Berkeley Haas Enrolls A Much Bigger — And More Diverse — MBA Class

Acting deans don’t get to issue many directives. This spring Jenny Chatman got one big one: Fill every seat of UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business MBA Class of 2026.

Chatman’s word was the Haas admissions team’s command: Berkeley this fall enrolled an MBA class of 295 students, 51 students larger than its predecessor and second in size only to the coronavirus-inflated Class of 2022.

“The campus gives us a fixed number of seats,” Chatman tells Poets&Quants. “When I was acting dean, the only directive I think I gave — because you don’t actually have many of those that you can use — was that we need to fill every single one of them. And so we pushed that.”

BERKELEY HAAS MBA FALL INTAKES 2021-2024: BY THE NUMBERS

UC-Berkeley Haas	2024	2023	2022	2021
Class Size	295	244	247	291
Average Undergrad GPA	3.65	3.64	3.64	3.67
GPA Range (80%)	3.38-3.9	3.3-3.91	3.4-3.92	3.34-3.93
Average GMAT	730*	733	729	726
GMAT Range (80%)	690-750	680-770	NA	NA
GMAT Focus Median	660	NA	NA	NA
GMAT Focus Range	615-675	NA	NA	NA
Average GRE (Total)	323*	324	326	323

Source: Berkeley Haas … *Median

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MULTIPLE RECORDS SET BY THE CLASS OF 2026

Chatman became the Haas School’s acting dean when Ann Harrison stepped away less than a year into her second term. A long-time member of the B-school’s leadership team who joined the Haas faculty in 1993, she became the school’s interim dean on August 1.

Though Haas does not disclose exact MBA application numbers, Chatman says that like its peers Berkeley had a great 2023-2024 cycle that helped reverse the slump of the previous two cycles. The surge in apps helped the school enroll one of its most diverse classes ever: Haas defied expectations by increasing its percentage of U.S. minorities (51% from 48%, a new school record) and more than doubling its under-represented minorities (29% from 13%, also a school high mark). According to federal reporting guidelines, Black students account for more than 10% of the class, and Hispanic/Latino students more than 12%.

Meanwhile women in the class increased to 42% from 41% and students in the class identifying as LGBTQ+ increased to another record: 19%, up from 14% last year.

“Apps were steady and we were able to cultivate this unbelievable class that is going to make us very proud,” Chatman says. “They are among the most diverse classes (the school has had), without sacrificing any of our rigorous parameters. And so we’re really pleased.”

BERKELEY HAAS WOMEN, MINORITIES & MORE: FALL INTAKES 2022-2024

UC-Berkeley Haas	2024	2023	2022
Women	42%	41%	46%
LGBTQ+	19%	14%	16%
U.S. Minority	51%	48%	45%
URM	29%	13%	21%
First Generation	15%	20%	13%
Military/Veterans	7%	7%	4%
International	38%	47%	41%
Countries	35	39	NA

Source: Berkeley Haas

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TECH CONTINUES COMEBACK

The Haas School suffered one significant decline: international students dropped to 38% of the class from last year’s school record 47%. First-generation students were also down, to 15% from 20%, though that likely keeps Haas among the leaders in that particular metric.

In terms of pre-MBA industries, in last year’s class, the Class of 2025, consulting industry veterans accounted for 24% of the class, financial services was 16%, and tech was 20%, having jumped from 13% the year before — no doubt thanks to Haas’ efforts to woo tech workers who had lost their jobs in the layoff waves of 2021 and 2022. This fall consulting ticked downward by 1 point to 23%, finance ticked upward to 17%, and tech continued its comeback, rising to 21%. Six percent of the class hail from the healthcare/pharma/biotech industry, and another 7% from not-for-profits.

Top undergraduate majors for the Haas MBA Class of 2025 were engineering at 23%, economics at 18%, business/commerce at 13%, and social sciences at 11%. This year engineering accounts for fully one quarter of the class, while both economics and business are flat at 18% and 13%, respectively, and 12% hail from the social sciences. See below for details.

Source: Berkeley Haas

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