Can you transfer from one MBA program to the HAAS school of Business (berkeley) MBA program?

Question

I was thinking about attending SFSU MBA program and try to do extremely well academically... then possibly transfer to Berkeley reflecting the good grades from SFSU. My undergraduate GPA is lacking, so I thought of this idea. Is this possible?

What if I did not want to transfer the credit, but simply wanted to reflect that I can excel in an MBA program? Would this help my consideration as a Haas applicant?

Answer 1

No, sorry that doesn't happen. There are a few schools which allow transfers (for example, I am on faculty at a Jesuit university and we allow transfers from one Jesuit university to another), but only within the same quality level. You could probably go from Wharton to Berkeley, but not from SFSU to Berkeley. Keep in mind that undergraduate degrees take four years, so when a student transfers as a junior, the school has had two years' performance to review. An MBA is half the length, and a year isn't enough time to judge. Furthermore, MBA programs don't uniformly offer the same set of courses, so it would be very difficult to make that type of a transition.

Answer 2

Some schools allow second year MBA students to visit, though the practice is very rare, and SFSU and Berkeley are worlds apart academically so I don't see Haas allowing you to do that.

Hopefully Ranto can answer this at some point, since he'll know this better than anyone here, but my guess is your chances of starting at SFSU and ending at Berkeley are zero.

Edit - re: your later comment about basically starting your MBA over at Haas once you've proven yourself at SFSU - no. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way.