【合格体験記】Business - UC Berkley - Shu Shimizu - DVC

始めに

今回はUC Berkley(世界ランキング８位)にBusiness専攻(Haas Business School)で合格した先輩にインタビューしました！この先輩はUCLAにも合格されているので、UCLA志望の方も必見です！UCのBusinessメジャーは看板学部であり、合格率は

• UC Berkley(5%)
• UCLA(10%)

と超難関です！(その他のキャンパス、メジャーの合格率はこちら参照)そんな先輩に合格の秘訣を聞いたのでぜひ参考にしてください！

プロフィール

DVCで取った授業

(左から、科目, 授業番号, 内容, 単位, 成績)

Fall 2021

BUS	240	Business Statistics	3.0	A
ECON	220	Principles of Macroeconomics	3.0	A
ECON	221	Principles of Microeconomics	3.0	A
ENGL	122	First-Year College Composition and Reading	3.0	A

Spring 2022

BUS	109	Introduction to Business	3.0	A
BUSAC	186	Financial Accounting	4.0	A
ENGL	123	Critical Thinking: Composition and Literature	3.0	A
KNACT	110A	Beginning Hatha Yoga	0.5	A
KNCMB	114	Jujitsu	0.5	A
MATH	191	Pre-Calculus	5.0	A

Summer 2022

ARTHS	193	History of Asian Art	3.0	A
MATH	192	Analytic Geometry and Calculus I	5.0	A
MUSIC	119	The History and Culture of Hip Hop Music	3.0	A

Fall 2022 (出願)

BUSAC	187	Managerial Accounting	4.0	A
MATH	193	Analytic Geometry and Calculus II	5.0	A
PSYCH	101	Introduction to Psychology	3.0	A

Spring 2023

ANTHR	115	Primate Evolution and Adaptation	3.0	A
ASTRO	130	Astronomy Laboratory	1.0	B
ASTRO	110	The Visible Universe	3.0	A
DANCE	170A	Hip-Hop and Urban Funk Dance I	1.0	A
KNACT	160A	Beginning Badminton	1.0	A
PHILO	120	Introduction to Philosophy	3.0	A
POLSC	120	Introduction to Politics	3.0	A

各科目の対策

全体的に勉強はテスト前日に徹夜でやってました笑(課外活動が多忙すぎて)

• 数学系は苦手だったため、出る範囲の問題全てを1周やって、過去問を３周くらいしてました。
• EnglishはひたすらにOffice Hourに通い内容を固め、English Tutorに通い詰めて英語をナチュラルにしてもらっていました。
• BusinessやEcon、その他IGETCなどの暗記系は前日にdocumentにまとめて夜から朝にかけてひたすら覚えてました(ノート2周〜3周くらい)。

主な課外活動とどのように見つけたか

• SNSマーケティングインターン、Salesインターン、幼稚園インターン

　　　知り合いの会社をやっている人たちに紹介してもらったり、Yukoさんに紹介してもらったりしました。

　　　※YukoさんはUC編入のサポートをしてくださっている方です。Yukoさんのinstagramはuc_berkeley_yuko

• Japanese Student Association VP of Media & President

　　　DVCに入学が決まった当初にグループで募集を見て、締切日ギリギリに申し込みました。

• HBSA Business Competition 2022 上位3組

　　　UC BerkeleyのHaasにいる先輩から教えてもらいました。

• 大学生向けSkill Share Communityの運営/ Migratory Birds (高校生に留学について教えるプロジェクト)

　　　高校の時の友達/ NICの時の友達と共同で立ち上げたプロジェクトです。

合格のために勉強面で頑張ったこと、苦労したこと

勉強を極力せず、かつグレードを落とさないために、テスト勉強は原則前日からと決めていたのでそのテストの前日、及びテストが固まっている週は寝ないことを頑張っていました。

合格のために勉強以外で頑張ったこと、苦労したこと

コミカレ生活は課外活動しかしてなかったと言い切れるくらい課外活動はしっかりやりました。自分がやりたいと思っていたことを手当たり次第やっていたため、タイムマネジメントにかなり苦労していました。友達と遊んだ帰りの車でミーティングを受けていることなどもありました。

Application出してから合格発表までの過ごし方や準備

合格発表１ヶ月前くらいから徐々に緊張していっていて、合格発表の三日前くらいからあまり寝られなくなっていました。

普段占いなんか信じないのにインターネットの占いなどをして彼女にからかわれていました。彼女の存在はメンタル面で物凄く大きかったです。

合格発表から学期開始までの準備や心得

合格してからの書類提出は本当に面倒くさいです。特に残高証明の提示やワクチン接種は大変だったため、気をつけて下さい。

僕はサマーの授業を取ったのですが、どのように授業登録すればいいか、どのクラスを取るのかなどかなり困惑したため、同じ学部や学校の先輩と先に繋がっておくといいと思います。

提出したエッセイ

テーマ１

Please describe how you have prepared for your intended major, including your readiness to succeed in your upper-division courses once you enroll at the university. 

提出したエッセイ

I have the ambition to stop Japan’s stagnant economy for my children's generation because I have seen many people suffering from low salaries. I realized that an unchanging education system could not nurture talented entrepreneurs, and this has made my country's economy stagnant. I want to become such a business leader and contribute to the Japanese economy by nurturing business-people with diverse skills.

I majored in business at college to study business management in Bay Area, where many talented entrepreneurs live. I learned about the management structures of running a business, and based on this, my friends and I planned a project:  "A Skill-Sharing Community for College Students Using Facebook." We gathered Japanese college students and conducted online classes. All participants gave us positive feedback. However, I could not manage the project with only knowledge from class, and I struggled with management issues such as sharing our vision and task management. Eventually, we retired from the project. I was so frustrated and felt that I needed to cultivate management skills from more practical experiences. 

I believe the core of management is sharing vision and responsibility for the task. To learn more about management, I became the president of the Japanese Association Club and constantly reminded the members that the club's vision is the core of every activity in the club. I also asked each vice president to write schedules for making a sense of responsibility. By supporting the events planned in their schedules, we succeeded in building a shared understanding of the vision and a solid sense of responsibility. Consequently, we held six events with up to 60 attendees during the semester. However, while planning these events with others, I thought that I still needed to have more management experience in various cases compared to them.

In the future, I want to recover the Japanese economy to what it once was by becoming an entrepreneur with solid management skills and nurturing the next innovative entrepreneurs from Japan.  To achieve this goal, I still need to deepen my management skills by studying more deeply about entrepreneurship through upper-division classes at UC. 

(350 words)

テーマ2

Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes or contributed to group efforts over time.   

提出したエッセイ

I strongly desire to be a leader who listens to my teammates and learns from them. I discovered this because I met a leader who did not follow this value. My teacher cruelly ignored me in middle school because I was disobedient. Thus, I want to become my ideal leader who does not make my teammates feel neglected and build a productive team.

A few years later, I became the president of Japanese Association Club at my college. I tried to listen to my teammates to be an ideal leader. I spoke with each member to understand their concerns and gave advice to them. One day, one of the club officers expressed his concern to me, and we discussed it. I believed that his concern was addressed. 

However, I later heard from another officer that the officer I spoke with still complained about the same problem behind my back after our discussion. I felt betrayed and tried to get him to leave the club, but executive members criticized it. I thought I did not learn from the officer. I got scared that I was unconsciously behaving like my middle school teacher and making my teammate feel like I used to be. I requested a vice president to ask that officer what he really thought. The officer said my intimidation as the president made him afraid of telling the truth.  I realized that as a leader, it’s important to create a safe space where teammates can comfortably speak up. 

To create such an environment and learn from them, I worked with the vice president to hold a "Feedback meeting" monthly. In this event, we tried to give both negative and positive feedback to each club’s officer, and this made them say their opinion more easily than before. Also, I learned from them that I still lacked to ask them for advice.

An ideal leader for me is an individual who listens to and learns from teammates. To acquire an open mindset and be able to help my teammates share their thought, I want to deepen my understanding of leadership at UC. 

(350 words)

テーマ3

What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time? 

提出したエッセイ

My greatest talent is creating and optimizing breakthrough marketing strategies by questioning existing strategies. I believe this talent is necessary to create new business models that are more helpful for people. I developed this talent into a business skill while doing an internship in social media marketing at Tripia, a Japanese startup company. Tripia operates a platform that matches participants with research projects posted by companies. My mission was to increase the web platform's subscribers from 50 to 1000 in 3 months.

At first, I followed the basic Social Media Marketing approach, in which people analyze influencers' accounts and imitate their actions, but this was a detour. I could not gain any subscribers in a week. I thought it was not enough to follow the basic idea.

Questioning this approach led directly to results. I analyzed influencers' accounts and found that the approach was not suited for this short-term project. I re-examined the results and thought of a breakthrough hypothesis: "I could gain better results in the short term if I could collaborate with influencers in the same industry because they already have my audience." Thus, I contacted these influencers and successfully made over 50 influencers promote the website. As a result, I could get 1000 subscribers to our website.

To develop this method, I participated in a case competition. The competition's theme was improving Cisco's YouTube channel. In my team, I analyzed general strategies for YouTube and the channel's current situation. I realized that we needed to change the video content, such as the discussion videos of famous entrepreneurs. We presented based on this idea and got second place out of 10 teams. The method of questioning the status-quo enabled me to devise unique ideas. On the other hand, the first-place team's idea is as unique as mine but more realistic in the funding aspect. I did not consider enough the difficulty of implementing my ideas.

I believe that my talent is unique, but this is not a mature skill in the business field. I want to continue refining the feasibility of my idea through case studies at UC.

(350 words)

テーマ4

What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?

提出したエッセイ

I want to help Japanese students who lack self-confidence due to the Japanese value of comparing oneself to others excessively by telling my experience of studying abroad. In high school, teachers graded me by comparing me with my classmates, and I lost self-confidence. Studying abroad in the U.S. was what reverted this. When I started college, I felt embarrassed about my English speaking skills, but my American friends did not laugh at my pronunciation and provided support. I thought that true confidence does not come from comparing oneself with others but from embracing oneself. I thought struggling Japanese students would get this true confidence by studying abroad. Thus, by giving a presentation to them about studying abroad and encouraging them to do it, I want them to know true confidence. 

My Japanese college friends and I organized a project to let Japanese students know about studying abroad. We gave a presentation in front of 100 students. I wanted to explain the true confidence I learned in my college, but most students did not know about studying abroad at all. Thus, I just explained the system of other countries’ colleges, and I could not communicate my message to them. It was frustrating to me, and I found that to deliver my message to struggling students like I used to, I needed to divide our tasks, informing studying abroad and telling our story.  

For the second presentation, we divided our roles like that. In cooperation with a Japanese study abroad agency, we gave an online presentation to 50 Japanese high school students who lacked motivation by telling our experiences. Later, 30 of the students said they wanted to experience true confidence and decided to study abroad. I was happy that I succeeded in helping them know it. However, through this experience, I realized that I could not influence all the students with my explanation skill.

I want to save more struggling students in Japan from the value of comparing themselves with others through my presentation. To achieve this, I want to deepen my ability to explain and pitch through business pitch contests.

(350 words)

後輩達へのアドバイス

皆さんもそうだと思いますが、留学生みんなそれぞれが何かしらの決意や覚悟を持って留学に来ているはずです。無駄にしている時間はないので、自分が楽しいと思えることを精一杯やっていくのが重要かなと思います。

編入のために楽しくないクラブやワクワクしないボランティア、つまらない授業に時間を使うよりも、何か楽しいと思える活動に時間を使っていくことをお勧めします(パーソナルな意見ですが、笑)。