August 18–22, 2025
ACE Week is the final phase of your MBA onboarding. Attendance at most sessions is required. For the Excel and Data & Decisions workshops, attendance is highly recommended unless you are already proficient in those skills. Please consult the grid below where required sessions are marked with an asterisk * and the session descriptions for more details.
Light breakfast and coffee/tea will be provided from 8-8.45am.
Morning Sessions: Academic Preparation
Each day begins with academic prep sessions focused on key skills, strategies, and tools essential for success in the core curriculum. These workshops are designed to help you refresh foundational concepts, build confidence, and ease your transition back into the classroom. Even if you completed the virtual MBA Quantitative Skills Course, ACE Week offers a deeper, in-person experience grounded in the Haas context.
Lunch Break
Lunch is provided daily.
Afternoon Sessions: Career Preparation
Afternoon workshops are led by the Career Management Group (CMG) and cover a range of topics to jumpstart your internship and career search. Throughout the week, you will:
- Work on your resume real-time with the CMG team in a two-part workshop
- Learn “The Process” of a successful career search
- Dive into the available tools and resources, to optimize your career search
- Practice real-life skills, such as networking to build career relationships
- Meet your Primary Career Coach
**Please Note: students are assigned a time slot for each of these sessions based on their cohort or team number. Once you learn your cohort at the beginning of WeLaunch, you will be able to revisit the schedule below to understand which blocks of time you will be in a Careers session and which you will have free.
Schedule overview:
Workshop Descriptions
Familiarity with the basic functionality of excel is essential for all students. During this workshop we will illustrate most of these basics – how to structure and organize efficient worksheets, labeling and formatting, useful functions and tips, pivot tables, common errors, etc. Students with little to no experience with excel are strongly encouraged to attend. Students with intermediate experience with excel may benefit too. Note that all exercises in this workshop are pre-recorded in short videos and these videos are posted on bCourses. They will remain available throughout the academic year. No preparation for this workshop is required.
The standard excel package includes many functions and other tools helpful for a number of statistical calculations and data analyses. This workshop is designed to help students familiarize with these functions and tools before the Data and Decisions class begins. Examples: Data Analysis Toolpack, correlation matrix, regression analysis, how to enable add-ins, how to use goal seek, t-values and z-values for normal distribution. Note that all exercises in this workshop are also pre-recorded in short videos and these videos are posted on bCourses. They will remain available throughout the academic year. No preparation for this workshop is required.
The Data and Decisions workshop is designed to help the students prepare for MBA200S – the Data & Decisions core course in Fall A. It includes a brief discussion of the theory and various exercises on the concepts covered in chapters 1-12 from the required textbook. The students are highly encouraged to review the pre-recorded content on this topic or review the chapters from the textbook prior to the live workshops. The pre-recorded content includes short videos and summary slides posted on bCourses. The workshop concludes with review of practice quizzes given in prior years.
Join your Academic Advisors for an essential overview of key degree requirements and academic policies that will guide your MBA journey. This session will also cover the Fall 2025 Elective Sign-Up process and highlight important academic resources designed to support your success throughout your first semester and beyond.
The way you approach your MBA journey is a critical part of what you will get out of it. This session is designed to get you thinking about the ways in which you can set yourself up for success. We’ll share success stories, wellness resources, productivity frameworks, and more, and invite you to reflect on your own plan.
This session will introduce you to the key systems that you’ll need to use inside and outside of the classroom. Your presenters will guide you through the purpose, use, and pro tips for each system. Bring your laptop and follow along and you’ll have everything you need to start the semester set up.
Master Your MBA Resume From Day One
Ready to make a powerful first impression? This 2-part workshop series is your definitive guide to crafting an impactful MBA resume. We’ll show you how to:
- Showcase transferable skills
- Strategically frame career pivots
- Leverage AI effectively
- Optimize formatting and bullet points
The Career Management Group will be there to provide personalized support. Elevate your resume and unlock your potential.
Please bring your laptop and a charger to this session!
Understand the process that highly successful people follow but few people talk about.
Everyone talks about networking to get a job, but few people know how to do it well. In this session, you’ll learn how to become one of those people:
- Hone your unique value proposition to differentiate yourself.
- Learn a step-by-step method for finding your job in a challenging market.
- Show up confidently and bring value to networking conversations and interviews.