Moving from the South Bay, where he earned an engineering degree and worked for three years, to San Francisco made a world of difference in Cedric Dupont's MBA experience. "This is an amazing environment. I was never bored living in San Francisco," he says. "There are museums and music and great restaurants." And when he needed a change from the city, Dupont found it easy to head for the mountains to ski or hike.

Sidewalk cafés and ski runs were a big change from the Mojave Desert, the scene of Dupont's triumph in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge robotic vehicle race. He organized the winning team of experts and convinced management at Volkswagen to sponsor the effort. The team's creation, named Stanley, completed the demanding 132-mile course in less than seven hours.

"Since childhood, I wanted to be an inventor," Dupont says. "But as I got farther away from pure science in my jobs, and was given more responsibility for planning and managing projects, I realized that I really enjoyed it. That's when I figured out that I needed a real business education. Here at Haas, everything was new. Even my math skills, which are very strong, were tested in new contexts."

At Haas he found that "everyone has a specialty or something they are particularly known for. Everyone sticks out for a unique reason. I think that is what made it so easy for us to collaborate." That collaboration is evident, according to Dupont, in how much is student-run at Haas, including the >play digital media case competition organized by the Digital Media & Entertainment Club (DMEC). "I was amazed by the amount of support the administration and other students gave me when I was organizing logistics for >play. Haas really gives students the opportunity and the freedom to lead."