addressing social justice, particularly in universal design.

Speakers included Darren Walker, Maddy Burke-Vigeland, Jeffrey Mansfield, Elaine Ostroff, Valerie Fletcher, Victor Pineda, and Susan Schwelk with a keynote talk by Christopher Downey, our inaugural Lifchez Professor of Practice in Social Justice.

Conversations on Social Justice and Design Part I

Conversations in Social Justice and Design Part II

Conversations on Social Justice and Design Part II

Conversations on Social Justice and Design Part III

share this!

April 8, 2024

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

fact-checked

reputable news agency

Berkeley's backtrack on gas ban won't stop the electrification trend

by Los Angeles Times Editorial Board, Los Angeles Times

Berkeley's agreement to throw out its first-in-the-nation ban on gas hookups in new buildings after losing a court challenge might seem like a big loss for climate action.

To meet our fossil-fuel reduction goals, after all, we have to stop using natural gas to power furnaces, stoves, water heaters and clothes dryers and switch to electric heat pumps, induction ranges and other zero-emission technology.

But in reality, the East Bay city's recent settlement with the California Restaurant Association is little more than a bump in the road. The transition to all-electric buildings is so well underway that legal obstacles thrown up by the fossil fuel industry and its allies won't be enough to stop it. The market is already moving away from gas appliances in favor of electric models. And state and local leaders still have a lot of other tools at their disposal to accelerate that trend.

Industry data show heat pumps outsold gas-fueled furnaces in the U.S. for the second year in a row in 2023. The popularity of these dual-purpose appliances, which provide both heating and air-conditioning , is only expected to grow in the coming years as more Americans take advantage of generous rebates and tax credits under the federal Inflation Reduction Act.

Perhaps people are waking up to the fact that gas stoves and other fossil-fueled appliances in buildings degrade indoor air quality, are responsible for about 10% of California's greenhouse gas emissions and generate four times as much smog-forming pollution as the state's gas power plants. They may also be responding to the reality that heat pumps and induction stoves are more efficient technology that can make homes more comfortable while saving time and money.

Berkeley's trend-setting 2019 ordinance banned gas piping in new buildings and was followed by dozens of other cities across the state that passed a range of ordinances discouraging gas hookups or encouraging all-electric construction.

Last year, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the restaurant industry lobbying group, holding that Berkeley's gas ban is preempted by the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which was enacted in 1975 to establish energy efficiency standards for appliances and prohibits state and local governments from setting their own standards. In January, the court denied the city's petition to rehear the case.

Running out of options, Berkeley settled, agreeing to halt enforcement of its ordinance and eventually repeal it. The restaurant industry lobbying group is now urging every city and county in the state that passed a similar ordinance to toss theirs too.

But the impact is not as sweeping as it might seem. Not all local measures to discourage gas piping in new construction are subject to the decision because some weren't copies of Berkeley's ordinance or as prescriptive. And the ruling was narrow enough that there are other options to reach the same goal, including adopting more stringent energy performance standards for buildings and emissions rules for appliances.

Some cities, such as San Luis Obispo, stopped enforcing their gas bans and all-electric building codes after last year's ruling and and are pivoting to measures that encourage electrification using energy efficiency standards. Cities and counties across the state can copy that approach and pass "fuel neutral" ordinances, which require buildings to meet tougher performance standards regardless of whether they use natural gas or electricity. Those standards will be easier to meet with electric heat pumps and induction stoves because they are up to three times more efficient than their gas-fueled counterparts.

Berkeley, too, should be able to craft a new ordinance that passes legal muster and advances its goal of becoming a fossil fuel-free city. While city officials have been circumspect given the ongoing case, Mayor Jesse Arreguín said in a statement to the editorial board that "the ruling leaves open many policymaking avenues for Berkeley to address environmental and public health hazards within its borders."

It's not surprising that industries whose business models are threatened by the move away from natural gas have pushed back against efforts to limit natural gas hookups in California. About three-quarters of California homes use gas for heating and cooking that is piped in with extensive infrastructure that for decades was advantaged through official policy, including incentives for builders to expand the the natural gas system. But California building codes no longer favor natural gas, and regulators last year eliminated the last remaining subsidies for new construction using gas infrastructure.

And a few days ago the California Energy Commission released a proposal to set tougher energy efficiency standards starting in 2026. They will result in the vast majority of new construction being equipped with electric heat pumps, experts say, that will most easily meet the requirements for space and water heating.

With more progress than setbacks, it's clear that gas appliances are on the way out in California one way or another. For the sake of pollution-plagued communities and future generations' right to a safe climate, state and local officials should do all they can to make it happen quickly.

2024 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Explore further

Feedback to editors

Thermal camera senses breathing to improve exercise calorie estimates

34 minutes ago

Protecting art and passwords with biochemistry

37 minutes ago

Novel robust-optimal controllers based on fuzzy descriptor system

Brain-inspired computing may boil down to information transfer

New durability evaluation technique protects against solar variability for advancing green hydrogen production

3 hours ago

This 3D printer can figure out how to print with an unknown material

A fusion SLAM system that enhances the sensing and localization capabilities of biped climbing robots

5 hours ago

US nuclear industry upbeat on small reactors, despite setback

23 hours ago

A scalable reinforcement learning–based framework to facilitate the teleoperation of humanoid robots

Apr 6, 2024

Elon Musk says Tesla will unveil robotaxi in August

Related stories.

New York becomes first US state to ban gas in new buildings

May 3, 2023

Why gas stoves matter to the climate, and the gas industry: Keeping them means homes will use gas for heating too

Jan 19, 2023

Benefits of heat pumps detailed in new report

Feb 13, 2024

Natural gas bans are new front in effort to curb emissions

Jan 7, 2022

New Seattle law phases out emissions from large buildings by 2050

Dec 15, 2023

Opinion: Why we need to ban gas in New York State buildings

Oct 3, 2022

Recommended for you

Exploring the resilience of the Texas power grid against extreme weather conditions

Apr 4, 2024

Study examines cost competitiveness of zero-emission trucks

Machine learning enables viability of vertical-axis wind turbines

Apr 3, 2024

Researchers find a simple way to harvest more 'blue energy' from waves

Let us know if there is a problem with our content.

Use this form if you have come across a typo, inaccuracy or would like to send an edit request for the content on this page. For general inquiries, please use our contact form . For general feedback, use the public comments section below (please adhere to guidelines ).

Please select the most appropriate category to facilitate processing of your request

Thank you for taking time to provide your feedback to the editors.

Your feedback is important to us. However, we do not guarantee individual replies due to the high volume of messages.

E-mail the story

Your email address is used only to let the recipient know who sent the email. Neither your address nor the recipient's address will be used for any other purpose. The information you enter will appear in your e-mail message and is not retained by Tech Xplore in any form.

Your Privacy

This site uses cookies to assist with navigation, analyse your use of our services, collect data for ads personalisation and provide content from third parties. By using our site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use .

E-mail newsletter

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

What Researchers Discovered When They Sent 80,000 Fake Résumés to U.S. Jobs

Some companies discriminated against Black applicants much more than others, and H.R. practices made a big difference.

By Claire Cain Miller and Josh Katz

A group of economists recently performed an experiment on around 100 of the largest companies in the country, applying for jobs using made-up résumés with equivalent qualifications but different personal characteristics. They changed applicants’ names to suggest that they were white or Black, and male or female — Latisha or Amy, Lamar or Adam.

On Monday, they released the names of the companies . On average, they found, employers contacted the presumed white applicants 9.5 percent more often than the presumed Black applicants.

Yet this practice varied significantly by firm and industry. One-fifth of the companies — many of them retailers or car dealers — were responsible for nearly half of the gap in callbacks to white and Black applicants.

Two companies favored white applicants over Black applicants significantly more than others. They were AutoNation, a used car retailer, which contacted presumed white applicants 43 percent more often, and Genuine Parts Company, which sells auto parts including under the NAPA brand, and called presumed white candidates 33 percent more often.

In a statement, Heather Ross, a spokeswoman for Genuine Parts, said, “We are always evaluating our practices to ensure inclusivity and break down barriers, and we will continue to do so.” AutoNation did not respond to a request for comment.

Companies With the Largest and Smallest Racial Contact Gaps

Of the 97 companies in the experiment, two stood out as contacting presumed white job applicants significantly more often than presumed Black ones. At 14 companies, there was little or no difference in how often they called back the presumed white or Black applicants.

Source: Patrick Kline, Evan K. Rose and Christopher R. Walters

Known as an audit study , the experiment was the largest of its kind in the United States: The researchers sent 80,000 résumés to 10,000 jobs from 2019 to 2021. The results demonstrate how entrenched employment discrimination is in parts of the U.S. labor market — and the extent to which Black workers start behind in certain industries.

“I am not in the least bit surprised,” said Daiquiri Steele, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama School of Law who previously worked for the Department of Labor on employment discrimination. “If you’re having trouble breaking in, the biggest issue is the ripple effect it has. It affects your wages and the economy of your community going forward.”

Some companies showed no difference in how they treated applications from people assumed to be white or Black. Their human resources practices — and one policy in particular (more on that later) — offer guidance for how companies can avoid biased decisions in the hiring process.

A lack of racial bias was more common in certain industries: food stores, including Kroger; food products, including Mondelez; freight and transport, including FedEx and Ryder; and wholesale, including Sysco and McLane Company.

“We want to bring people’s attention not only to the fact that racism is real, sexism is real, some are discriminating, but also that it’s possible to do better, and there’s something to be learned from those that have been doing a good job,” said Patrick Kline, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who conducted the study with Evan K. Rose at the University of Chicago and Christopher R. Walters at Berkeley.

The researchers first published details of their experiment in 2021, but without naming the companies. The new paper, which is set to run in the American Economic Review, names the companies and explains the methodology developed to group them by their performance, while accounting for statistical noise.

Sample Résumés From the Experiment

Fictitious résumés sent to large U.S. companies revealed a preference, on average, for candidates whose names suggested that they were white.

To assign names, the researchers started with a prior list that had been assembled using Massachusetts birth certificates from 1974 to 1979. They then supplemented this list with names found in a database of speeding tickets issued in North Carolina between 2006 and 2018, classifying a name as “distinctive” if more than 90 percent of people with that name were of a particular race.

The study includes 97 firms. The jobs the researchers applied to were entry level, not requiring a college degree or substantial work experience. In addition to race and gender, the researchers tested other characteristics protected by law , like age and sexual orientation.

They sent up to 1,000 applications to each company, applying for as many as 125 jobs per company in locations nationwide, to try to uncover patterns in companies’ operations versus isolated instances. Then they tracked whether the employer contacted the applicant within 30 days.

A bias against Black names

Companies requiring lots of interaction with customers, like sales and retail, particularly in the auto sector, were most likely to show a preference for applicants presumed to be white. This was true even when applying for positions at those firms that didn’t involve customer interaction, suggesting that discriminatory practices were baked in to corporate culture or H.R. practices, the researchers said.

Still, there were exceptions — some of the companies exhibiting the least bias were retailers, like Lowe’s and Target.

The study may underestimate the rate of discrimination against Black applicants in the labor market as a whole because it tested large companies, which tend to discriminate less, said Lincoln Quillian, a sociologist at Northwestern who analyzes audit studies. It did not include names intended to represent Latino or Asian American applicants, but other research suggests that they are also contacted less than white applicants, though they face less discrimination than Black applicants.

The experiment ended in 2021, and some of the companies involved might have changed their practices since. Still, a review of all available audit studies found that discrimination against Black applicants had not changed in three decades. After the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, such discrimination was found to have disappeared among certain employers, but the researchers behind that study said the effect was most likely short-lived.

Gender and other characteristics

On average, companies did not treat male and female applicants differently. This aligns with other research showing that gender discrimination against women is rare in entry-level jobs, and starts later in careers.

However, when companies did favor men (especially in manufacturing) or women (mostly at apparel stores), the biases were much larger than for race. Builders FirstSource contacted presumed male applicants more than twice as often as female ones. Ascena, which owns brands like Ann Taylor, contacted women 66 percent more than men.

Neither company responded to requests for comment.

The consequences of being female differed by race. The differences were small, but being female was a slight benefit for white applicants, and a slight penalty for Black applicants.

The researchers also tested several other characteristics protected by law, with a smaller number of résumés. They found there was a small penalty for being over 40.

Overall, they found no penalty for using nonbinary pronouns. Being gay, as indicated by including membership in an L.G.B.T.Q. club on the résumé, resulted in a slight penalty for white applicants, but benefited Black applicants — although the effect was small, when this was on their résumés, the racial penalty disappeared.

Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, discrimination is illegal even if it’s unintentional . Yet in the real world, it is difficult for job applicants to know why they did not hear back from a company.

“These practices are particularly challenging to address because applicants often do not know whether they are being discriminated against in the hiring process,” Brandalyn Bickner, a spokeswoman for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, said in a statement. (It has seen the data and spoken with the researchers, though it could not use an academic study as the basis for an investigation, she said.)

What companies can do to reduce discrimination

Several common measures — like employing a chief diversity officer, offering diversity training or having a diverse board — were not correlated with decreased discrimination in entry-level hiring, the researchers found.

But one thing strongly predicted less discrimination: a centralized H.R. operation.

The researchers recorded the voice mail messages that the fake applicants received. When a company’s calls came from fewer individual phone numbers, suggesting that they were originating from a central office, there tended to be less bias . When they came from individual hiring managers at local stores or warehouses, there was more. These messages often sounded frantic and informal, asking if an applicant could start the next day, for example.

“That’s when implicit biases kick in,” Professor Kline said. A more formalized hiring process helps overcome this, he said: “Just thinking about things, which steps to take, having to run something by someone for approval, can be quite important in mitigating bias.”

At Sysco, a wholesale restaurant food distributor, which showed no racial bias in the study, a centralized recruitment team reviews résumés and decides whom to call. “Consistency in how we review candidates, with a focus on the requirements of the position, is key,” said Ron Phillips, Sysco’s chief human resources officer. “It lessens the opportunity for personal viewpoints to rise in the process.”

Another important factor is diversity among the people hiring, said Paula Hubbard, the chief human resources officer at McLane Company. It procures, stores and delivers products for large chains like Walmart, and showed no racial bias in the study. Around 40 percent of the company’s recruiters are people of color, and 60 percent are women.

Diversifying the pool of people who apply also helps, H.R. officials said. McLane goes to events for women in trucking and puts up billboards in Spanish.

So does hiring based on skills, versus degrees . While McLane used to require a college degree for many roles, it changed that practice after determining that specific skills mattered more for warehousing or driving jobs. “We now do that for all our jobs: Is there truly a degree required?” Ms. Hubbard said. “Why? Does it make sense? Is experience enough?”

Hilton, another company that showed no racial bias in the study, also stopped requiring degrees for many jobs, in 2018.

Another factor associated with less bias in hiring, the new study found, was more regulatory scrutiny — like at federal contractors, or companies with more Labor Department citations.

Finally, more profitable companies were less biased, in line with a long-held economics theory by the Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker that discrimination is bad for business. Economists said that could be because the more profitable companies benefit from a more diverse set of employees. Or it could be an indication that they had more efficient business processes, in H.R. and elsewhere.

Claire Cain Miller writes about gender, families and the future of work for The Upshot. She joined The Times in 2008 and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for public service for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. More about Claire Cain Miller

Josh Katz is a graphics editor for The Upshot, where he covers a range of topics involving politics, policy and culture. He is the author of “Speaking American: How Y’all, Youse, and You Guys Talk,” a visual exploration of American regional dialects. More about Josh Katz

From The Upshot: What the Data Says

Analysis that explains politics, policy and everyday life..

Pandemic School Closures: ​A variety of data about children’s academic outcomes and about the spread of Covid-19 has accumulated since the start of the pandemic. Here is what we learned from it .

Affirmative Action: The Supreme Court effectively ended race-based preferences in admissions. But will selective schools still be able to achieve diverse student bodies? Here’s how they might try .

Parenting: Surveys of young adults show that most parents are highly involved in their grown children’s lives. Yet in many ways, their relationships seem healthy and fulfilling .

N.Y.C. Neighborhoods: We asked New Yorkers to map their neighborhoods and to tell us what they call them . The result, while imperfect, is an extremely detailed map of the city .

Dialect Quiz:  What does the way you speak say about where you’re from? Answer these questions to find out .

Column: I wanted to hate what UC Berkeley parents are doing in the name of safety, but I can’t

• Show more sharing options
• Copy Link URL Copied!

At first blush, the idea that parents of adult college students would hire a private security force to patrol areas around the campus of a public university seems like the ne plus ultra of helicopter parenting.

I mean, seriously?

Why not just hire a bodyguard for your kid?

Last year, parents of students at UC Berkeley launched the nonprofit SafeBears , with the goal of pressuring the university to find ways to increase the safety of its students.

Opinion Columnist

Robin Abcarian

Alarmed by the fatal October 2022 shooting of a youth minister on fabled Telegraph Avenue near campus, and the return of crime to normal or above-normal levels in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic — including a shooting in February on Cal’s main thoroughfare, Sproul Plaza — the parents began to raise their voices about whether their kids were safe.

And then they did something that would seem to confirm this era as the one in which parents go totally overboard: They raised $40,000 and hired a private firm to provide enhanced security around dorms and the south side of campus for what they called a pilot program.

For two and a half weeks in March, a 30-year-old company called Streetsplus dispatched six unarmed “ambassadors” on foot and on bicycles between 6 p.m. and 3 a.m. A Streetplus executive told me the company provides cleaning, safety and hospitality services to 75 clients, almost exclusively in business improvement districts, which are set up by local businesses. The ambassadors undergo some training and background checks. With rare exceptions, they do not carry weapons, and they do not physically intervene in situations.

UC Berkeley parents hired private security, fearing for their kids

Frustrated with security concerns, some parents paid for private security at UC Berkeley. The university is not happy.

March 27, 2024

Detractors — and numerous lawsuits — maintain that security personnel in business improvement districts routinely overstep their authority to harass homeless people or exclude them from public spaces.

That’s not exactly the issue here, since the goal is to protect students, not to improve business conditions.

Last week, my colleagues Salvador Hernandez and Nathan Solis reported that Berkeley administrators are not happy about the private parental effort. They have shared their disapproval in a statement: “Parents who want to donate funds toward additional campus security can do so via a university fund that has been established. We do not believe that private security should take precedence over hiring sworn officers.”

And yet, SafeBears founder and President Sagar Jethani, the father of twin sons who are Cal sophomores, told me Monday, the group has not really gotten much pushback.

UC Berkeley closed People’s Park. The cost is in the millions and rising

The multimillion-dollar cost for UC Berkeley of walling off People’s Park will grow with bills from outside agencies and continued security to keep people out.

Feb. 28, 2024

“I’ll be honest, that was my worry when we began,” he said. “That we would be seen as a bunch of helicopter parents having a hard time letting little Johnny go.”

Of course, there’s no way to know whether any crimes did not occur as a result of the ambassadors’ presence on the streets of Berkeley, but at least one assault was thwarted when a SafeBears ambassador interrupted an attack on a young woman by a man who then fled in a car with friends. The ambassador caught a few moments of the altercation on video.

The victim did not contact police or offer details about what led to the attack, Jethani told me. “We’re horrified that this happened,” he told the news site Berkeley Scanner. “But it’s also significant that one of our private security guards was able to take a bad situation and stop it from getting worse.”

Listen, as a parent, I totally understand worrying about the safety of your child, even your adult child. Sending a kid off to college is a fraught exercise for most families. But crime around college campuses — particularly urban ones — is nothing new.

After violent protest, controversial pro-Israeli speaker comes back to UC Berkeley

Pro-Israeli groups at UC Berkeley rescheduled a controversial speaker to Monday after the same event was canceled amid violent protests last month.

March 19, 2024

It turns out the Berkeley program is modeled after one at USC, the Yellow Jackets, which USC created in 2009. In 2012, after some high-profile crimes, including the killings of two Chinese graduate students as they sat in their car a mile from campus, USC ramped up its safety program, using security personnel in bright outerwear to help keep students safe both on campus and off. Yellow Jackets are unarmed but carry radios to communicate with USC’s police department.

But from Jethani’s perspective, the situation at Cal is different than it has been in the past. By some estimates , the crime rate on and adjacent to the UC Berkeley campus is among the highest in the nation.

After George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police officers in 2020, Jethani told me, UC Regents responded to the call to defund the police by producing a UC Community Safety Plan , which he described as “a new vision for how to protect members of the UC community without simply relying on officers.”

UC regents debate stricter control of views on Israel and other topics on campus websites

University of California regents delayed action on a controversial proposal to control political opinion, such as criticism of Israel, from campus websites.

March 21, 2024

Cal only got halfway there; the campus police department has barely half the officers it did a few years ago, 47 vs. 80. But the police department has not yet been supplemented with non-sworn staff as the plan calls for, so many have been left feeling that the campus and its environs are underpatrolled and vulnerable.

Some parents of older college students told Jethani that his mission is futile. “They said, ‘Sit down, Grasshopper. You will whinge to the school and demand meetings and they will say they hear your concern and nothing will happen,’ ” he said. “ ‘And your kids will graduate and you will move on.’ I thought, ‘Is there any way to break this cycle of inaction?’ ”

I tried, but I can’t find it in my skeptical heart to condemn the actions of the SafeBears parents.

They want their college-age children not just to feel safe but to be safe. Who can argue with that?

@robinkabcarian

More to Read

Berkeley public schools hit with complaint alleging ‘severe and persistent’ antisemitic bullying

March 3, 2024

Editorial: Some schools are overdoing it with frightening active-shooter drills

Feb. 14, 2024

Editorial: Want to protect children? Don’t sign this trans-bashing petition

Dec. 10, 2023

A cure for the common opinion

Get thought-provoking perspectives with our weekly newsletter.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

Robin Abcarian is an opinion columnist at the Los Angeles Times. She writes about news, politics and culture. Her columns appear on Wednesday and Sunday. Twitter: @AbcarianLAT

More From the Los Angeles Times

Opinion: Trump turns his trials into a soapbox. Does he know he’s channeling Hitler?

April 8, 2024

Opinion: Just don’t call it a bagel. It’s fluffy, domed and dimpled

Opinion: I’ve covered California’s homeless since before the word was used. This is what I learned

April 7, 2024

Granderson: Netanyahu owes the U.S. better answers about Gaza

April 6, 2024

What time is the 2024 solar eclipse? Here's when you should look up in your area

On Monday, April 8, the sky will momentarily darken for millions of Americans in the path of totality during the 2024 solar eclipse .

This is the first total solar eclipse to pass through North America in seven years, and the next one will not be seen from the contiguous U.S. until Aug. 23, 2044 , according to NASA .

The exact time the solar eclipse will occur will vary, depending on the state and the time zone. And of course, eclipse visibility will also be dependent on Monday's weather .

Whether you're experiencing the path of totality from home or traveling to witness it in person, here's what to expect for the exact eclipse time.

Solar eclipse 2024 live updates: See latest weather forecast, what time it hits your area

What time is the 2024 solar eclipse?

The eclipse will begin in Mexico at about 11:07 a.m. PDT, Monday, April 8 before crossing into Texas at 1:27 p.m. CDT. It will end in Maine at 3:35 p.m. EDT. Even if you're not in the path of totality and won't see the full eclipse, you may still see a percentage of it.

To find out exactly when the eclipse will be happening in your area, you can search by USA TODAY's database by zip code for a viewing guide.

Even if you still see a fraction of the eclipse, you can use the database to search the time, duration, peak and percentage in your area.

Here are the major cities in each state where you can expect to experience totality in the United States (note that the included times do not account for when the partial eclipse begins and ends):

• Dallas, Texas: 1:40-1:44 p.m. CDT
• Idabel, Oklahoma: 1:45-1:49 p.m. CDT
• Little Rock, Arkansas: 1:51-1:54 p.m. CDT
• Poplar Bluff, Missouri: 1:56-2:00 p.m. CDT
• Paducah, Kentucky: 2-2:02 p.m. CDT
• Carbondale, Illinois: 1:59-2:03 p.m. CDT
• Evansville, Indiana: 2:02-2:05 p.m. CDT
• Cleveland, Ohio: 3:13-3:17 p.m. EDT
• Erie, Pennsylvania: 3:16-3:20 p.m. EDT
• Buffalo, New York: 3:18-3:22 p.m. EDT
• Burlington, Vermont: 3:26-3:29 p.m. EDT
• Lancaster, New Hampshire: 3:27-3:30 p.m. EDT
• Caribou, Maine: 3:32-3:34 p.m. EDT

Where is the 2024 total solar eclipse?

The eclipse begins in Mexico , and then crosses over into the U.S. through Texas. From there, the path of totality, which is approximately 115 miles wide, extends northeast, crossing through 13 states. In the U.S., totality will end in Maine, but the eclipse will eventually enter the maritime provinces of Canada.

Other major cities along the eclipse's path of totality include San Antonio and Austin, Texas; Indianapolis; and Rochester and Syracuse, New York.

Contributing: Eric Lagatta, Ramon Padilla and Karina Zaiets, USA TODAY.