UC Berkeley announced in 2016 that it was launching a new dual degree option for undergraduate students who want to gain expertise in both engineering and business.
The Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology program, or “MET” program, will be jointly taught at Berkeley’s top-ranked Haas School of Business and College of Engineering. The program is designed to give students a seamless understanding of technology innovation, and to prepare future leaders who will create real-world impacts – be it at new start-ups, social impact ventures or within established companies.
Michael Grimes, Managing Director of Global Technology Investment Banking at Morgan Stanley reports at Poets & Quants that “80% of the most effective C-suite leaders in tech fit a common pattern. They tend to have an undergraduate degree in computer science followed by an MBA later on. That way they have the management skill set combined with a deep understanding to be taken seriously by the engineers.”
With the ever rising cost of undergraduate and graduate education, Berkeley may have found a way to position outstanding students for leadership in the tech community in a shorter timeframe.
“The long-term purpose of this program is to develop leaders with an integrated mindset and tools to address our largest challenges and opportunities,” says Rich Lyons, dean of Berkeley-Haas. “Their M.E.T. education will greatly expand their capacity to shape parts of our future that we cannot even see today.”
Grimes continues: “It is the academic equivalent of the Navy Seals… This is a whole other level of an academic experience. As a hirer and an employer, I can tell you this will be one of the most elite undergraduate programs out there.”
There are two tracks in the new MET program:
- Electrical Engineering & Computer Science + Business (EECS + Business)
- Industrial Engineering & Operations Research + Business (IEOR + Business)
UC Berkeley has released sample schedules to indicate what students pursuing one of these tracks might expect from their time in the program.
Sample Schedule for EECS + Business Track
Sample Schedule for IEOR + Business Track
The first MET cohort will be limited to 30 students, and the maximum size the program will grow to is expected to be 50 students.
Admissions
Future undergraduate students interested in the MET program can find more admissions information on the UC Berkeley website here, and are encouraged to give serious thought to how they will tell their story to best appeal to both the business and engineering schools.
For anyone who would like help crafting their stories when applying to this program, which claims to be the academic equivalent of the Navy Seals, please feel free to reach out and introduce yourself to our team anytime at Info@TranscendAdmissions.com.