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<p>I do have to question some of the premises in the OP’s post.</p>
<p>First of all, the presumption is that the OP will actually get into Haas. This is far from assured. You apply to Haas at the end of your Berkeley sophomore year after taking all the Haas prereqs with no assurance that you will get in. About 40% of those who apply don’t get in. And that’s just talking about those who apply. Plenty of people don’t even apply because they got such poor grades in their Haas prereqs that they know they have no chance in getting in. Hence, that means that the majority of incoming freshmen who came to Berkeley hoping to get into Haas do not make it. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/Undergrad/statsucb.html[/url]”>http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/Undergrad/statsucb.html</a>
<a href=“Application Process - Undergraduate Program - Berkeley Haas”>Application Process - Undergraduate Program - Berkeley Haas;
<p>Secondly, I would strongly question whether you really would get a better GPA at Berkeley/Haas than at Harvard. I would suspect that, if anything, the reverse is probably true. The truth is that Berkeley is a grade deflated school. The Haas prereq courses are particularly grade deflated because Haas is using those courses not so much to teach students anything but primarily as a measuring stick to make their Haas admissions decisions. When you’re talking about the GPA you will ultimately, it’s not so much the curricula you ought to worry about, rather it’s the GRADING of the curricula that ought to concern you.</p>
<p>I’ll give you an example from the engineering side of the house. I know a guy who scored in the 80’s on one of his engineering exams. That’s pretty good right? After all, he demonstrated that he understood the vast majority of the material on the exam. The problem? The mean score on the test was a 95. Furthermore, the class was curved to a C+, meaning that everybody who got the mean score was getting a C+. What that meant is that that guy’s test score was equivalent to a D, and close to an F. Seems cruelly unfair, doesn’t it? After all, this guy demonstrated that he knew almost all of the material on the exam. But for the purposes of grading, that doesn’t matter. What matters is not how much you know on an absolute scale, but rather how much you know RELATIVE to how much everybody else knows, as well as where the curve is set. You can possess an excellent understanding of the material and still fail. </p>
<p>Finally, I would argue that GPA is NOT what matters most. What matters most is your personality as demonstrated during the interview. GPA may help you to get an interview, but it’s still up to you and your personality to punch the ball into the endzone. </p>
<p>For example, I know of a guy who got stellar grades getting dual-degrees in engineering and management from MIT. He didn’t get a single banking offer. He got lots of banking interviews, but not a single banking offer. Why? Simple. By his own admission, he doesn’t have smooth interview skills. He gets nervous during interviews. In fact, lately I heard him talking about how he should have been spending less time studying and more time working on his interview skills. </p>
<p>Now to be fair, it looks like he now prefers to go to a PhD program in business or finance instead of getting a banking job. I’m pretty sure he’ll get in. So things will work out well for him. But the point is, who really cares if you get top grades if you can’t get the job that you want?</p>