Waiver Examination Guidelines – 2012 Fall A Courses
Waiver Examination Guidelines – 2012 Fall B Courses
Waiver Examination Guidelines – 2013 Spring A Courses
Automatic Waivers
Alternatives for Waived Courses

Waiver exams allow you to waive certain core courses and start taking electives in your area of interest early in your time at Haas. You should consider taking a waiver exam if you have academic or professional experience in the subject matter.

Waiver exams for all courses offered in a given semester are given before the semester starts. A passing grade on a waiver exam exempts you from having to take the class, although you may choose to take it anyway. Waiving a core course does not reduce the number of units needed to graduate. You must take additional elective course(s) to complete the 51-unit graduation requirement. You may, however, take the elective(s) in a later semester.

You may waive any of the core courses except:
- MBA 205 Leading People
- MBA 200C Leadership Communication
- MBA 207 Ethics
- MBA 299 Strategic Leadership

If you have any questions about the waiver exam process or the specific exams, please contact the MBA Program Office by email at FTAcademics@haas.berkeley.edu.

MBA 200S: DATA AND DECISIONS (STATISTICS)

Course Overview
MBA 200S is an introductory course in statistics. The course objective is to give you working skills in the techniques of statistically-based decision making in business.

Course Format
The course meets for the first seven weeks of the Fall Semester. There are two 110-minute lectures and one 80-minute discussion section each week.

Recommended Textbook
Stine and Foster, Statistics for Business, 2010

Waiver Exam Overview
If you have taken a course in statistics up to and including multiple regression analysis, you might consider taking the waiver exam. Although MBA 200S may cover some topics not included in your previous course, you should be able to review the added information on your own and pass the exam. Proficiency in all of the topics covered in the waiver exam is not needed, however, you should be able to solve problems in most of the topic areas and demonstrate a reasonable overall skill level.

Exam Preparation
The Stine and Foster textbook would be a suitable reference for your review. The waiver exam will cover Chapters 13-25, including samples and surveys, sampling variation, confidence intervals, statistical tests, alternative approaches to inference, confidence interval for differences, linear and nonlinear relationships, the simple regression model, regression diagnostics, multiple regression, and categorical explanatory variables. You should work through the problems in the back of the book for these chapters.  The waiver exam is closed book and you will need a calculator. Use of Excel is not part of the waiver exam, but will be in the MBA 200S coursework.

MBA 201A: MICROECONOMICS

Course Overview
The goal of this course is to teach you to think systematically about creating and capturing value though the management of a firm's resources. We analyze the economics of management decisions, including achieving efficient production, pricing and market entry. The course also emphasizes the use of decision analysis methods. The course is primarily based on lectures, with some case discussions using both traditional cases written for student analysis and articles taken from the business press.

Course Format
The course meets twice a week in 110-minute classes for the first seven weeks of the Fall semester. There also is one 80-minute discussion section each Friday.

Course Reading
Course readings will be from a reader that includes cases, articles, material designed especially for the course and an optional textbook.   

Waiver Exam Overview
You should consider taking the waiver exam if you are exceptionally well prepared in microeconomics. Since even those with considerable economics coursework are likely to find many new applications presented in the course, students are strongly encouraged to carefully review the course description and study the materials for the waiver exam to prepare for the exam.   Here is a sample exam to help you assess your ability and as a study guide

MBA 202: FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING

Course Overview
MBA 202 is an introduction to financial accounting at a fairly sophisticated level, with emphasis on interpreting accounting figures. The course is concerned with the measurement of income, assets, liabilities, and owner's equity for external reporting. The primary goal is to develop your ability to understand, interpret and analyze the financial statements of business enterprises. Several secondary objectives include: familiarity with accounting terminology; knowledge of the measurement rules and disclosure regulations governing the recording and keeping of transactions; understanding the impact of alternative accounting principles for financial statements; ability to use the conceptual structure, both extant and prospective, of financial accounting as a benchmark for evaluation; and acquiring a working knowledge of the accounting process.

Course Format
The course meets twice a week in 110-minute classes for the last seven weeks of the Fall semester. There also is one 80-minute discussion section each Friday.

Course Textbook
Easton, Wild, Halsey and McAnally, Financial Accounting for MBAs (4th. ed., 2009)

Waiver Exam Overview
If you have passed the CPA exam and/or level II of the CFA exam, please see Automatic Waivers.

If you have a solid foundation in the basics of financial accounting, including at least one course at the intermediate level, you should consider taking the waiver exam. The exam is a set of basic questions and problems that you must complete in three hours. You may bring a basic financial calculator. You may not use any books or notes.

Exam Preparation
You should obtain a copy of Financial Accounting for MBAs , or a similar text, and be thoroughly familiar with: the framework and environment of accounting; assets and equities; collecting financial information; elements of the accounting cycle; concepts of income; revenues and receivables; cost measurement; inventories; noncurrent assets; notes and bonds; leases; income taxes; stockholder's equity; statement of cash flow; and analysis of financial statements. Here is a sample exam to help you assess your ability and as a study guide.


MBA 203: INTRODUCTION TO FINANCE

Course Overview
The primary goal of MBA 203 is to introduce you to the principles of valuation and capital market theory. The course concentrates on developing the tools needed to analyze the financial decisions firms face. Lectures, readings, problem sets and cases introduce financial markets and financial market terminology; discounting and present value analysis; capital budgeting; asset valuation; the historical behavior of security returns, diversification and portfolio theory.

Course Format
The course meets twice a week in 110-minute classes for the last seven weeks of the Fall semester. There also is one 80-minute discussion section each Friday.

Course Textbook
Berk and DeMarzo, Corporate Finance plus MyFinanceLab Student Access Card Package, (2nd Edition, 2011)

Waiver Exam Overview
If you have passed the first three levels of the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) exam, please see Automatic Waivers.

If you have a solid foundation in the basics of financial markets and asset pricing theory, you should consider taking the waiver exam. The exam is a set of questions and problems that you must complete in three hours.

You should bring a financial calculator. You may not use any books or notes. For more information, please contact the MBA office.

Exam Preparation
You should obtain the course textbook and review the chapters on present value and the mechanics of discounting; fixed income securities and markets; the valuation of real assets under certainty; valuation of common stocks; portfolio theory and the CAPM; risk and project valuation; market efficiency; the debt/equity choice; and options markets. Here is a sample exam to help you assess your ability and as a study guide.

MBA 206: INTRO TO MARKETING

Course Overview
MBA 206/Core Marketing is designed to provide students with a comprehensive overview of the fundamentals of marketing and how they are best employed in the modern corporation to create and sustain markets.

Course Format
The course meets twice a week in 110-minute classes for the last seven weeks of the Fall semester.

Course Textbook (recommended but not required)
Kotler and Keller, Marketing Management (14th edition), Prentice Hall, 2011

Waiver Exam Overview
You should consider taking the waiver exam only if you have a solid foundation in the basics of marketing, including at least one course at the intermediate level.  The exam is in the form of a comprehensive marketing case analysis.

Exam Preparation
You should review the Kotler and Keller text, or similar texts, and the outline of last year's Core Marketing course case topics, which includes suggestions for how to prepare for in-class case discussions.

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MBA 201B: MACROECONOMICS IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

Course Overview

What makes interest, inflation, unemployment, and foreign exchange rates go up and down? And, what was that financial crisis all about – and when will its effects be over?  In this course, we will learn how these and other aspects of macroeconomies come to be what they are, and where they are likely to be going. To do so, we will examine how consumer and business practices affect and are affected by the current condition and outlook for the future of the U.S. and other economies. We will analyze how governments' monetary, fiscal, and trade policies affect, and are affected by macroeconomies. This course uses past events and current predicaments to help understand how macroeconomies operate and how they influence business and public policies, and vice versa.

We will use the tools and approach of demand and supply to help understand which real and financial goods and services are produced, bought and sold in a macroeconomy, at what prices and in what volumes. The models that we use build upon what you already know (and, indeed, what you do!) and will introduce you to some analyses that you probably haven't seen before. We will use real-time case studies from the Financial Times to check the usefulness of the perspectives we develop: Does our framework help us understand current events around the globe?

The perspectives that emerge from our understanding of theory and evidence will sharpen our abilities to analyze and (in some cases) forecast:

   •interest rates and inflation rates
   •wages, salaries, and unemployment rates
   •consumer spending and housing construction
   •business profits and business investment in equipment and structures
   •the government budget deficit, the trade deficit, and exchange rates
   •economic growth rates over the long run and across countries

Course Format
The course meets twice a week (either on Monday & Wednesday or Tuesday & Thursday), in 2-hour classes, for the first 7 weeks of the Spring semester. In addition, there is an optional 80-minute discussion section each Friday (though contact with the GSIs at other times is available by appointment).

Course Textbook
The seventh edition of Macroeconomics by N. Gregory Mankiw..

Waiver Exam Overview
The waiver exam will ask questions about both theories and applications of the concepts that are useful for understanding the macroeconomics of consumer spending, business investment, fiscal and monetary policies, imports and exports, and rates of interest, inflation, exchange, and economic growth.  To prepare, be sure that you are comfortable with the concepts and applications above at the level of conventional intermediate-level macroeconomics textbooks and that you can apply the concepts to discuss current events.

Exam Preparation
Here are some sample exam questions to help you assess your ability and as a study guide.

MBA 204: OPERATIONS

Course Overview
This course introduces you to concepts and techniques related to matching supply with demand in manufacturing and service operations. The goals are to make you conversant in the language of operations management; provide you with quantitative and qualitative tools to analyze basic operations issues; and allow you to see the role of operations management in the overall strategy of the firm. The course covers topics in process and capacity analysis, inventory management, demand uncertainty, supply chain management, and service operations. In each module, you are introduced to tools for analyzing operations problems and methods of managing that aspect of operations. You will prepare cases for class discussion, analyze cases and problem sets, participate in simulations/exercises, and take mid-term and final exams. Our objective is to create as much interaction with operations issues as possible, allowing you to examine how they affect an organization’s overall performance.

Course Format
The course meets twice a week in 110-minute classes for the first seven weeks of the Spring semester. There also is an optional 80-minute discussion section each Friday.

Course Textbook
The course will use readings and cases that are made available electronically or through a course reader. If you want additional background, you may consult one of the many operations management textbooks that are available including: Matching Supply and Demand: An Introduction to Operations Management by Gerard Cachon and Christian Terwiesch.

Waiver Exam Overview
If you have a background in industrial engineering or very strong analytical experience in manufacturing or operations management, you should consider taking the waiver exam. If you have questions about the format of the waiver exam, please direct them to the MBA Program Office (not the instructor).

Exam Preparation
The Cachon and Terwiesch text (on reserve at Haas’ Long Library) provides a good review of basic operations principles. Many other operations management textbooks would serve equally well. You should be familiar with process and capacity analysis, service operations (including queueing phenomena), inventory control, demand uncertainty, and supply chain management. If you plan to take the exam, you are encouraged to review the course syllabus from last year. The syllabus includes references to sections of the Cachon and Terwiesch text that are relevant; the text also includes practice problems.

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• MBA 202 Financial Accounting: passed the CPA exam administered by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants or the ACCA exam administered by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. (Other international accountants also may be waived. Contact the Director of Academic Affairs) or
• MBA 202 Financial Accounting: passed level II of the CFA exam
• MBA 203 Finance: passed level III of the CFA exam.
• MBA 204 Operational Leadership: passed the CIPM exam administered by the American Production and Inventory Control Society.

• Select an MBA elective for which you have the necessary prerequisites(s). The MBA Program Office maintains a list of courses that have open seats and will work with you to identify an appropriate course. You should attend at least one class session before you request admission to be sure the course is a good fit for your interests and your level of academic preparation.
• Take a course outside Haas. For example, this might be a good time to start learning another language. You can refer to the policy on foreign language courses. Or, you might find something in another field among Berkeley’s many degree programs. The University's course listings are available at http://schedule.berkeley.edu/. For course descriptions, see the University Catalog and/or visit the Website of the specific department for detailed information.