Unless you waived*, all students will be automatically enrolled in Spring Core courses (totaling 7 units). You will be in the same cohort for Spring but can swap core courses if you have an elective or other commitment that conflicts. Refer to the Spring Core Cohort Schedule to view your specific cohort schedule and for instructions on how to request class and cohort swaps if needed.

MBA electives range from 1 to 3 units and are offered in a variety of schedule formats.

When considering electives, ask yourself:

• How challenging will the content of each course be?
• What are the faculty’s grading criteria and how does that work with your particular learning style (for example: project-based work vs purely exam-based grading)?
• Course overlap is not permitted. So how do the course meeting dates/times sync with one another?
• How does your full schedule fit with your broader semester goals?

*NOTE: If you waived one or more Spring Core courses, you will be able to bid 6 units plus the number of units you waived out of in the Spring.

You may submit a request to swap sections of any core course if you’d like to make room for an elective you hope to take or for another commitment. Take a few minutes to review the new Class Swap Tool FAQs and the OLR Swap Instructions doc so that you can become familiar with the process. You can review the swap period in the Registration & Enrollment timeline. Additional instructions will be sent out to students closer to the opening of the swap period.

During Bidding, second-year students should plan to bid for their full schedule (or as close as they can get). Second-year students can bid up to 13 units during Bidding.

If the upcoming Spring semester is your last term with the program, remember to review and complete all the graduation requirements to ensure you graduate on time. Meet with your assigned academic advisor as soon as possible to discuss any questions you may have.

Important considerations:

• Make sure to prioritize graduation requirements – AI course, units needed, dual-degree requirements
• Except for the Speaker Series courses, MBA courses will not count towards your GPA or your degree if you take them as Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory (S/U) (pass/no pass)
• Though the context may feel different ( if it is your last semester of schedule planning), the bidding strategies are the same

The bidding process for MBA electives is available only through the OLR portal.

On-Line Registrar (OLR) Portal

In bidding, you will allocate points to each of the courses you want to take – essentially using your points to indicate how much a course is “worth” to you. There are two rounds of bidding. Everyone will participate in Round 1, while only those who had unsuccessful bids in the first round will participate in Round 2 (If you have unsuccessful bids in Round 1, your points will be refunded to you to use in Round 2).

During each round, you will sign into OLR and enter your bids. This is not first-come, first-served, so you just need to finalize your bids before the round closes.

After each round, the Academics team processes the bids. If there are enough seats for everyone who bid on a class, then everyone gets in. If there are more bids than seats, then the system will enroll students starting with the highest bidder and then moving down until seats are filled. In the event of a tie, the system runs a random lottery to decide who gets in.

Once bids are processed, we’ll send an email to let you know that we’ve finished, and you can sign into OLR to view your results.

Students submit bids via the On-Line Registrar (OLR). Log in using your CalNet ID.

Some good resources to help you decide on classes:

• Review the Registration & Enrollment pages of our website
• Review Graduation Requirements
• Consider the Areas of Emphasis
• Review the student-facing Google Drive folder
• Read the course descriptions carefully. Connect with the faculty if you have questions about the course.
• Faculty/Course evaluations https://haas.berkeley.edu/mba/academics/course-planning/faculty-evaluations/
• Faculty, peers, and us – the Academics Team!

Once bidding ends, MBA course enrollment will be frozen until the start of Add/Drop.

Except for students accepted into pre-bidding Selection Courses,  all students will begin Round 1 with 1000 bid points during Bidding. The lowest acceptable bid is one point and the highest acceptable bid is 1000 points.

During Add/Drop, the MBA unit limit that a student can be enrolled in during the semester will be raised to the max of 16.

Keep in mind that enrollment is a two-step process: Bidding takes place first, and then Add/Drops will occur during the first two weeks of the semester.

First Years

Except for students accepted into pre-bidding Selection Courses, all first-year students begin Round 1 with 1000 bid points and up to 6 units to work with during Bidding. Students who waived out of Spring core courses may enroll in additional units to replace the units they waived, but no more than 16 units total (including core) by the end of Add/Drop.

Keep in mind that MBA course enrollment is a two-step process: your first time participating in Bidding will be in November and then Add/Drop will occur during the first two weeks of January. Students should aim to make the final adjustments to their schedule during the Add/Drop phase.

During Add/Drop, your limit will be raised to the MBA max of 16 units (including core and elective units) so you can make the final adjustments to your schedule. Information about add/drop is typically sent two weeks before the first day of classes.

Second Years

Except for students accepted into pre-bidding Selection Courses,  all students will begin Round 1 with 1000 bid points and 13 units to work with.

During Add/Drop, the MBA unit limit will be raised from 13 to a maximum of 16.

We can think of no situation in which it would make sense to hold back points for Round 2, since the points for any unsuccessful Round 1 bids will be refunded to you for Round 2, and bid points are irrelevant once bidding concludes.

Don’t assume a course will still be available during Add/Drop if you do not bid for it now. Courses with low bid demand may be canceled. So, it is very important that you bid your points for the classes you want to take, not just the ones you think will be the hardest to get into.

NOTE: Campus fees are due before the start of classes and the University requires that students be enrolled in at least 6 units before it will release financial aid. For more information regarding financial aid, please visit the Haas Financial Aid website.

What to avoid

The most common strategic mistake is spreading the 1000 points across too many of the most popular electives. If you do so, you’ll likely end up getting into few or none of them. Instead, prioritize a couple of popular courses and bid higher on those.

For courses you want, but do not think will bid out, we suggest bidding a few points, saving the rest of your bid points for courses you think will be more competitive to get a seat in.

Students who had unsuccessful Round 1 bids may drop course(s) between rounds if the course you want to drop is not full. The points from dropped classes will be refunded to you for use in Round 2.

To drop a class between rounds, email the Academics Team before submitting your Round 2 bids, and no later than 9:00AM on the last day of bidding (so we have time to adjust your points/units and refund the points before the Round 2 deadline).

If you use all your points in Round 1, and all of your bids are successful, you will not take part in Round 2 (since you will have gotten all your Round 1 picks and have no points left over).

Points and units from unsuccessful Round 1 bids will be automatically returned for use in Round 2. You will also receive statistics on the number of students, as well as their range/median points and units remaining so you can get a sense of the R2 landscape.

For first-year students, only those who emerge from Round 1 bidding with fewer than 6 units, AND who have points left over or refunded to them, may take part in Round 2.

For second-year students, only those who emerge from Round 1 bidding with fewer than 13 units, AND who have points left over or refunded to them, may take part in Round 2.

You will have two options:

Option 1: If the section you’re hoping to drop bids out, you will keep both classes until add/drop and then drop the section you no longer want (please keep in mind that this will prevent your peers from being able to try for the extra seat in Round 2 of Bidding).

Option 2: If the section you’re hoping to drop did not bid out, you can email [email protected] before the start of Round 2 Bidding and indicate which section you’d like to drop. We will put the seat back into Round 2 of Bidding so other students can try for it.

There are a handful of courses that are marked “No Add/Drop” on the elective schedule. These courses will not be available during the add/drop period at the beginning of the semester. If you want to take them, you should bid for them now. By the same token, you should only bid into these courses if you are 100% committed to taking them as they cannot be dropped after Bidding closes.

IMPORTANT: No add/drop courses are not eligible for grading option changes to S/U. Students who do not follow through with their original commitment to the class and choose to stop attending will receive a letter grade of “F” in the class.

Selection Courses are classes students apply for and are accepted to before the start of bidding.  These courses are noted under the Selection Courses tab on the elective schedule.

If you are accepted into a selection course, your enrollment in the course is final and cannot be dropped. Since you are already guaranteed these units, the Academics Team will reduce your bid points and units proportionately prior to bidding.

First-Year Students:

• 1-unit course: cost is 167 bid points (1/6 = 16.7%). Will enter bidding with 5 units and 833 points.
• 2-unit course: cost is 333 points (2/6 = 33%). Will enter bidding with 4 units and 667 points.
• 3-unit course: cost is 500 bid points (3/6 = 50%). Will enter bidding with 3 units and 500 points.

Second-Year Students:

• 1-unit: cost is 80 bid points (1/13 = 8%). Will enter bidding with 12 units/920 points.
• 2-unit: cost is 150 points (2/13 = 15%). Will enter bidding with 11 units/850 points.
• 3-unit: cost is 230 bid points (3/13 = 23%). Will enter bidding with 10 units/770 points.

To get a sense of how Bidding was in a previous term, you can review the list of courses that were filled by previous students. We commonly refer to these as courses that “bid out,” meaning they are filled during bidding.

Experience has taught us that past bid performance is not predictive of future bid success. This is due to a number of ever-changing variables such as different instructors, the number of sections in a given class,  course conflicts, co-curricular opportunities, and changing labor market & hiring trends. These changing factors make it challenging to confidently predict course popularity or bid point trends.

Student feedback over the years confirms that sharing the previous year’s bid point cut-offs not only is not predictive but artificially inflates the “cost” of classes. Because of these reasons, no record of previous bid point cutoffs is captured or shared from year to year.

Students are not permitted to be enrolled in two courses that have any overlap or meet during the same day and/or time. The OLR system will attempt to block bids for classes that conflict. You should also manually check for conflicts between courses you are planning to bid on, particularly for those with unique meeting dates.  Please keep in mind that requests for exceptions will not be approved.

If you need a sounding board to talk through your decision between classes that overlap or have a schedule conflict, do not hesitate to connect with your academic advisor.