Hi! I’m Yaohan Zhang and I’m currently studying financial management at Zhejiang Normal University (Zhejiang province, China). The courses in my major are based on the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) system, especially those related to accounting, financial management, tax law, et cetera. In addition, compulsory courses such as advanced mathematics, linear algebra and statistics also provide me with a foundation toward my development in this major. My professors are very responsible and some have experience working or studying overseas, which have laid a good foundation for me.
Around the beginning of my sophomore year, I started to think about my future development. My GPA and English were both good, and I also had the desire to explore the related knowledge and jobs of financial management and accounting. So I thought it would be great if I had the opportunity to visit the best business schools in the world. I'm very lucky that since the pandemic ended, my school has been actively promoting overseas visiting-student programs.
Among the programs listed on the school's official website, the ones that I was most interested in included the Berkeley Haas Global Access Program. The Haas School of Business is as famous as the sunshine in California! I was excited that I could take the courses offered by Haas and freely choose electives and learn with Berkeley students. So I applied for and was accepted into the Fall 2024 semester!
A Deep Dive Into My Classes
In my undergraduate track at BHGAP, I took Thriving at Haas and Beyond, Climate Change and Business Strategy and International Marketing. For electives, I chose Pricing and Introduction to Finance.
Thriving at Haas and Beyond is very useful and practical for students who are not studying in the United States as an undergraduate but plan to apply for graduate school or to work in the U.S. It encourages you to express yourself and communicate with others, teaches us how to package ourselves and reach out to others on LinkedIn, and how to write résumés and CVs. Professor Jennifer Davis always handed out snacks and shared her life with us on sunny Friday afternoons, showing motherly kindness to children far away from home.
International Marketing as a campus elective is case-based, with theoretical knowledge integrated into it. And it is really international! We discussed many fashion and luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Chanel, as well as L'Oreal, Uniqlo, Zara and so on. I have taken marketing courses before, so I had gained theoretical knowledge such as the five W’s of marketing and the 6M model of integrated marketing communications, but I lacked experience in applying them to actual cases. This course made up for that very well. It provided an opportunity to encourage people to actively absorb and explore information and think deeply. Because the brands we learned about are truly global and my fellow classmates came from all over the world, it was also very helpful to listen to everyone's exploration of the extension of local brands.
Pricing was my favorite campus elective class. Professor Yuichiro Kamada was always proud to incorporate his Japanese culture into the course. For example, when explaining the knowledge of sumo pricing, a scene of watching a sumo match was presented. All of the classroom experiments were also very interesting, such as the auction experiment. We got to understand the first-price auction, second-price auction, English Auction, Dutch Auction, et cetera. Our final project, which we worked on during the semester, required us to select a brand and study its pricing strategy (demand curve, optimal price, conjoint analysis) by using the methods learned in the course.
Another campus elective, Introduction to Finance was rich with content, ranging from time value at the very beginning to portfolio construction, cost of capital, et cetera. It can be said that the progression in the class was relatively fast and required a certain foundation of financial knowledge. The professor was committed to integrating the real world into classroom knowledge, thanks to his considerable CPA experience. The best part of this course was that the professor and the teaching assistant would teach you step by step how to calculate net present value, internal rate of return and the like using Excel, as well as how to build financial statements. This was very helpful for establishing my knowledge system and future work.
Taking Advantage of Sunny California
My friends and I went to Tahoe during the Thanksgiving holiday and stayed at a wonderful house through Airbnb. The pine forests, snow-capped mountains and lakes were incredibly beautiful. We also went skiing—it was really fun! Because I live in the south, I had never skied before, so I kept falling for the first two hours. But after learning to ski, it was as enjoyable as flying.
Outside of class, I also took a beginner-level ballet course offered by Pointe of Berkeley. It was taught by members of this student club. The students who came to the class were both male and female, with different backgrounds, but everyone was very enthusiastic—starting from warm up, plié and battement tendu through the end when we also tried en dehors.
The visits to companies in the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley also attracted me very much to this program. I was excited to visit Apple, Google and 1TCC, a supply chain–management company whose vision is to help CFO’s right-size their balance sheet, drive capital efficiency and deliver liquidity by minimizing investments in raw materials. That was the first time I visited a startup company and saw the real working environment of an American enterprise. Several of the initial founders of the enterprise have a strong accounting background, which has enabled me to see more possibilities for the development of my career. I’m thinking that working as an auditor or in a tax-related job at an accounting firm in the United States sounds like a promising future for me.
My Top 5 Things to Do While at Berkeley
- Get a library card from the Berkeley Public Library and enjoy electronic resources using apps such as Kanopy and Libby.
- Enjoy clam chowder at Fisherman's Wharf.
- Climb Big C with friends to watch the sunset at least once.
- Buy a cup of coffee and a cookie at Caffè Strada Berkeley and wander around aimlessly.
- Jollibee!!!
My Advice to You
Seize all of the opportunities that interest you, whether it's watching guest speakers or attending the Dean's speaker series, and obtain more information to expand your thinking.
Communicate more with professors and classmates. They are an important part of networking and may offer many different insights and help for academic and career development.
Check out more images from my time in Berkeley!
