Insider's Guide: Booth School of Business

mbaMission’s Insider’s Guide

Booth School of BusinessUniversity of Chicago

Chicago, IL

2017–2018

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4mbaMission Insider’s Guide: Booth School of Business · 2017–2018

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After more than a decade helping MBA applicants get

into top business schools, we have learned what can

compel an admissions committee to send that cov-

eted letter of acceptance. Selecting the right MBA

program for your needs and developing a true un-

derstanding of and familiarity with that program are

crucial in crafting a successful application. We have

therefore invested hundreds of hours into research-

ing and examining the leading business schools—in-

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representatives—to construct these guides, with the

express goal of helping applicants like you make in-

formed decisions about this important step in your

education and career.

We hope you enjoy this guide and encourage you to

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Admissions GuidesmbaMission Complete Start-to-Finish MBA Admissions Guide

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mbaMission Essay Writing Guide

mbaMission Fundamentals of an MBA Candidacy Guide

mbaMission Interview Guide

mbaMission Letters of Recommendation Guide

mbaMission Long-Term Planning Guide

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mbaMission Selecting Your Target MBA Program E-Book

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mbaMission Waitlist Guide

MBA Student Loan Reduction Primer

Insider’s GuidesmbaMission Insider’s Guide to Columbia Business School

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mbaMission Insider’s Guide to Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business

mbaMission Insider’s Guide to the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley

mbaMission Insider’s Guide to Harvard Business School

mbaMission Insider’s Guide to the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University

mbaMission Insider’s Guide to the MIT Sloan School of Management

mbaMission Insider’s Guide to New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business

mbaMission Insider’s Guide to the Stanford Graduate School of Business

mbaMission Insider’s Guide to the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan

mbaMission Insider’s Guide to the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth

mbaMission Insider’s Guide to the UCLA Anderson School of Management

mbaMission Insider’s Guide to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business

mbaMission Insider’s Guide to the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business Administration

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Interview PrimersmbaMission Chicago Booth School of Business Interview Primer

mbaMission Columbia Business School Interview Primer

mbaMission Dartmouth Tuck Interview Primer

mbaMission Duke Fuqua Interview Primer

mbaMission Haas School of Business Interview Primer

mbaMission Harvard Business School Interview Primer

mbaMission INSEAD Interview Primer

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Table of Contents

9 The MBA Program in Context: Choosing Chicago Booth 10 Location: Urban Campus Versus College Town

13 Class Size: Smaller Versus Larger

17 Curriculum: Flexible Versus Mandatory Core

20 Pedagogy: Lecture Versus Case Method

22 Academic Specializations/Recruitment Focus: Resources and Employers

27 Alumni Base: Opportunities to Engage

29 Facilities: Shaping the Academic/Social Experience

30 Rankings and Reputation: Important Metrics or Arbitrary Measures?

36 Booth School of Business36 Summary

37 The Dean

39 Professional Specializations

39 Consulting

41 Entrepreneurship, Private Equity, and Venture Capital

44 Finance

47 International Business

49 Marketing

52 Nonprofit/Social Entrepreneurship

54 Notable Professors and Unsung Heroes

57 Social/Community Life

59 Academic Summary

61 Admissions Basics

65 University of Chicago (Booth) Essay Analysis, 2016–2017

68 Insider Interview: Alumna, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Class of 2012

74 Appendix: Chicago Booth Facts and Figures74 Basics

74 Class Profile (Class of 2018)

75 Employment Statistics (Class of 2016)

78 Bibliography


The MBA Program in Context:

Choosing Chicago Booth

Over the years, we have met many aspiring MBA students who have tried to

identify their target schools and quickly become overwhelmed, wondering,

“How are the top MBA programs really different?” and “How do I choose the

one that is right for me?”

Frustrated, some applicants ultimately choose schools based simply on

rankings or the opinions of friends or alumni. Although these inputs have a

place in your evaluative process, you should also do the necessary research

to find the program that is truly best for your personality and professional

needs. In doing so, you will find significant differences between, for exam-

ple, programs that have a class size in the low 200s and those that have classes of more than 900 students. As you

are undoubtedly already aware, an MBA is a significant investment in the short term and a lifetime connection to

an institution in the long term. We therefore strongly encourage you to take time now to think long and hard about

this decision and thoroughly consider your options. We hope this guide will prove helpful to you in doing just that.

At mbaMission, we advise candidates evaluating their potential target schools to consider the following eight

specific characteristics (in no particular order) that shape MBA programs:

1. Location: Urban Campus Versus College Town

2. Class Size: Smaller Versus Larger

3. Curriculum: Flexible Versus Mandatory Core

4. Pedagogy: Lecture Versus Case Method

5. Academic Specializations/Recruitment Focus: Resources and Employers

6. Alumni Base: Opportunities to Engage

7. Facilities: Shaping the Academic/Social Experience

8. Rankings and Reputation: Important Metrics or Arbitrary Measures?

You will not likely find a single MBA program that meets all your needs and preferences across these eight criteria,

but you should be able to identify schools that fulfill the factors that are most important to you. Although this

guide is intended to familiarize you on a deeper level with this particular school, nothing will prove more valuable

in your decision making than visiting the programs that appeal to you and experiencing them firsthand. Inevitably,

no matter what your research may reveal, some schools will simply “click” with you, and others will not.

You may not find a single program that meets all your needs and preferences, but you should be able to identify ones that fulfill the factors that are most important to you.


Note: The authors and editors at mbaMission have made every effort to ensure the accuracy and timeliness of the

information included in this guide. However, some discrepancies may exist or develop over time between what is

presented here and what appears in the school’s official materials, as well as what may be offered by other content

providers in print or online. For the most up-to-date information, always check with your target school directly. The

opinions expressed by the people interviewed are those of the attributed individuals only and may not necessarily

represent the opinion of mbaMission or any of its affiliates.

We also wish to thank the students, alumni, faculty members, and administrators who gave generously of their time

to provide valuable input for this guide.

1. Location: Urban Campus Versus College Town

Pursuing an MBA can be quite intense, and the environment and community

surrounding the campus can profoundly affect and even shape your MBA

experience. For example, imagine stepping out of a class at New York Univer-

sity’s (NYU’s) Stern School of Business and into the energetic bustle of New

York City’s West Village. Now imagine walking outside after a course at the

Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and being surrounded by the tranquil-

ity and natural beauty of New Hampshire’s Upper Valley. Neither scenario is

necessarily “better” than the other, but one might appeal to you more.

An urban campus can undoubtedly offer social and cultural opportunities that a college town simply cannot match.

This is not to suggest, however, that college towns are devoid of culture—indeed, intense intellectual and cultural

programs exist in college towns precisely because the academic institution is at the core of the community.

While schools in college towns tout their close-knit atmosphere and the tight bonds classmates form in such a

setting, this environment can be welcoming for some students and overwhelming for others. In contrast, urban

campuses are more decentralized, with students often living in various parts of a city and even in the surrounding

suburbs. Someone who has a greater need for privacy or personal space might therefore prefer an urban environ-

ment. In addition, in major urban centers, some students—particularly those who lived in the city before enrolling

The environment and community surrounding your chosen school can profoundly affect and shape your MBA experience.

Urban Campus Schools Urban/College Hybrid Schools College Town Schools

Chicago BoothColumbia Business SchoolHarvard Business SchoolMIT SloanNYU SternUCLA AndersonUPenn Wharton

Northwestern Kellogg Stanford GSBUC Berkeley HaasYale SOM

Cornell JohnsonDartmouth TuckDuke FuquaMichigan RossUVA Darden


in business school—may already have well-developed social groups, and this scenario may again be better for

those who find an academically and socially all-encompassing environment less attractive.

One aspect of the MBA experience that candidates often fail to consider when evaluating their school options is

weather. Although factoring climate into your school choice may initially seem superficial, if you know you cannot

comfortably manage frigid conditions or soaring temperatures, certain programs should be stricken from your

list. We encounter many applicants each year who wisely stave off a potentially miserable experience by choosing

to not apply to certain schools in locations they just do not feel are “livable” for them.

In addition, housing costs are one expense that many applicants do not stop to consider before choosing a school

to target. By researching real estate prices at the top programs, we found that the cost differential between rent-

ing a one-bedroom apartment in a Midwestern college town and renting one in New York City, for example, can

be quite significant—adding up to tens of thousands of dollars on a cumulative basis across two years. This is an

important factor to include as you weigh your options and calculate your projected budget.

In summary, a college town can be appealing for some candidates because its smaller size tends to create strong

bonds within the business school’s community, though for others, the lack of privacy could be undesired or over-

whelming. Furthermore, some find a slower pace of life calming and comfortable, whereas others crave the energy

and bustle of a city. If you strongly prefer one or the other, you should be able to quickly eliminate certain schools

from your list.

Average Monthly Rent for a One-Bedroom Apartment

NYU Stern New York, NY $3,395 within .27 mile radius of campus

MIT Sloan Cambridge, MA $3,149 within .49 mile radius of campus

Harvard Business School Cambridge, MA $2,631 within .59 mile radius of campus

Columbia Business School New York, NY $2,563 within .54 mile radius of campus

Stanford GSB Stanford, CA $2,521 within 1.15 mile radius of campus

UCLA Anderson Los Angeles, CA $2,336 within .96 mile radius of campus

UC Berkeley Haas Berkeley, CA $1,984 within .57 mile radius of campus

Northwestern Kellogg Evanston, IL $1,772 within .69 mile radius of campus

Dartmouth Tuck Hanover, NH $1,727 within .38 mile radius of campus

UPenn Wharton Philadelphia, PA $1,418 within .78 mile radius of campus

Yale SOM New Haven, CT $1,232 within .30 mile radius of campus

Chicago Booth Chicago, IL $1,222 within 1.05 mile radius of campus

Cornell Johnson Ithaca, NY $1,092 within .58 mile radius of campus

Michigan Ross Ann Arbor, MI $976 within .46 mile radius of campus

Duke Fuqua Durham, NC $916 within 1.8 mile radius of campus

UVA Darden Charlottesville, VA $827 within 1.26 mile radius of campus

According to Rentometer.com, accessed April 2017.


Chicago, Illinois, known as the “Second City” (a nickname established when the city was the second most

populous one in the country after New York City), boasts a population of just over 9.5 million in its greater

metropolitan area. So, rather than discussing everything that a city the size of Chicago has to offer—and it

indeed offers plenty in terms of arts and entertainment (several major sports teams, the world-renowned

Art Institute of Chicago, and a stunning array of architectural styles amid rows of towering skyscrapers,

just to scratch the surface)—we will focus on the neighborhoods in which students at the University of

Chicago Booth School of Business primarily study and live, starting with Hyde Park, where the business

school is located.

For years, Hyde Park was maligned as a dangerous part of Chicago, but the neighborhood has gentrified

significantly and appears to have even earned some cachet. Hyde Park is now perhaps best known for

being the Chicago home of a certain former Illinois senator who became President of the United States.

Some Chicago Booth students are not concerned about Hyde Park’s safety but told mbaMission that the

area is fairly quiet at night and that students who do not live downtown might miss out on all that Chicago

has to offer. Still, Hyde Park has its charms, being a neighborhood where both professors and student

families live, and it is economical, with one-bedroom apartments costing approximately $1,100 per month

(according to real estate Web site Trulia.com), compared with approximately $1,800 per month downtown.

Students who live in the neighborhood told mbaMission about eating at Medici on 57th, a pizzeria with a

rooftop balcony, and hanging out toward the end of the week at The Pub at the University of Chicago’s Ida

Noyes Hall.

Within Hyde Park, a notable number of students reside in the Regents Park high-rise complex, where

monthly rents for studio apartments start at $1,250, and three-bedroom apartments start at $2,350.

Booth Partners, the school’s club for the significant others and families of Chicago Booth students, reports

that 60% of students live downtown in the Loop/Lakeshore East area and approximately 12% live in South

Loop. The Gold Coast/Streeterville and River North areas attract approximately 10% of students each, and

roughly 5% of students live both in the Hyde Park and the Lincoln Park/Wicker Park/Logan Square areas.

A popular housing option for Chicago Booth students, according to the club, is a building called Aqua, a

spectacular 87-story high-rise, built to comply with LEED green building certification from the U.S. Green

Building Council. Students who want to relax after a tough day can swim in one of the facility’s pools, watch

a movie in the media room, work out in the fitness center, or just enjoy the view from the observation

deck. At Aqua, which is located approximately 35 minutes from campus on the “L” (Chicago’s elevated sub-

way system), students pay between approximately $1,800 and $2,550 per month for a studio and between

$3,200 and $4,100 per month for a two-bedroom apartment.

Commenting on the preference many students have for downtown living, one first year wrote in an April

2013 post on her personal blog, “MBAs have been out of school for at least three years (some of us even 10+

years) and have become used to living a certain way. If we have the opportunity to maintain that lifestyle


(lack of income and debt be damned), we’re going to do it. Hyde Park is lovely, but most of us just aren’t

about that 2.5 kids, Sunday at the park life quite yet. Chicago’s public transportation makes it easy to com-

mute to school and we have lockers so that we can keep the stuff we need on campus to avoid extra trips.

Given these conveniences, we choose to live where Chicago’s night life does.”

Regardless of where students choose to live—and according to much of the information shared in the Chi-

cago Booth admissions chats we consulted, more and more seem to choose downtown—taking advantage

of everything Chicago has to offer is reportedly quite easy. Said one first year in a January 2012 admissions

chat, “Most Booth students live downtown in the Loop, due to more access to activities, restaurants, and

shopping, and make use of the Metra [the northeast Illinois commuter rail system] to get to campus on a

daily basis.” And in January 2015, a student contributor to The Booth Experience blog discussed the advan-

tages and disadvantages of living in Hyde Park , referring to the area simply as “the perfect place to live.”

In recent years, Booth Partners has claimed that approximately 20% of students with families live in uni-

versity housing. Graduate student housing is offered in 28 buildings on a first-come, first-served basis and

is available in the Hyde Park area, with units from efficiencies to three-bedroom apartments. In addition,

international students have the option of residing at International House. This residence hall is open to

all students at the University of Chicago, although the residence population is largely made of graduate

students. Annual rents at International House range from approximately $8,211 for a double to $9,435 for

a single or a suite.

One international student with whom mbaMission spoke cautioned that some prospective students may

not realize how expensive the city of Chicago can be: his rent in the typically pricey Gold Coast area, in the

north side of the city, was $1,700 per month for a one-bedroom apartment. He added that he also had to

stop taking public transportation to campus because the trip was taking him a full hour; instead, he bought

a car, which reduced his commute to 35 minutes.

Chicago Booth represents an urban campus within a large city, thereby offering its students both neigh-

borhood and downtown living. Candidates should consider how they feel about a decentralized community

(and possibly a significant commute) when deciding whether to apply to the school. Further, applicants

might consider whether the general ambience of a major metropolis is ideal for their personal lifestyle as

well as their study style.

2. Class Size: Smaller Versus Larger

Another element that affects the character of a school’s MBA experience is class size. You might want to reflect on

your high school, college, and work environments to help you determine whether you would be more comfortable

in a larger class or a smaller one—or whether this is even a consideration for you at all.


Students at smaller schools (which we define as having approximately 350

students or fewer per class) tend to interact with most of their peers and

professors at some point during the typical two-year MBA period. Thus, the

smaller schools are generally considered more “knowable,” and their com-

munities tend to be quite closely knit. Also, consider that assuming a leader-

ship position is easier in a smaller environment, because, for example, the

Finance Club may have only one president at both a small school and a large

school, but competition for such a position would obviously be greater in the

larger program.

Some individuals might prefer to be at a larger school where they can better

maintain their anonymity if they so choose. A student at a school with close

to 900 people or more in each class will not likely get

to know each and every one of his/her classmates

by the end of the program, and some people might

prefer this. Further, advocates of larger classes tout

the advantage of being able to interact with more

people during one’s MBA experience—and to thereby

develop a broader and more robust network of peers.

Note that many schools divide students into smaller

groups—called “sections,” “clusters,” “cohorts,” or

even “oceans”—in which approximately 60–90 stu-

dents take certain classes together, and this ap-

proach can help foster a stronger sense of commu-

nity within the larger programs.

With a class of approximately 580 (585 in the

Class of 2018), Chicago Booth is one of the

country’s larger MBA programs. Although a

class of this size is too big to allow every stu-

dent to truly get to know one another, Chicago

Booth is contained within a single building—

the Harper Center—which has a massive public meeting space at its core, and this helps facilitate and

encourage student interaction.

Chicago Booth does not divide its incoming students into dedicated sections for the first full year of its

MBA program, but all students must participate in the LEAD (Leadership Effectiveness and Development)

Program and are divided into sections of approximately 60 for that purpose. LEAD begins two to three

weeks before the start of the first semester and ends just before the semester ends. In the LEAD class,

Reflect on your past academic and work environments to determine whether you would be more comfortable in a larger or smaller class—or whether this is a consideration for you at all.

Class Size

900 to 1,000 Harvard Business School

800 to 900 UPenn Wharton

700 to 800 Columbia Business School1

500 to 600 Chicago Booth

400 to 500 Northwestern KelloggDuke FuquaStanford GSBMichigan RossMIT Sloan

300 to 400 NYU SternUCLA AndersonUVA DardenYale SOM

200 to 300 Dartmouth TuckCornell JohnsonUC Berkeley Haas

Schools are listed in order from largest class to smallest within

each category.

1 Includes J-Term students.


students are further divided into small squads (of six to eight members) and participate in a variety of

team-building experiences on- and off-site. A second year wrote in a 2016 Booth Experience blog post that

the LEAD program “is a dynamic course where first-year students focus on developing the most critical

aspects of leadership—cultivating support and influencing others, understanding different working styles

and motivating diverse teams, presenting ideas, and managing under crisis. At Booth, we believe these

skills simply can’t be learned in a traditional academic setting, so LEAD is a fully experiential program

where first-year students are constantly challenging themselves to practice these skills and incorporate

feedback from each other to improve.”

Some students reported to mbaMission that they appreciate the LEAD course as an opportunity for social-

ization, and some of the program’s student sections—or the “squads” within them—arrange reunions to

stay in touch with one another after the program is over. An alumnus we interviewed who had been a LEAD

Facilitator (as well as student club co-chair and an Admissions Fellow) pinpointed the course as one of the

most impressive elements of his business school experience. “I thought that all three activities were great,”

he said, “but being a LEAD Facilitator was where I got to practice my public speaking and build great bonds

School (Class of 2018) Women International Minorities

Chicago Booth 42% 36% 29%1

Columbia Business School 38% 48% 31%1

Cornell Johnson 31% 33% 15%

Dartmouth Tuck 44% 30% 18%1

Duke Fuqua2 35% 40% 20%

Harvard Business School 43% 35% 25%1

Michigan Ross 40% 31% 24%

MIT Sloan 40% 39% NA

Northwestern Kellogg 41% 35% 26%1

NYU Stern 35% 31%4 30%

Stanford GSB 41% 40%3,4 29%1

UC Berkeley Haas 38% 38% 32%1

UCLA Anderson 32% 38% 25%

UPenn Wharton 44% 32% 32%1

UVA Darden 39% 33% 20%1

Yale SOM 43% 46% 28%11 Specified as U.S. minorities.

2 Fuqua had released no official figures for the Class of 2018 by the publication of this guide but offers statistics on its site to represent a

“typical” class.

3 Includes permanent residents.

4 Includes dual citizens.


with my squad.” Another Facilitator wrote in a 2016 blog post: “LEAD facilitators serve a role as ‘bridge’

between first-year students and second-year students. In true Booth give-back fashion, LEAD facilitators

become one of the very handy access points for those first-year students to connect to other second-year

students who just finished their summer internships and are excited to meet first-year students.”

LEAD is Chicago Booth’s only mandatory class; thereafter, students take courses of varying sizes with both

first- and second-year students. Oftentimes, Chicago Booth’s full-time students will take classes with stu-

dents in the school’s Evening and Weekend MBA program at the downtown Gleacher Center. These elements

serve to broaden the community beyond the approximately 580 students with whom one will graduate.

Meanwhile, another graduate we interviewed explained, “It is easy to build strong relationships with

classmates, so long as you get involved. Whether it be through joining student groups, attending TNDC

[Thursday Night Drinking Club, a weekly social activity for the entire MBA student body], or just hanging

out in the Winter Garden, there are many ways to not just meet, but actually socialize with classmates.”

A first-year student with whom we spoke attested that the culture among Chicago Booth’s students is

largely supportive, saying, “Most of the students are very willing to help each other despite the competi-

tive nature of the classes.”

Most Common Undergraduate Major for Incoming Students (Class of 2018)

Chicago Booth Business 28%

Columbia Business School Social Science 34%

Cornell Johnson NA NA

Dartmouth Tuck Humanities, Social Science, Economics 51%

Duke Fuqua1 Engineering/Natural Sciences 29%

Harvard Business School Economics/Business 41%

Michigan Ross Economics/Business 38%

MIT Sloan Engineering 32%

Northwestern Kellogg Economics/Business 45%

NYU Stern Business 29%

Stanford GSB Humanities/Social Sciences 48%

UC Berkeley Haas Business 24%

UCLA Anderson Business 28%

UPenn Wharton Humanities 46%

UVA Darden Business 25%

Yale SOM Humanities and Social Sciences 33%1 Fuqua had released no official figures for the Class of 2018 by the publication of this guide but offers statistics on its site to represent a

“typical” class.


A first-year student observed in a 2013 post on her personal blog that the school’s breadth of social op-

portunities requires students to take on a more active role in engaging the community. “I will readily ad-

mit that although Booth has a very vibrant community, it is built differently than at other schools,” she

wrote, adding, “Booth is set up so that students aren’t interacting with the same people day in and day out.

Booth fosters breadth of socializing, but it’s up to the individual to determine where to seek depth. One of

the best consequences of this breadth is a greater sense of cohesion between the first- and second-year

classes. This is the very opposite of the structure at most schools, where the depth of socializing is built

into the program and it’s up to students to seek out a wider breadth.”

3. Curriculum: Flexible Versus Mandatory Core

Many business schools have a “core” curriculum—a standard series of courses that all students must take. How-

ever, these core requirements can vary tremendously from one program to the next. For example, one school may

teach its required curriculum for the entire first year, meaning that students will not take any elective courses

until their second year, whereas another MBA program may stipulate only one or two required courses.

Year-Over-Year Class Profile Data: Chicago Booth

Class of 2018

Class of 2017

Class of 2016

Class of 2015

Class of 2014

Class of 2013

Class of 2012

Class of 2011

Number of Applicants

NA NA NA NA 4,021 4,169 NA NA

Number of Full-Time Students

585 585 581 581 580 579 575 550

Average GMAT 726.3 726 724 723 720 715 719 714

GMAT Range (Median 80%)

NA NA NA NA 680–760

660–760

660–760

660–760

Average GPA 3.6 3.6 3.59 3.57 3.52 NA NA NA

GPA Range 2.6–4.0 3.2–3.91 3.2–3.91 3.1–3.91 3.1–3.91 NA NA NA

Average Years of Work Experience

5 4.6 4.6 5 5 5 5 5

Average Student Age

27.9 27.8 27.7 28 28 28 28 NA

Minority Representation

29% 23% 22% 24% 22% 9% 10% 9%

Female Representation

42% 36% 36% 35% 35% 35% 35% 35%

International Representation

39% 34% 36% 37% 32% 36% 34% 36%

1 Median 80%.


The rigidity or flexibility of a school’s required curriculum affects students’

education and socialization. Regardless of their professional experience, stu-

dents at a school with a rigid core curriculum must all take the same classes.

At some schools, for example, even CPAs must take the required foundational

accounting course, whereas at others, students can waive selected classes

if they can prove a certain level of proficiency. Again, both approaches have

pros and cons, and what those are depends on your perspective.

Proponents of a rigid core curriculum would argue that academics

understand what skills students need to become true managers

and that when students “overspecialize” in one area, their over-

all business education can ultimately suffer. A significant body of

academic writing has been devoted to critiquing programs that

give students a narrow view of business, notably Henry Mintz-

berg’s Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of

Managing and Management Development (Berrett-Koehler, 2004)

and Rakesh Khurana’s From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The So-

cial Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unful-

filled Promise of Management as a Profession (Princeton Univer-

sity Press, 2007).

Advocates of the core curriculum approach would also argue

that having all students take the same classes creates a common

language and discussion among the classmates because of the

shared experience. In addition, proponents contend that a rigid

core curriculum facilitates learning, because students who have

applicable direct experience bring that knowledge and insight

into the classroom and can thereby help teach others. Finally,

schools with mandatory cores generally keep students together

in their sections for several months, if not an entire academic year, and students who interact every day in this

way ultimately forge strong bonds. This sustained contact and connection can create a deep sense of community

among the students.

In contrast, those who would argue in favor of a more flexible curriculum feel that students benefit from the op-

portunity to specialize immediately—that time is short, and students need power and choice in preparing for their

desired careers. So if, for example, a student intended to enter the world of finance, an advocate of flexibility

would argue that the student should be able to study finance in depth throughout the MBA program, possibly

even from day one, so as to gain as much experience as possible in this area—especially before interviewing for a

summer internship. Furthermore, proponents for flexible curricula caution that experienced students could end

The rigidity or flexibility of a school’s first-year curriculum affects students’ education and socialization.

Average GMAT of Incoming Students(Class of 2018)

Chicago Booth 726.3

Columbia Business School 717

Cornell Johnson 700

Dartmouth Tuck 717

Duke Fuqua NA

Harvard Business School1 730

Michigan Ross 708

MIT Sloan 724

Northwestern Kellogg 728

NYU Stern 710

Stanford GSB 737

UC Berkeley Haas 717

UCLA Anderson 715

UPenn Wharton 730

UVA Darden 712

Yale SOM1 730

1 Represents median rather than average.


up “wasting” hours taking courses

in subjects in which they already

have expertise. Finally, they would

assert that a flexible schedule al-

lows students the opportunity to

meet a greater number and wider

variety of their classmates.

The academic calendar at Chicago

Booth is divided into three ten-

week quarters (fall, winter, and spring), and students take three to four courses per quarter, for a total of

21 classes (including LEAD) over 21 months. Although a great deal of flexibility does indeed exist within the

Chicago Booth curriculum, students do not enjoy a truly “open buffet.” Beyond LEAD, the school breaks its

first-year course selection down into different categories, and students must choose from among the op-

tions within each category to fulfill certain requirements. Although these course categories are required

for all students, approved substitutes may be taken in areas where students may have prior experience.

First, students must take three Foundation courses, one from each of the following three divisions: fi-

nancial accounting, microeconomics, and statistics. Each of these divisions includes between four and six

course options from which students may choose.

Foundation (one course from each of the three categories):

� Financial Accounting

� Microeconomics

� Statistics

Second, students must complete six Functions, Management, and Business Environment courses, which are

divided into seven subsections. The Functions subcategories include finance, marketing, and operations;

Management includes decisions, people, and strategy; and Business Environment includes just one busi-

ness environment course. Each subsection offers between three and 12 courses from which students may

choose. Thereafter, 11 elective options remain for students among the 21 total courses (including LEAD)

they need to graduate. With faculty permission, students may waive the prerequisites for some courses.

Functions, Management, and Business Environment (six courses chosen from seven categories):

� Functions

� Finance

� Marketing

� Operations

Can Waive/Test Out of Classes

Cannot Waive/Test Out of Classes

Chicago BoothColumbia

Dartmouth TuckDuke Fuqua

Michigan RossNorthwestern Kellogg

NYU SternUC Berkeley HaasUCLA AndersonUPenn Wharton

Cornell JohnsonHarvard Business School

MIT SloanStanford GSBUVA Darden

Yale SOM


� Management

� Decisions

� People

� Strategy

� Business Environment

Although this flexibility has its advantages, it also requires students to make certain academic choices

early on. One Chicago Booth second year told us, “I was lucky. I knew what I wanted to do after school and

had a clear academic path in mind to meet my needs from day one, which is when I had to make my aca-

demic choices. I felt that some who were unsure of their paths were at a disadvantage with such limited

structure.” Another second-year student with whom we spoke said that she, too, felt fortunate to have a

defined path. Still, she seized the opportunity to discuss her academic and career plans with second-year

students via the Career Advisor program—a peer advisor program in which experienced and trained sec-

ond years talk through career options and approaches with first years—and felt that it was of such benefit

that she became one herself in her second year.

In a 2011 Bloomberg Businessweek online chat, a second-year student noted, “Booth’s flexible curriculum

enables each individual to tailor his or her individual experience. I think being able to customize your MBA

is a differentiating feature of the program.” One recent graduate with whom we spoke credited the pro-

gram’s flexibility with his ability to obtain a banking internship in a difficult economy. He told mbaMission

that he overloaded on quantitative and financial courses in his first semester to allay recruiter concerns

about his rather qualitative background and then planned to take marketing, operations, and strategy

courses thereafter.

Further, the Graduate Business Council (student government) offers what is called “The Mentor Program”—

a kind of first year/second year buddy system—to help incoming students acclimate to life at Chicago

Booth. So, candidates who are attracted to the school but have concerns about whether they can manage

the flexibility should know that they will have resources available to help them effectively navigate and

shape their Chicago Booth experience.

4. Pedagogy: Lecture Versus Case Method

Students will likely encounter multiple styles of learning while in business school—including participating in simu-

lations, listening to guest speakers, and partaking in hands-on projects—but the two most common MBA learning

styles are case method and lecture.

Pioneered by HBS, the case method, or case-based learning, requires students to read the story (called a “case”)

of either a hypothetical or a real protagonist who is facing a managerial dilemma. As the student reads, he/she


explores the protagonist’s dilemma and has access to various quantitative

and qualitative data points meant to facilitate further analysis. (Cases can

vary in length but are typically 10–20 pages long.) After reading and study-

ing the entire case, the student generally understands the profundity of the

problem and is typically asked a simple question: “What would you do?” In

other words, how would the student act or react if he/she were in the pro-

tagonist’s place? What decision(s) would the student make?

After completing his/her independent analysis of the case, the student typi-

cally meets with the members of his/her study group or learning team (if

the school in question assigns such teams) for further evalua-

tion. Together, the group/team members explore and critique

one another’s ideas and help those students who may have had

difficulty understanding particular aspects of the issue or pro-

gressing as far on their own. Often, though not always, the team

will establish a consensus regarding the actions they would take

in the protagonist’s place. Then, in class, the professor acts as

facilitator and manages a discussion of the case. Class discus-

sions can often become quite lively, and the professor will guide

students toward resolving the dilemma. Sometimes, the profes-

sor will ultimately reveal the protagonist’s decision and the sub-

sequent results—or even bring the actual protagonist into the

classroom to share and discuss the case’s progression and out-

comes in person.

In short, the case method focuses primarily on the analytical pro-

cess and illustrates that the problems presented have no clear-

cut right or wrong responses. For a student to disagree with the

protagonist’s chosen path—even after it has proved to be suc-

cessful—is not unusual. After all, another approach (or even inac-

tion) may have produced an even better result.

Note that case-based learning is not specific to one academic

discipline. Cases are available in finance, strategy, operations, accounting, marketing, and still other areas. Fur-

ther, many cases are interdisciplinary, meaning that they address more than one area at a time, such as requiring

students to think about how a financial decision might affect the operations of a manufacturing company or the

ways in which a marketing decision might involve significant financial considerations. Importantly, students in

case environments are often graded on their “contribution” to the class discussion (measured by the level of one’s

participation in discussions and analysis, not on the frequency with which one offers “correct” answers), so the

Average GPA of Incoming Students(Class of 2018)

Chicago Booth 3.6

Columbia Business School 3.5

Cornell Johnson 3.39

Dartmouth Tuck 3.5

Duke Fuqua NA

Harvard Business School 3.67

Michigan Ross NA

MIT Sloan 3.5

Northwestern Kellogg 3.6

NYU Stern 3.51

Stanford GSB1 3.73

UC Berkeley Haas 3.64

UCLA Anderson NA

UPenn Wharton NA

UVA Darden 3.5

Yale SOM2 3.65

1 U.S. schools, 4.0 scale only.

2 Median GPA listed.

Students will encounter many different styles of learning during their time at business school, but the two most common are case method and lecture.


case method is not for those who are uncomfortable speaking in class. However, it can be incredibly helpful for

those who want or need to practice and build confidence speaking publicly.

Lecture is the method of learning that is familiar to most people—the professor stands in front of the class and

explores a theory or event, facilitating discussion and emphasizing and explaining key learning points. Often, stu-

dents have read chapters of a textbook beforehand and have come to class with a foundation in the specific area

to be examined that day. Although the case method gives students a context for a problem, those who favor lec-

ture tend to believe that the case method is too situation specific and therefore prefer a methodical exploration

of theory that they feel can be broadly applied across situations. In lecture classes, the professor and his/her re-

search or theory are technically paramount, though students still participate, challenge ideas, and debate issues.

Note that at some schools, professors may alternate between cases and lectures within a single semester of classes.

True to Chicago Booth’s reputation for flexibility, the school allows its professors to decide which method

of instruction they prefer on a class-by-class basis. Some professors use cases, others use lectures, and

still others use both, switching back and forth from course to course. Assessing the ratio of lectures to

case method classes is difficult, because the choice of approach varies from professor to professor and

courses are constantly being revamped.

One recent graduate with whom we spoke noted the advantages of flexibility as it pertains to pedagogy.

He felt that he was able to specifically target classes in which case-based learning would be more effective

and then engage in lecture courses when he wanted more of a theoretical grounding. And a recent alumna

we interviewed reported that she felt the variety of teaching methods used allowed for better accessibil-

ity of some the subjects covered. “I would say that it was a really good mix of classroom teaching and case

studies,” she said. “I thought it was really helpful to get lectures on certain topics and then to use a case

study as an application of them. I just thought, for me, it made a ton of sense to learn some of the theories

first and then to do more applications of them, do real-world scenarios.”

A first year with whom we spoke emphasized that no matter which teaching method is used from one

course to the next, the school’s curriculum overall is generally heavy on quantitative analysis, saying, “Be

ready to be challenged. Even the intro foundation classes at Booth are not easy by any means. Booth is

analytical and proud of it.”

5. Academic Specializations/Recruitment Focus: Resources and Employers

Schools’ brands and reputations develop over time and tend to endure, even when the programs make efforts

to change them. For example, many applicants still feel that Kellogg is only a marketing school and that Chicago

Booth is only for people interested in finance, even though both programs boast strengths in many other areas.


Indeed, this is the exact reason mbaMission started producing these guides

in 2008—we wanted applicants to see beyond these superficial “market” per-

ceptions. Make sure you are not merely accepting stereotypes but are truly

considering the breadth and depth of resources available at each school.

We have dedicated the majority of this guide to exploring the principal pro-

fessional specializations for which resources are available at this particular

school, and we encourage you to fully consider whether the MBA program

meets your personal academic needs by supplementing the information here with additional context from the

school’s career services office, by connecting with the heads of relevant clubs on campus, and perhaps even by

reaching out to alumni in your target industry.

Although Chicago Booth’s reputation as a “finance school” may be warranted—given that many of its

standout theorists have made names for themselves in this area and a large portion of the program’s

students aspire to enter this field—the school certainly offers more than a finance education and has been

making a concerted effort to broaden its reputation beyond this industry.

In fact, in an exclusive interview with mbaMission, Associate Dean of Student Recruitment and Admissions

Kurt Ahlm noted, “Our graduates are analytical problem solvers who can apply what they learn here to

successful careers in any number of fields. Booth has strength in many areas beyond finance, including

School Top Industry for 2016 Graduates % Entering the Industry

Chicago Booth Financial Services 36.0%

Columbia Business School Financial Services 36.9%

Cornell Johnson Financial Services 32.0%

Dartmouth Tuck Consulting 36.0%

Duke Fuqua Consulting 32.0%

Harvard Business School Financial Services 28.0%

Michigan Ross Consulting 32.2%

MIT Sloan Consulting 30.5%

Northwestern Kellogg Consulting 32.6%

NYU Stern Consulting 35.3%

Stanford GSB Finance 31.0%

UC Berkeley Haas Technology/Telecom 38.8%

UCLA Anderson Technology 28.3%

UPenn Wharton Financial Services 35.1%

UVA Darden Consulting 38.0%

Yale SOM Consulting 30.8%

Do not merely accept stereotypes but truly consider the breadth and depth of resources available at each school.


entrepreneurship and marketing.” And in a January 2013 post on the Booth Insider blog, an associate di-

rector of admissions addressed the myth that the school prefers applicants from finance and consulting

backgrounds, saying, “We value diversity in all its forms, including career industry. Many of our applicants

come from finance or consulting backgrounds; but many more have work experience in other industries,

including military service, marketing, education, retail, and nonprofit work, just to name a few.”

In a January 2012 Chicago Booth admissions chat geared specifically to applicants interested in entrepre-

neurship, a coach in career services noted, “There is so much support here for students who are interested

in starting their own entrepreneurial venture. Between courses, the Polsky Center [for Entrepreneurship],

student clubs, conferences and meet-up groups, an active alumni network, and support from career coach-

es and peer advisors, the possibilities are strong. If you bring your passion, we provide the ways to channel

it!” And in a November 2014 chat, a member of the admissions committee reassured an applicant, “As a

student at Booth, you begin interacting with our Career Services team right away. At Orientation you will

participate in Industry Immersion, an event that will help you to target your recruiting strategy. From there

it largely depends upon the industry you are recruiting for, but trust that you will find abundant support

from our coaches and career advisors along the way.”

Indeed, Chicago Booth has received praise for being a better-rounded school than its noted reputation

for quantitative analysis may imply, and a recent alumnus with whom we spoke reiterated this point, com-

menting, “It is not just a quant school! Some of the best classes that I took were in the strategy and mar-

Most Common Pre-MBA Industry (Class of 2018)

Chicago Booth Consulting 21%

Columbia Business School Financial Services 25%

Cornell Johnson NA NA

Dartmouth Tuck Consulting 20%

Duke Fuqua NA NA

Harvard Business School Consulting 15%

Michigan Ross Financial Services 20%

MIT Sloan NA NA

Northwestern Kellogg Financial Services 22%

NYU Stern Financial Services 26%

Stanford GSB Investment Management/Private Equity/Venture Capital 20%

UC Berkeley Haas Consulting 22%

UCLA Anderson High Tech 26%

UPenn Wharton Consulting 23%

UVA Darden NA NA

Yale SOM NA NA


keting realm.” Similarly, when asked why she chose Chicago Booth, a first year we interviewed said she was

attracted to the school’s “balance of quant and non-quant classes.” The Economist ranked Chicago Booth

number one in 2015, 2014, and 2013 for “student assessment of career service” and “diversity of recruiters”

and number one in 2014 for “open new career opportunities,” suggesting that the school’s graduates find

employment in a wide range of industries.

Even after a significant downturn in the economy and a lull in hiring by several major recruiters in recent

years, members of Chicago Booth’s Class of 2016 largely entered the financial services industry (36.0%),

followed by consulting (27.5%). Although consulting was the largest standalone job function (29.3%) for

which graduates were hired last year, in aggregate, investment banking (15.1%), investment management

and research (8.4%), private equity (4.9%), company finance (3.9%), venture capital (1.8%), real estate

(1.2%), and several other less-represented finance functions (2.2% in total) accounted for a total of 37.5%

of all 2016 Chicago Booth graduates. These numbers seem to show that the school’s students can find

placement in the field even during difficult times.

The following table lists the top employers of Chicago Booth MBAs in 2016 and presents these firms’ hiring

numbers for the past several classes as well.

Class of 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010

McKinsey & Company, Inc. 35 44 40 41 28 39 24

The Boston Consulting Group 23 29 25 18 24 19 19

Amazon.com, Inc. 19 14 9 10 NL NL NL

Bain & Company, Inc. 15 18 16 21 21 17 15

Accenture 13 5 13 7 10 7 4

Google Inc. 12 5 7 7 4 4 NL

Bank of America Merrill Lynch 11 12 8 NL 8 8 NL

Top Industries: Chicago Booth

2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007

Financial Services 36.0% 35.2% 36.4% 35.0% 43.2% 41.1% 45.0% 42.5% 52.1% 44%

Consulting 27.5% 32.1% 27.9% 30.7% 30.3% 27.8% 24.0% 23.2% 23.1% 21%

Technology 16.7% 15.2% 13.5% 12.3% 9.0% 9.9% 7.5% 5.7% 6.4% 7%

Consumer Products

6.9% 5.0% 6.1% 2.1% 2.2% 5.7% 5.8% 6.9% NA 5%

Health Care Products and Services

3.3% 2.9% 2.2% 2.5% 2.4% 2.1% NA NA NA 3%

Energy 1.2% 2.1% 2.8% 1.1% 1.3% 2.5% 3.5% 5.4% NA NA


Chicago Booth offers 14 concentrations that allow students to “develop frameworks that enhance or com-

plement [their] experience and fit [their] career goals,” asserts the school’s Web site. Concentrations are

not required, but students typically fulfill one to three of the following options:

� Accounting

� Analytic Finance

� Analytic Management

Class of 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010

PwC Advisory/Strategy 10 12 9 NL NL NL NL

Deloitte Consulting 9 7 11 7 10 4 6

Morgan Stanley 9 NL NL NL NL NL NL

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. 8 11 7 7 6 6 9

JPMorgan Chase & Co. 8 8 9 9 7 8 7

Deutsche Bank AG 7 4 NL NL NL NL NL

Lazard Frères & Co. LLC 7 4 NL NL NL NL NL

Citigroup Inc. 6 7 9 9 7 7 13

Fidelity 6 NL NL NL NL NL NL

PepsiCo, Inc. 6 NL NL NL NL NL NL

Apple Inc. 5 8 6 7 NL NL 4

A.T. Kearney, Inc. 5 4 5 12 6 6 7

Cisco Systems, Inc. 5 NL NL NL NL NL NL

Credit Suisse 5 11 12 13 14 11 12

William Blair 5 NL NL NL NL NL NL

Barclays Capital 4 5 NL NL NL NL NL

Cornerstone Research, Inc. 4 NL NL NL NL NL NL

PIMCO 4 NL NL NL NL NL NL

Samsung Group 4 NL NL NL NL NL NL

Chevron Corporation NL 4 NL NL NL NL NL

DISH NL 4 NL NL NL NL NL

Ernst & Young LLP NL 4 NL NL NL NL NL

Evercore Partners Inc. NL 4 NL NL NL NL NL

Microsoft Corporation NL 5 NL NL NL NL NL

Moelis & Company LLC NL 4 NL NL NL NL NL

The Cambridge Group, Inc. NL 4 6 NL NL NL NL

The Kraft Heinz Company NL 4 NL NL NL NL NL

NL = Indicates the company was not included in the school’s list of employers hiring four or more graduates that year.


� Econometrics and Statistics

� Economics

� Entrepreneurship

� Finance

� General Management

� International Business

� Managerial and Organizational Behavior

� Marketing Analytics

� Marketing Management

� Operations Management

� Strategic Management

6. Alumni Base: Opportunities to Engage

The size and depth of a school’s alumni base may be important to you as you

seek to break into a specific field or region/country. Some MBA programs

have had large classes for many years and can therefore boast sizeable

alumni networks, whereas other schools may have pockets of strength in

particular parts of the world or in certain industries—or can claim a smaller

but tighter-knit and more dedicated alumni network overall. For example,

Dartmouth Tuck has a smaller absolute number of alumni than most top U.S.

schools but has repeatedly been touted as having the highest rate of annual

alumni giving, thanks to its very dedicated graduates.

Although acquiring detailed breakdowns of a school’s alumni base is sometimes difficult, you may want to con-

sider whether the school you are targeting has alumni clubs in your chosen professional area (i.e., some schools

have industry-specific alumni groups) or preferred post-MBA location. Furthermore, if you are determined to live

in a particular city/country/region after graduating, then earning your MBA in or near that area, if possible, may

be a good idea, so that you can more easily connect with local alumni while you are in school—particularly if you

want to pursue a niche professional area and do not expect to participate in on-grounds recruiting. Of course,

technological developments have greatly facilitated outreach, meaning that alumni are no longer a flight or long

drive away, but are now just a phone call, email, text, or even Skype session away.

Chicago Booth has more than 50,000 alumni who stay connected to the school via approximately 80 alumni

clubs (31 in the United States, 39 international, and eight special interest). The school’s special interest

alumni clubs include the Chicago Booth Black Alumni Association, the Chicago Booth Energy Network, the

Chicago Booth Pakistan Club, the Chicago Private Equity Network, the Chicago Booth Real Estate Alumni

Group, the Chicago Booth Women’s Network, the Chicago Angels Network, and the University of Chicago

Some schools boast sizeable alumni networks, while others have pockets of strength in particular regions or industries.


Women’s Business Group. Graduates have reportedly even started corporate networks at such companies

as Kraft, Motorola, William Blair, GE, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, and Northern Trust.

Chicago Booth also has a mix of roundtable programs, in which groups of alumni meet for events and speak-

ers—predominantly in Chicago, but also around the world—so they can stay connected. These are the fol-

lowing:

� Big Data and Analytics Roundtable

� Business Book Roundtable

� Consulting Roundtable

� Entrepreneurial Roundtable

� European Private Equity and Entrepreneurship Roundtable

� European Wealth Management Roundtable

� Finance Roundtable

� Healthcare and BioPharma Roundtable

� Innovation Roundtable

� International Roundtable

Alumni Base

Note: Some schools include MBA program graduates only in their alumni total; other schools may also include alumni from their part-time,

executive, doctoral, and/or other programs, so totals may not be directly comparable.

Schools are listed in order from largest alumni base to smallest within each category.

75,000 to 100,000

100,00075,00050,00025,0000

50,000 to 75,000

25,000 to 50,000

10,000 to 25,000

10,000or fewer

NYU Stern, UPenn Wharton, Harvard Business School

Northwestern Kellogg

Chicago Booth, Michigan Ross, Columbia

UC Berkeley Haas, UCLA Anderson, Stanford GSB

MIT Sloan, Duke Fuqua

UVA Darden, Cornell Johnson

Tuck

Yale SOM


� Marketing Roundtable

� Sales Leaders’ Roundtable

Indeed, the school offers a wide array of events and functions for alumni, both nationally and internation-

ally—in fact, too many to list here. To learn more, view the alumni events calendar online at www.chicago-

booth.edu/alumni/events. Potential students should be encouraged to learn that they will have a variety of

ways in which to stay connected with the school after they graduate and to network with their fellow alumni

around the world. For an up-to-date and interactive map of alumni locations, go to www.chicagobooth.edu/

alumni/community/clubs.

7. Facilities: Shaping the Academic/Social Experience

When contemplating an MBA program, do not overlook the school’s facili-

ties. Renovations, upgrades, and new construction are all regular occurrenc-

es on school campuses these days, as some programs increase their square

footage while others unify disparate areas or refresh existing spaces. Some

schools boast on-campus housing or elite athletic facilities, others have es-

tablished new green spaces and meeting rooms, and still others have refur-

bished or added classrooms, theaters, libraries, and other such resources.

Keep in mind, though, that just because a school has not updated or added to

its facilities in recent years, this does not mean that its offerings are outdated or subpar; the lack of updates may

simply be because none have been needed or the school has invested in other aspects of its program instead. A

campus visit is always the best way to evaluate firsthand what a school has to offer, but we nonetheless dedicate

this space to a discussion of the facilities available at this particular program.

Designed by world-renowned architect Rafael Viñoly and completed in 2004 at a cost of $125M, the Charles

M. Harper Center houses Chicago Booth’s full-time MBA program. The business school’s location boasts a

number of architectural points of interest, standing near Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House and the Univer-

sity of Chicago’s imposing Rockefeller Memorial Chapel. The Harper Center’s Rothman Winter Garden—a

towering atrium with six-story, glass Gothic arches—is at the heart of the building and serves as a central

place where students can study, socialize, and hold club meetings. With over 400,000 square feet of space,

12 classrooms (on the downstairs “classroom level”), offices for the entire administration and faculty (on

the third, fourth, and fifth floors, known as the “faculty floors”), 31 group study rooms, a 3,500-square-foot

student lounge, and 150-person dining facilities, the Harper Center helps shape Chicago Booth’s commu-

nity and is part of the school’s identity.

If a school has not updated its facilities in recent years, perhaps none were needed or the school has invested in other aspects of its program instead.

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/alumni/events

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/alumni/events

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/alumni/community/clubs

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/alumni/community/clubs


MBA students have access to the University of Chicago’s extensive library system. Students may also take

advantage of the 150,000-square-foot Gerald Ratner Athletics Center, which includes fitness centers, gym-

nasia, and a swimming pool and is home base for the university’s basketball, volleyball, and wrestling teams.

Finding a parking space can reportedly be difficult at the Harper Center; indeed, the Chicago Booth Web

site recommends that students driving to campus allow 30–45 minutes for parking alone. Parking permits

for spaces on the University of Chicago campus start at approximately $100 per month.

8. Rankings and Reputation: Important Metrics or Arbitrary Measures?

MBA rankings should always be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism,

given that they can fluctuate dramatically from year to year and from publi-

cation to publication. For example, if you had relied on the Financial Times’

rankings to choose the Yale School of Management as your business school

in 2011 because of the program’s position at number seven, you probably

would have been disappointed to see the school then slide down to number

12 just one year later before rebounding to number nine the following year.

Similarly, if you had selected UC Berkeley Haas in 2004, when it was number

17 in Bloomberg Businessweek’s ranking, you would have been delighted to

see the program rise to number eight in 2010 before it slipped out of the top ten again to number 13 in 2012.

Can an MBA program—which is made up of so many moving parts—really change so much in just one or two

years? Furthermore, how can one reconcile that UVA Darden is in the third position (among U.S. programs) in The

Economist’s rankings but is 12th in the Bloomberg Businessweek survey, 14th in the U.S. News & World Report, and

16th in the Financial Times’ rankings—all at the same time? Or that Stanford GSB holds the fifth position on The

Economist’s list and fourth in the U.S. News rankings, but is second in the Bloomberg Businessweek rankings and

first in the Financial Times’ survey? Or that UPenn Wharton is number one according to the U.S. News rankings and

number two in the Financial Times’ list, but only number six in Bloomberg Businessweek and number nine in The

Economist’s survey?

An MBA ranking that appears to be gaining in popularity, according to feedback we have received from candidates

in recent years, is from Poets&Quants, which aggregates what it considers the top five MBA surveys—Bloomberg

Businessweek, The Economist, the Financial Times, U.S. News & World Report, and Forbes—to create a kind of com-

posite ranking.

Of course, the various surveys should and likely will provide some context for your decision, but resist the temp-

tation to choose a school based on rankings alone, because rankings may ultimately betray you—possibly even

before you graduate.

The various surveys should and will provide some context for your decision, but resist the temptation to choose a school based on rankings alone.


One thing to keep in mind, particularly for international students, is that a school’s reputation domestically can

be quite different from its reputation abroad. Years ago, mbaMission worked with an international candidate who

was accepted into the MBA programs at Cornell Johnson and Dartmouth Tuck. When this individual shared the

good news with his manager, his manager said, “I thought you would have gone to an Ivy League school like Princ-

eton!” Of course, Dartmouth and Cornell are in fact Ivy League institutions, and Princeton does not even have an

MBA program—the manager’s reaction illustrates how possible misconceptions can arise. So, after considering an

MBA program’s strengths, you might factor in that some schools have greater brand power in certain parts of the

world, especially if you plan to live and work abroad after you complete your studies.

We advise you to consider your MBA a long-term investment that will pay dividends throughout your life, and such

an investment should be based on more than a one-time ranking. In fact, most MBAs who are five to ten years out

of school are not even aware of what their school is now ranked. Perhaps more importantly, if you were to ask one

whether the school’s position in the rankings has any effect on his/her career, the response would certainly be an

impassioned “No!”

Today, Chicago Booth is among the top five domestically in all four of the four most prestigious MBA rank-

ings. After a number of years in the number one position in Bloomberg Businessweek’s MBA rankings—gen-

erally considered the preeminent such survey—the school came in at number two in 2015 and fell a few

spots in 2016, landing in the fourth place. In the Financial Times’ 2017 survey, Chicago Booth rose one spot

from the previous year to fifth in the United States, while falling one spot to ninth internationally. The pro-

gram also remained steady at number one both domestically and internationally in The Economist’s rank-

ings for 2016, for the fifth year in a row. The program was listed third in the 2016 Poets&Quants ranking of

U.S.-based business schools, unchanged from 2015.

In the 2018 U.S. News & World Report survey, the school remained among the top five, shifting from a tied

second place (with Stanford GSB) to third in the country. In addition, U.S. News ranked the program among

the top 20 in the country in the following specialty areas: finance (2), accounting (4), marketing (7), manage-

U.S. Ranking: Chicago Booth

2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008

Poets&Quants NA NA 3 3 4 3 3 3 3 NA NA

U.S. News & World Report 3 2 4 4 6 4 5 5 6 NA NA

Bloomberg Businessweek1 NA NA 4 2 3 [1] 1 [1] 1 [1] 1

Financial Times NA 5 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 7 NA

The Economist NA NA 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 NA

1 Until 2015, Bloomberg Businessweek released rankings every two years (in November), so numbers in brackets represent carryover from

the previous year’s ranking.


ment (12, tied with UT McCombs), entrepreneurship (13, tied with St. Louis Cook), international (18), and

product/operations (20, tied with UT Dallas). The Princeton Review’s 2017 ranking of 294 MBA programs

named Chicago Booth number five for Top Entrepreneurship and number eight for Toughest to Get Into.

Despite Chicago Booth’s impressive standing in the various rankings, it cannot claim to be the number one

school in terms of global prestige. Quite subjectively, mbaMission would state that HBS, the Stanford GSB,

and UPenn Wharton have stronger global profiles, though one will have no trouble opening doors with the

Chicago Booth name on his/her resume.

Several students with whom we spoke expressed general satisfaction with the school’s placement in the

various rankings. “We are solid,” said a first-year student we interviewed, while another declared that he

was understandably “proud” of Chicago Booth’s long reign in the number one position in the Bloomberg

Businessweek survey. “I think the rankings are certainly justified,” remarked a first year when we asked her

opinion of the program’s standings, adding, “Booth offers a world-class education and gives you access

to the best professors and most talented students and alumni.” And another first year declared, “Booth is

ranked in the top consistently, so I am satisfied.”


Poets&Quants (2016)

1 Harvard Business School

2 Stanford GSB

3 Chicago Booth

4 Northwestern Kellogg (tie)

4 UPenn Wharton (tie)

6 MIT Sloan

7 Dartmouth Tuck

8 UC Berkeley Haas

9 Columbia Business School

10 Yale SOM

11 Duke Fuqua

12 UVA Darden

13 Michigan Ross

14 Cornell Johnson

15 UCLA Anderson

16 UNC-Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler

17 NYU Stern

18 UT Austin McCombs

19 Carnegie Mellon Tepper

20 Emory Goizueta


U.S. News & World Report (2018) Bloomberg Businessweek (2016)

1 Harvard Business School (tie) 1 Harvard Business School

1 UPenn Wharton (tie) 2 Stanford GSB

3 Chicago Booth 3 Duke Fuqua

4 MIT Sloan (tie) 4 Chicago Booth

4 Northwestern Kellogg (tie) 5 Dartmouth Tuck

4 Stanford GSB (tie) 6 UPenn Wharton

7 UC Berkeley Haas 7 MIT Sloan

8 Dartmouth Tuck 8 Rice Jones

9 Columbia Business School (tie) 9 Northwestern Kellogg

9 Yale SOM (tie) 10 UC Berkeley Haas

11 Michigan Ross 11 Columbia Business School

12 Duke Fuqua (tie) 12 UVA Darden

12 NYU Stern (tie) 13 Michigan Ross

14 UVA Darden 14 Yale SOM

15 UCLA Anderson 15 Carnegie Mellon Tepper

16 Cornell Johnson 16 Cornell Johnson

17 UT Austin McCombs 17 NYU Stern

18 UNC-Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler 18 Texas A&M Mays

19 Carnegie Mellon Tepper 19 Washington Foster

20 Emory Goizueta 20 Emory Goizueta


Financial Times (2017)1,2 The Economist (2016)1,3

1 Stanford GSB 1 Chicago Booth

2 UPenn Wharton 2 Northwestern Kellogg

3 Harvard Business School 3 UVA Darden

4 Columbia Business School 4 Harvard Business School

5 Chicago Booth 5 Stanford GSB

6 Northwestern Kellogg 6 Dartmouth Tuck

7 MIT Sloan 7 UC Berkeley Haas

8 UC Berkeley Haas 8 Columbia Business School

9 Yale SOM 9 UPenn Wharton

10 Dartmouth Tuck 10 UCLA Anderson

11 NYU Stern 11 Yale SOM

12 Michigan Ross 12 MIT Sloan

13 Duke Fuqua 13 Duke Fuqua

14 Cornell Johnson 14 NYU Stern

15 UCLA Anderson 15 Michigan Ross

16 UVA Darden 16 UNC-Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler

17 Carnegie Mellon Tepper 17 Vanderbilt Owen

18 Georgetown McDonough 18 Cornell Johnson

19 Washington Foster 19 Emory Goizueta

20 UNC-Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler 20 IU Kelley

1 Excludes international schools and reranks only U.S. schools.

2 The Financial Times ranks Chicago Booth 9 internationally.

3 The Economist ranks Chicago Booth 1 internationally.


The University of Chicago

Booth School of Business

Summary

In November 2008, as stock markets were falling in North America and academic institutions were growing in-

creasingly concerned about shrinking endowments, the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business made

a stunning announcement: alumnus David G. Booth (MBA ’71), co-founder of Dimensional Fund Advisors, had made

a $300M donation to the school—the largest donation ever to a business school and one of the largest donations

to any academic institution ever. The school did not receive $300M in cash, however, but became a partner in

Dimensional Fund Advisors, from which it will receive dividends. Not too surprisingly, the school subsequently

announced that it had been renamed the Booth School of Business in honor of its patron.

The Booth gift is yet another link in a chain of success that the school has experienced over the past decade or

so, starting with the hiring (in 2001) of Edward “Ted” Snyder as dean, though he has since left Chicago Booth (in

2010). Then, in 2004, the school opened a new, cutting-edge, $125M facility—the 400,000-square-foot Charles M.

Harper Center—which galvanized a community that had previously been housed in disparate, and some say dreary,

quarters.

With all this momentum, Chicago Booth experienced a swift uptick in its rankings, consistently appearing at or

near the top of all of the “prestige” lists. The school has a reputation for superior academic research, particularly

in finance and economics, with several of its academics having won Nobel Prizes in these fields. Indeed, many

prospective candidates consider Chicago Booth a “finance school,” which is understandable, particularly given

that 37.5% of the program’s 2016 graduates (37.1% in 2015, 41.2% in 2014, and 40.3% in 2013) accepted positions with

a finance function (including company finance, investment banking, venture capital, private equity, real estate,

investment management/research, and “other” finance).

However, even though the aggregate percentage of all the finance-related functions has been consistently higher

than for any other function since at least 2007 (the earliest year for which we have employment data), consulting

has steadily been the most popular standalone job function among Chicago Booth graduates, with investment

banking claiming the second-highest percentage as a standalone function. To illustrate, in 2016, 29.3% entered

positions with a consulting function, compared with 15.1% investment banking; in 2015, these figures were 33.5%

and 16.7%, respectively (30.1% and 15.2% in 2014, and 30.9% and 12.7% in 2013). We believe this helps attest to the

diversity of the school’s MBA program.

Indeed, Chicago Booth is more than “just” a finance school and offers a wide range of experiential opportuni-

ties—especially for those interested in consulting and entrepreneurship. And although Chicago Booth will never


be mistaken for Kellogg in terms of its offerings in marketing, we have learned that Chicago Booth does in fact

have a surprisingly strong program in this field—as well as in the nonprofit sector.

If “finance” is one buzzword for Chicago Booth, “flexibility” is another. The school is known to have a very flexible

curriculum—its LEAD (Leadership Effectiveness and Development) Program is actually the only specific course

that is mandatory in the Chicago Booth program. Although students must meet certain requirements by taking

courses chosen from among several foundations, functions, management, and business environment options, the

school has no strictly defined mandatory core curriculum. Students told mbaMission that because the program is

not rigid, they are able to focus on their professional ambitions as soon as they start the academic program and

can avoid redundant or even potentially irrelevant classes.

We believe that today, Chicago Booth can certainly be said to be stronger than ever. Given the improvements at

the school in recent years and the infusion of new energy from the change in command, we are confident that Chi-

cago Booth will remain an applicant favorite because of its remarkable faculty, well-regarded admissions office,

and strong facilities.

The Dean

In July 2016, Sunil Kumar, who had served as the dean of Chicago Booth since 2011, announced his departure from

the school in order to join John Hopkins University as the provost and senior vice president of academic affairs.

Kumar’s decision came as a surprise to many as he had been appointed to serve a second five-year term as dean

in 2015. The announcement set off a national search for the school’s new leader. The University of Chicago an-

nounced in August 2016 that Douglas J. Skinner, who at the time was serving at Booth as the deputy dean of faculty

and as an accounting professor, would step in as the interim dean later that month. Skinner originally joined the

school in 2005 after a 16-year stint at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. “Doug’s appointment

will help sustain the momentum that has been built to further establish Chicago Booth as one of the world’s pre-

eminent business schools while the search for the next dean is conducted,” University President Robert J. Zimmer

commented in the press release announcing Skinner’s appointment as interim dean.

The search for a new long-term dean came to an end in March 2017, when the university announced the appoint-

ment of Madhav Rajan, who served as the senior associate dean for academic affairs at the Stanford Graduate

School of Business (GSB) from 2010 to 2016. “We sought the most outstanding candidate whose values, ambi-

tion, and abilities fully comport with the distinctiveness of Chicago Booth as one of methodological rigor in its

research and education, and through that commitment one of high impact on the world,” President Zimmer and

university Provost Daniel Diermeier said in the announcement, continuing: “We are confident that Madhav will be

an outstanding leader for Chicago Booth in the coming years.” Rajav holds three academic degrees from Carnegie

Mellon University and one from the University of Madras in India. He joined the Wharton School of the University

of Pennsylvania in 1989 and worked as an associate professor and later a professor at the school before stepping


in as an area coordinator for accounting at the Stanford GSB in 2002. Rajan’s role as dean will not constitute his

first professional involvement with Booth—he served as a visiting professor at the school during the 2007–2008

academic year. In addition to his contributions in the classroom, Rajan has sat on the editorial board of numerous

accounting journals, including The Accounting Review and the Review of Accounting Studies.

In the announcement for the appointment, Rajan expressed enthusiasm for his upcoming role, which he will fill in

July 2017: “The values I have in research and education are deeply valued at Chicago Booth. People come here to do

rigorous, empirically based research and analysis, which provides the basis for a transformative student experi-

ence and an extremely effective MBA curriculum. We have an exciting opportunity to take Booth’s deep strengths

and leverage them here and around the world. I am thrilled to have the chance to be dean at what is unquestion-

ably the greatest academic business school.”

Sunil Kumar took over as dean of Chicago Booth in 2011, replacing Edward “Ted” Snyder, who had served as the

school’s dean since 2001. Said John Huizinga, chair of the search committee and the Walter David “Bud” Fackler

Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, in a 2010 news release on Kumar’s hire, “We are confident that

his vision, integrity, intelligence, energy, and commitment will ensure that Chicago Booth continues its positive

momentum. We expect that under his guidance, Booth will reach an even higher level of achievement and recogni-

tion.” Kumar himself noted in a 2011 Poets&Quants article, “Schools don’t stay terrific by sitting still … The lack of

fires to fight gives me the luxury of being able to think strategically a few years ahead.”

Before his appointment as dean and professor of operations management at Chicago Booth, Kumar served on the

faculty of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business for 14 years, where he was also senior associate

dean for academic affairs. Kumar received a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-

Champaign, a Master of Engineering in computer science and automation from the Indian Institute of Science,

and a Bachelor of Engineering from Mangalore University. He has been the recipient of numerous honors for his

teaching and research in the area of operations management and communications networks, including the 1998

Finmeccanica Faculty Scholarship from Stanford University and the 2001–2002 Professor of the Year award at the

Indian School of Business.

Kumar stated in a 2010 Wall Street Journal article on his hiring that his primary goal was “to strengthen and en-

hance what is already great,” while learning more “about the students, faculty and the programs.” And one of

the new dean’s early moves proved to be quite a coup for the school: in 2011, Chicago Booth announced that Axel

Weber, the outgoing president of the German central bank (Deutsche Bundesbank) would join the MBA faculty as

a visiting professor. As Kumar told the Chicago Tribune in 2011, his goal “to enhance and broaden the impact and

reputation of the school” is “not a trivial one.” He affirmed, “We have a deservedly good reputation for taking rigor

seriously. … So we want to broaden, but without giving up this fundamental value.”

In a 2014 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Kumar further emphasized his desire to broaden prospective stu-

dents’ perception of the school. “The most common one [thing people get wrong] is that it’s a finance and bank-


ing school,” he said. “We support a broad array of careers. Entrepreneurship and finance are tied for the school’s

most popular concentration. About 10% of our class will go into marketing, and a significant fraction will go into

tech.” When asked why the Chicago Booth curriculum is such a flexible one, Kumar explained that most students

have work experience when they enter the school. “We believe that when you’re 27 years old, you’ve worked for

five years in industry, and you have some reasonable expectation of where you want to go, you should have that

choice,” he stated. “We want the student to decide at what level she will take courses; we want her to pace based

on what is most comfortable or most challenging.”

Professional Specializations

Consulting

Although Chicago Booth has a reputation as a finance school, it still places at least one-quarter of each graduating

class in consulting positions. In 2016, 27.5% of Chicago Booth graduates took positions in the consulting industry.

Despite a slight dip from last year, this percentage had been increasing fairly steadily throughout previous years:

from 24.0% in 2010 to 27.8% in 2011, 30.3% in 2012, 30.7% in 2013, 27.9% in 2014, and 32.1% in 2015. For the past

decade, McKinsey & Company has been the top employer of Chicago Booth graduates—35 in 2016, 44 in 2015, 40

in 2014, 41 in 2013, 28 in 2012, 39 in 2011, 24 in 2010, 23 in 2009, 29 in 2008, and 33 in 2007. Other firms that hired a

significant number of 2016 Chicago Booth graduates for consulting positions include the Boston Consulting Group

(23); Amazon.com, Inc. (19); Bain & Company (15); Accenture (13); and PwC/Strategy& (10). As a December 2012

Poets&Quants article states, the school has “become the preferred business school for the elite consulting firms.”

Chicago Booth offers no specific consulting track, but the school provides considerable hands-on opportunities

in this area to its MBA candidates, particularly through its “lab” courses. Via the “Management Lab,” for example,

teams of MBA students take on consulting assignments and work with executives from major companies to target

a problem that the client firm is encountering or to conduct research on a strategic opportunity. The “New Venture

and Small Enterprise Lab” and the “Private Equity/Venture Capital Lab” may seem to cater to niche groups, but in

fact, they both represent opportunities for aspiring consultants to engage directly with senior management and

make hands-on decisions with the assistance of teammates and mentors.

In addition, a variety of student clubs at Chicago Booth serve aspiring consultants, including the Management

Consulting Group, the Corporate Management and Strategy Group, and the Business Solutions Group. While the

Management Consulting Group and the Corporate Management and Strategy Group educate students on the ins

and outs of obtaining a job in this field—through resume preparation and reviews, case workshops, and Lunch

and Learn sessions—the Business Solutions Group is unique in that it actively engages first-year students in high-

quality consulting projects.


In short, the Business Solutions Group (BSG) is not so much about preparing for a consulting job as it is about

gaining actual consulting experience. Each fall, teams of five first-year students, along with a second-year mentor,

work for a nine-week period at a broad range of both for-profit and nonprofit firms, which have ranged from the

well-known international restaurant chain McDonald’s to the internationally renowned Art Institute of Chicago

to a small nonprofit such as Little Miss Giving’s (a bakery) to a start-up such as Advanced Diamond Technologies

(which applies diamond film to products to make them durable), to help these organizations solve various market-

ing, operational, and/or strategic problems.

Although the BSG managed 11 projects in 2007 and 14 in 2008, the group has reportedly maintained just eight to

ten projects annually in recent years. In an interview with mbaMission, a BSG co-chair explained, “The decision

to limit the number of projects at ten was a strategic choice. We have always had ample potential client interest

in participating, but we’ve recently capped the number of projects in order to create a more competitive project

selection process. This is also beneficial for the students, as it ensures that only the best projects are used for

the group.” Recent projects have included conducting industry analysis for ArrowStream, developing a marketing

strategy for Excelerate Labs, and performing internal research and analysis for Baxter Healthcare.

Finally, Chicago Booth’s one mandatory course, the LEAD Program, involves a series of events and activities that

help MBA students better understand their personal communication and leadership styles. Throughout this 125-

hour program, first-year students take on team challenges (e.g., the outdoor experience, which involves ropes

courses, climbing walls, and other physical challenges that incorporate a mental component), learn about their

personality type (via the Myers-Briggs test), and receive one-on-one coaching (e.g., on communication styles and

negotiation strategies) from faculty and second-year student mentors. This course is not designed exclusively

for consultants, but its teachings are broadly applicable to the team-based, leadership-oriented positions that

consulting typically entails.

Similarly, Chicago Booth’s annual Management Conference is not solely for aspiring consultants but serves also

as a venue through which interested students can access cutting-edge research in the field of general manage-

ment and can network with more than 1,000 students, business community members, and alumni. The conference

celebrated its 65th year in May 2017 and featured two sets of breakout sessions with panels on such topics as

“Designing a Good Life,” “Scalable Price Targeting,” “Building Your Leadership Capital,” and “ Renegotiating NAFTA:

Prospects and Scenarios from a Mexican Perspective.” Firms represented at the event included The Prizker Group

and Patria Investimentos Amgen, C.H. Robinson, Citadel, and Oak Hill Capital Partners—in fact, two co-managing

partners of The Pritzker Group and a managing partner of OceanM19 the CEO and founder of Citadel delivered the

event’s keynote addresses. The event concluded with a networking reception.

The 2016 Management Conference was held in May and also featured two sets of breakout sessions. Topics cov-

ered included “What Does the Rise of Populism Mean for American Business?,” “Sluggishness in the US Labor Mar-

ket,” “CEO Perspectives,” and “Big Value from Big Data with Marketing Analytics.” Amgen, C.H. Robinson, Citadel,


and Oak Hill Capital Partners were among the firms represented at the event. The keynote address was delivered

by the CEO and founder of Citadel. A networking reception concluded the event.

At the 2015 event, breakout sessions covered such issues as “Global Convergence in Corporate Governance Prac-

tices,” “Innovation Inside the Corporation,” “Asset Management,” and “Mergers and Acquisitions Strategy.” Among

the conference’s participants were representatives from Textura Corporation, Google, Newport Capital Group,

and McKinsey & Company. Richard H. Thaler, Chicago Booth’s Charles A. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor

of Behavioral Science and Economics delivered the keynote address, and attendees were invited take part in a

networking reception.

Entrepreneurship, Private Equity, and Venture Capital

Chicago Booth and its Michael P. Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation provide a wealth of formal aca-

demic opportunities in the areas of entrepreneurship, private equity, and venture capital. In late 2012, the center re-

ceived a $8M donation from Polsky—in addition to his 2002 $7M gift—which has allowed the school to hire new staff,

add facility space, and expand opportunities to help meet the growing demand for entrepreneurial programming.

Students may choose from among 15 entrepreneurship and related courses, such as “Building the New Venture,”

“Entrepreneurship through Acquisition,” and “Entrepreneurial Discovery.” The school’s experiential “lab” pro-

grams, however, appear to constitute the real heart of its offerings in this area. For example, via the “New Venture

and Small Enterprise Lab,” students work hands-on in small groups with the senior management of a new venture

to identify and realize strategic and operational goals. For up to ten hours a week for an entire quarter, students in

this lab work in a variety of functions within a firm or take on a dedicated project in a class designed to train those

who intend to ultimately join start-ups or consult to them. Participating enterprises in the Chicago area include

InContext Solutions, MightyNest, Protein Bar, and Solixir.

In the “Private Equity/Venture Capital Lab,” students’ classroom experience is enhanced by guest lectures by

leaders in the field; simultaneously, students intern for a minimum of 15–20 hours each week for at least ten weeks

with a private equity or venture capital firm, again working in a range of functions or on dedicated projects. Noting

that the lab is as much about making contacts as it is about operational experience, a second-year student stated

in a 2011 Chicago Booth online admissions chat that “knowing someone in the community, like through the PE Lab,

helps open doors and tap into the PE/VC network. And getting that first meeting is half the battle. It also makes

internship and full-time conversations much richer with relationships you bring to the table.”

Continuing the school’s experiential offerings, the Polsky Center sponsors the annual Edward L. Kaplan New Ven-

ture Challenge (NVC), which bills itself as the number-one accelerator program in the country on its Web site.

During the fall, students form teams—each of which must include at least one University of Chicago graduate

student but can also include part-time and executive MBA students—and these groups pitch their business ideas

and submit their feasibility summaries by the following February. Then, approximately 30 teams advance to the


second phase of the challenge, and the Chicago Booth students who have made it this far join the “Special Topics

in Entrepreneurship” class, where they develop their ideas and have them critiqued by venture capitalists and

entrepreneurs, with eight to ten ultimately advancing to the finals in May. A second-year student described the

NVC in a 2011 Chicago Booth admissions chat as “one of the most thrilling experiences here at Chicago Booth.”

Finally, these fully developed ideas are presented to and judged by entrepreneurs and business leaders. Since

1996, the center has helped launch more than 160 companies that, in turn, have raised $575M in capital in spaces

as diverse as payment solutions, flexible solar panels, food preparation, and children’s toys. In May 2016, the NVC

awarded more than one million dollars—more than double compared to the previous year—to students in the form

of cash prizes and business services for their winning business plans. At first place in 2016, winning $90,000, was

compensation transparency platform TransparentC. Second place was claimed by Coronado Conservation, which

produces innovative toilets and took home $70,000. Search relevance solution Riviter came in third and received

$45,000.

In 2015, healthy meal appliance Maestro won the first prize of $70,000. Second place was tied with surgical team

management tool ExplORer Surgical, which claimed $50,000, and NETenergy, which provides storage for thermal

energy and received a $40,000 prize. In 2014, RoomVa, a reservation system for small South American hotels, and

Simple Mills, which provides nutrient-rich baking mixes, tied for first place and each took home $30,000.

Competing NVC teams are also able to take advantage of the ARCH Venture Partners New Business Incubator for

one year (or until they receive funding to launch their businesses), benefitting from access to phones, computers,

office supplies, a conference room, and office and faculty support. Successful ventures that have been launched

through the competition include GrubHub, Braintree, Bump Technologies, BenchPrep, Base, Rise Interactive,

Swingbyte, and ZipFit.

In addition to the traditional NVC and two other iterations of the competition designated for undergraduates and

students pursuing executive MBAs at one of the school’s international campuses, Chicago Booth students with an

entrepreneurial bent who also have an interest in social entrepreneurship may compete in the John Edwardson

’72 Social New Venture Challenge (SNVC). The SNVC is co-organized by the Polsky Center and the Social Enterprise

Initiative and invites participants to pitch both for-profit and nonprofit business plans that focus on sustainability

and social impact. If accepted into the competition, students are enrolled in the course “New Social Ventures” and

given mentorship, resources, and the opportunity to present their venture plans to experts and business leaders

in the field.

Seven teams competed in the 2016 SNVC finals, and two teams tied for the first place. AccessArc, a technology

company that aids incarcerated individuals, and JoinGiving, which pairs businesses with nonprofits, both received

$20,000. No second place prize was distributed, although two teams were chosen as third place winners. Kitch-

enet, which provides people living in food deserts with healthy meals, and Solar Bus 4 Schools, which aims to

reduce school bus emissions, each went home with $5,000.


Of the seven teams selected to compete in the 2015 SNVC finals, BallotReady, an online voters’ manual, placed first,

winning $30,000. The second place winner, local goods provider Arev Armenia, received $20,000. In 2014, six teams

competed. Hello Tractor, a tractor rental program in Nigeria, placed first, winning $30,000. The second place winner,

Moxie Leadership Academy, a middle school–level summer program for low-income communities, received $20,000.

Meanwhile, in the Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC), students play the role of venture capitalists,

evaluating business ideas and making investment recommendations to a panel of experienced, real-world inves-

tors and entrepreneurs. The winning team at the school level goes on to compete in the regional competition and

then—ideally—the international one, vying for the ultimate grand prize of $10,000 in funds, but more so for the

prestige of the win and the opportunity to catch the attention of the venture capital judges. A Chicago Booth team

won first place in the regional competition during the inaugural VCIC in 2005. Since then, five regional competi-

tions have been won by Chicago Booth teams, and in both 2013 and 2012, a Chicago Booth team claimed the Entre-

preneurs’ Choice Award at the regional level. In 2010, the Chicago Booth team took first place at the international

finals for the first time in history, and in 2015, the school’s team claimed third place at the international finals.

We should note that entrepreneurially minded students can also apply for funding from the Hyde Park Angels

(HPA), a group of former Chicago Booth Executive MBA students who make investments in start-ups—in 2016, for

example, HPA invested more than $8M overall. Although the HPA is an arms-length organization and does not

source investments exclusively from Chicago Booth, it maintains a connection to the Polsky Center, which sup-

ports the HPA’s mission. So, students hoping to get in front of the HPA’s investment committee will have a built-in

networking advantage. Further, the HPA offers students the opportunity to intern as associates and gain venture

capital experience while pursuing their MBA at Chicago Booth. Tom Ancona, who was at the time the associate di-

rector of the HPA, told mbaMission that eight to ten students generally serve as HPA associates during the school

year, while two serve over the summer.

At Chicago Booth, entrepreneurship involves more than just facilitating seed-stage companies—it also encom-

passes small business. Via the Hamer Small Business Initiative—which was established through a $2.5M gift from

alumnus Donald W. Hamer (’58)—the Polsky Center can “reach deep” into the small business sector, both theoreti-

cally and practically (in the greater geographic region around the school), claims its Web site. An associate direc-

tor at the Polsky Center explained to mbaMission that the Hamer Initiative supports such programs as the Digital

Marketing Strategies Workshop, which is held on a Saturday each February and invites expert speakers to share

effective Web conversion strategies. Past speakers have included a partner at OCA Ventures, the co-founder/CEO

of Excelerate Labs, and the chief marketing officer for Power2Switch.

The Hamer Initiative also created the Entrepreneurial Internship Program, which allows students to intern, be-

tween their first and second years, with small businesses that may otherwise be unable to pay the interning

students a salary. Through the program, students who work at eligible companies (i.e., those with less than $50M

in revenue and no more than 150 employees) receive financial support during the course of their internship. This


support, which is made possible via sponsor donations, gives the students the opportunity to gain real-world

experience in an entrepreneurial environment.

A resource specifically for female students with an interest in entrepreneurship is the Herman Family Fellowship,

offered through the Polsky Center. This fellowship, formed in 1995, was established to alleviate the burden of the

expense of business school and thus help the student recipient pursue an entrepreneurial dream. Each year, one

or two female students receive funding that covers her two-year MBA experience.

A total of 6.3% of the Class of 2016 entered the private equity (5.1%) and venture capital (1.2%) industries—com-

pared with 5.6% (4.8% and 0.8%, respectively) in 2015 and 7.9% (5.9% and 2.0%) in 2014. Firms in this space that

have recruited at Chicago Booth in recent years include Baird Capital Partners; Altamar Private Equity; Cartesian

Capital Group, LLC; Partners Group; Emerging Capital Partners; and Scale Venture Partners. Seventeen 2016 gradu-

ates—2.9% of the class—chose to start their own business after graduation (compared with 19 and 3.3% in 2015,

20 and 3.3% in 2014, and 17 and 2.9% in 2013) rather than accepting a full-time position with a recruiting company.

Finance

With names like Eugene Fama, Gary Becker, and (the late) Robert Fogel associated with the school, the word “fi-

nance” readily—and not surprisingly—comes to mind whenever Chicago Booth is mentioned. We should note that

Professor Fama, generally regarded as “the father of modern finance,” served as inspiration for David Booth, who

learned about Fama’s philosophy on indexing (purchasing a broad number of stocks that are representative of the

market at large, rather than picking a small number of potential winners) and formed Dimensional Fund Advisors

as a manifestation of Fama’s theories. Now, years later, Chicago Booth is a $300M partner in the company.

Indeed, the school has a long history of economic and financial scholarship, thanks to its multiple Nobel Prize–

winning and distinguished faculty in these fields. Chicago Booth has 32 professors dedicated to teaching nearly

40 finance classes and has been consistently sending more than one-third (36.0% in 2016, 35.2% in 2015, 36.4% in

2014, and 35.0% in 2013) of its graduates into careers in this industry each year, even during the most recent eco-

nomic downturn. To put this into perspective, Chicago Booth requires the completion of only 21 courses total to

graduate. So, a student could not possibly exhaust his/her options within finance while at the school—something

committed finance types may consider a shame. Courses in the finance concentration include “Financial Markets

and Institutions,” “Cases in Financial Management,” “Topics in Asset Pricing,” and “Corporation Finance.”

As further testament to the interest in finance on campus, Chicago Booth has several student groups that focus

either fully or partially on the industry: the Investment Banking Group (IBG), the Entrepreneurship and Venture

Capital Group, the Private Equity Group, the Corporate Finance Group, the Credit Restructuring Distressed Invest-

ing and Turnaround Group, the Hedge Fund Group, and the Investment Management Group.


The IBG, purportedly one of the largest student groups on campus, offers its members an extensive array of

events and resources each year, including resume reviews and mock interview sessions, Lunch and Learn events

to prepare students for recruiting, Bank Week (when students descend on New York City en masse to job shadow

and network), and the IBG Conference.

“Bank Week is very much about getting to know potential colleagues and bonding with current classmates,” wrote

a first-year student in a January 2014 The Booth Experience blog post. “We got to see New York City from a unique

perspective and had engaging conversations with really bright people.” Another first year shared his experience in

a January 2013 post, commenting, “The success of my time in New York confirmed that Booth was the best choice

for me for business school. Bank Week was the perfect mix of structure and flexibility. Booth provides access to

top firms in finance through formal programming, but gives us enough room to customize the recruiting process

to our own needs and goals. On top of that, I’m building a great network of colleagues and friends for the future.”

The IBG Conference takes place each fall and offers career panels and networking opportunities with industry

leaders in banking, sales, and trading. A second-year co-chair of the IBG described the conference to mbaMission

as “one of the capstone events provided to full-time students to continue learning about careers in investment

banking, network with bankers, and attend functional workshops.” The event has attracted as many as 250 at-

tendees in recent years, including students and banking professionals, and is, as a student who helped organize

a past conference explained to us, “focused on providing students with first-hand perspectives of the investment

banking industry as well as opportunities to directly interact with investment banking professionals of all levels,

ranging from associates to vice presidents to managing directors.”

Although we were unable to ascertain specific details about the November 2015 event, panels at past confer-

ences have explored such topics as “Successfully Navigating the Recruiting Process,” “Day in the Life of a VP or

Associate,” and “Unique Perspectives from Industry Senior Experts.” Workshops have covered interview tips and

an analysis of industry trends, and the conference’s sponsors have included Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit

Suisse, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Citi, and Wells Fargo.

The Investment Management Group (IMG), another large campus organization, offers Day in the Life panels and

resume guidance, though its largest annual event is the Investment Management Conference—the most recent

of which took place in November 2015 and attracted more than 200 participants. The conference welcomed rep-

resentatives from such companies as Dimensional Fund Advisors, PIMCO, First Eagle Investment Management,

and The Grosvenor Group as speakers. The daylong event featured two discussion panels (“Developing a Sound

Research Process” and “Identifying Market Opportunities”) and concluded with a cocktail reception.

Speakers at the 2014 conference included the global credit chief investment officer of PIMCO and the head of mar-

keting at Dimensional Fund Advisors. In addition to panel discussions focusing on such themes as “Value Invest-

ing” and “Women in Investment Management,” the daylong conference offered a speed networking session and a

separate networking reception.


The Corporate Finance Group (CFG) provides guidance to students interested in pursuing internal finance–related

careers and “serves members with interests that cross various industries including financial services, high tech,

entertainment, consumer products, healthcare, and energy,” says its Web site. Members of this organization ben-

efit from such offerings as interview preparation and resume review sessions. The group also hosts guest speak-

ers, Lunch and Learns with company representatives, and social happy hours. Among the corporate finance–re-

lated courses recommended by the club on its site are “Corporate Finance,” “Financial Markets and Institutions,”

and “Cases in Financial Management.”

The Corporate Finance Symposium is one of the CFG’s signature events, attracting dozens of students and repre-

sentatives from such companies as Procter & Gamble, Exxon Mobil, Target, Prudential, Microsoft, and Citigroup.

Although we were unable to locate details on the 2015 event, the 2016 symposium was themed “Challenges and

Trends in Corporate Finance for Global Firms” and in 2014, participants could dine with representatives from firms

such as Kraft Foods and M&T Bank, participate in networking sessions, and attend company presentations. “One

of the key themes that came up was that the role of finance at these companies is not a reporting role but a stra-

tegic role,” said a second-year student of the 2012 symposium in a Chicago Business article, adding, “Attendees

really enjoyed learning about the various opportunities within finance at each of the companies. They also enjoyed

hearing about some of the current projects the guest speakers are working on.”

Perhaps most important to some students interested in finance is the opportunity to participate in the Student

Managed Investment Fund (SMIF), a portfolio controlled by second-year students and originally established in

2006 with a $1M allocation of the school’s endowment to provide “a real-world portfolio management environ-

ment which allows students to improve their equity research and stock-picking abilities,” explains the fund’s Web

site. First-year students can apply to become SMIF portfolio managers through the IMG. In the spring quarter,

current SMIF portfolio managers choose the portfolio managers for the upcoming year based on the first years’

involvement with the IMG throughout the year as well as the quality of their stock pitches.

What is unique about the SMIF is that 25% of its profits are placed into a scholarship fund each year and distrib-

uted among rising second-year students. For example, in 2014–2015, the SMIF’s contributions of over $110,000

were a notable part of the $700,000 in student scholarships awarded for that academic year. The SMIF reports its

year-to-year performance from time to time (available at www.chicagoboothsmif.com/holdings.htm), and as of

May 2017, the fund was valued at just under $1.6M.

The 36.0% of Chicago Booth’s 2016 graduates who entered the financial services industry (35.2% in 2015) did so

at firms such as Bank of America Merrill Lynch; Credit Suisse; Fidelity Investments; Deutsche Bank AG; Goldman

Sachs Group Inc.; Citigroup, Inc.; JPMorgan Chase & Co.; and Morgan Stanley.

http://www.chicagoboothsmif.com/holdings.htm


International Business

Chicago Booth’s international credentials seem quite strong: international students make up 34% of the Class of

2018 (34% of the Class of 2017 and 36% of the Class of 2016), approximately 25% of the faculty is international, and

alumni can be found in nearly 110 different countries. Further, each April, the school offers an annual Worldwide

Booth Night, wherein prospective students, current students, and alumni gather in more than 100 cities around

the world to network and socialize—no doubt an advantageous program for prospective MBAs, to say the least.

And Chicago Booth students benefit from a dozen different national/regional clubs at the school:

• Belgian Business Students

• Canadian Business Group

• Chicago African Business Group

• Chicago Asia Pacific Group

• European Business Group

• Greater China Club

• Hispanic American Business Students Association

• Japan Club

• Korean Business Group

• Latin American Business Group

• Middle East and North Africa Group

• South Asian Business Group

Chicago Booth offers students the opportunity to earn what is formally known as the International MBA Degree by

taking at least five courses in international business, pursuing an international exchange program for one semes-

ter at one of the school’s 33 partner institutions in 20 countries, and achieving proficiency in a second language.

Students can complete the course requirement by taking any five of classes offered in international business/

macroeconomics. Sample courses in this area include “Understanding Central Banks,” “The Wealth of Nations,”

and “Managing the Firm in the Global Economy.” Students may also complete international coursework offered

by schools and departments within the broader university, including the Harris School of Public Policy, the Law

School, and the political science department.

The school offers exchange programs with the following partner institutions:

• Australian Graduate School of Management, Sydney, Australia

• Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

• ESADE Business School (Escuela Superior Administración y Dirección de Empresas), Barcelona, Spain

• ESSEC Business School Paris, Cergy, France

• Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town, South Africa

• Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, Beijing, China

• HEC (Hautes Études Commerciales) School of Management, Jouy-en-Josas, France


• Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong

• IE Business School, Madrid, Spain

• IESE Business School, University of Navarra, Barcelona, Spain

• Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India

• Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India

• ITAM (Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México), Mexico City, Mexico

• Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

• Keio Business School, Keio University, Yokohama, Japan

• Leipzig Graduate School of Management, Germany

• London Business School, United Kingdom

• London School of Economics and Political Science: Interdisciplinary Institute of Management, United King-

dom

• Louvain School of Management, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

• Manchester Business School, United Kingdom

• Melbourne Business School, University of Melbourne, Australia

• Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

• Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Santiago, Chile

• Recanati Graduate School of Business, Tel Aviv University, Israel

• Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Netherlands

• SDA Bocconi School of Management/Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi, Milan, Italy

• St. Gallen University, Switzerland

• Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden

• Vienna University of Economics and Business/Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, Vienna, Austria

• Warwick Business School, Coventry, United Kingdom

• Waseda Business School, The Graduate School of Commerce, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

• Wits Business School, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

• Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea

The Initiative on Global Markets research institute is prominent on campus, offering the Myron Scholes Global

Markets Forum, through which it has hosted former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo and the CEO and president

of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago—not to mention Nobel Laureate Myron Scholes himself. In 2016, the forum

welcomed a former chairman of the United Kingdom Financial Services Authority for a presentation, in addition to

professors from Booth, Harvard University, and the University of Chicago.

The spring 2015 forum featured the former governor of the Bank of England for a presentation titled “Money and

Nations,” as well as a senior fellow of foreign policy and global economy and development at the Brookings Insti-

tute for a presentation on “China’s Economic Reform: Implications for China and for the World.” In 2014, presenta-

tions included “The Only Game in Town? A New Constitution for Monetary (and Credit) Policy” and “Mindwise, How

We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel and Want.”


In addition, the multidisciplinary George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State (engaging the

university’s law school and the Harris School of Public Policy) is devoted to interaction between private and public

economies. The center’s predominant focus is research, and its publications could fill niches or perhaps be a bit

esoteric for the casual student of international affairs.

Finally, candidates should note that Chicago Booth offers a program called Random Walks, through which stu-

dents can take any one of more than 30 available trips to an international location (e.g., Chile, Iceland, Vietnam) as

a preliminary orientation to the school—indeed, the school’s Web site describes the experience as “an opportu-

nity to meet and bond with future classmates before the rigors of the MBA program begin.” Although this program

is not part of the school’s official curriculum, it represents an opportunity for students to gain enhanced global

exposure. One first year with whom we spoke described the Random Walks as “basically a kick starter to school

social life.”

In 2016, 12.8% of graduates accepted positions outside the United States (down from 17.3% in 2015 and 13.1% in

2014). Recruiters of Chicago Booth MBAs in 2015–2016 include BNP Paribas, China International Capital Corporation

Limited, Credit Suisse, Government of Singapore Investment Corporation Private Limited, Banco Itaú BBA SA, and

Société Générale.

Marketing

Arthur Middlebrooks, executive director of the James M. Kilts Center for Marketing, told us at mbaMission that

Chicago Booth offers students “a full-service marketing curriculum” with roughly a dozen marketing electives

and, true to its quant-heavy reputation, its 12-professor marketing department integrates marketing, economics,

and statistics in its courses. Second-year students we interviewed informed us that “Data-Driven Marketing” is a

“quant-marketing” class popular among aspiring marketers and consultants. Other sample courses in this study

area are “Marketing Research Lab” and “Pricing Strategies.”

Although Chicago Booth is not primarily known for marketing, by establishing the Kilts Center for Marketing—

named for the 1974 alumnus who was formerly CEO of Gillette and Nabisco—in 1999, the school has attempted to

bolster its reputation for excellence in the field (possibly in hopes of gaining an edge over its crosstown rival, Kel-

logg). More recently, Kilts donated $1M, via a challenge grant, to the school to attract and fund top students inter-

ested in marketing. As a result, Chicago Booth provides approximately six students from each class with financial

support, as well as mentorship from a senior marketing executive. A first-year student expressed to mbaMission

that the school offers robust networking and recruiting resources to students interested in marketing, adding,

“Chicago Booth is known as a sort of rigorous, analytic school, but the amount of support provided for ‘softer’

kinds of learning really surprised me.”

Early in the academic year, the Kilts Center sponsors the Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME) Confer-

ence, which helps facilitate and encourage interaction among researchers in the field. The conference’s goal is “to


provide a forum for interaction among researchers in this growing and important area,” states the center’s Web

site. The October 2016 conference featured ten sessions over the course of two days, with topics ranging from

“The Value of Usage-Based Insurance Beyond Better Targeting: Better Driving,” “You Get What You Give: Theory

and Evidence of Reciprocity in the Sharing Economy,” and “Strategic Ability and Productive Efficiency in Electricity

Markets.” The 2016 winner of the Dick Wittink prize for the best QME paper, which is announced each year at the

conference, was “Effect of Temporal Spacing Between Advertising Exposures: Evidence from Online Field Experi-

ments” by Navdeep S. Sahni, an associate professor of marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

In October 2015, the QME Conference offered sessions on such topics as “Signaling in Online Credit Markets” and

“Estimating the Heterogeneous Welfare Effects of Choice Architecture: An Application to the Medicare Prescrip-

tion Drug Insurance Market” to “Income and Wealth Effects on Private Label Demand: Evidence From the Great

Recession” and “Competition and Crowd-Out for Brand Keywords in Sponsored Search.” The 2015 Dick Wittink

prizewinning paper was “Online Ads and Offline Sales: Measuring the Effect of Retail Advertising via a Controlled

Experiment on Yahoo!” by economic research scientist Randall A. Lewis and scientist David H. Reiley. A memorial

event was also held for Associate Professor of Operations Management Che-Lin Su, who passed away in July 2015.

The October 2014 QME Conference included session topics on “Optimal Selling Strategies When Buyers Name Their

Own Prices,” “Signaling Value Through Assortment,” and “Dynamic Models with Unobserved State Variables and

Heterogeneity: Time Inconsistency in Drug Compliance,” as well as a breakfast and a dinner reception. The 2014

Dick Wittink prizewinner was Stanford Graduate School of Business Assistant Professor Stephan Seiler for his pa-

per, “The Impact of Search Costs on Consumer Behavior: A Dynamic Approach.”

The Chicago Booth Marketing Group typically hosts an annual, half-day Marketing Conference covering topics that

are less esoteric than those examined in the QME Conference and providing the requisite networking opportuni-

ties with corporations. The 2015 event carried the theme “A Changing World: What’s Now, What’s Next?” and fea-

tured executives from the William Wrigley Jr. Company and Workiva Inc. as keynote speakers. The day’s two panel

discussions concentrated on the topics of “Pushing Boundaries Through Innovation” and “Staying Connected to a

Changing Consumer.”

Various informal Marketing Group–sponsored opportunities exist for students to interact with company represen-

tatives on campus, including corporate presentations and interviewing practice sessions. Kraft, Microsoft, Wrig-

ley, General Mills, Deloitte, Campbell’s Soup, and BCG have all presented for club members in the past. A first-year

student with whom we spoke reported, “Every single week, there’s a different company on campus, especially in

the fall. The [presentations] are great because you get a more informal interaction; you’re not wearing your suit

and name tag.” The student also mentioned an event at which approximately 30 first-year club members held a

“product tasting,” buying various food and beverage brands for the sake of comparison.

Further, the school offers “day at” opportunities, wherein students visit various marketing firms in the greater

Chicago area to learn firsthand about those companies’ career offerings and corporate culture. Participating “day


at” companies in recent years have included Abbot, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Wrigley, and Kraft. Of these off-

site opportunities, a first year told us, “You get a lot better sense of what the companies are like, even more than

when they visit campus.”

As soon as December exams are done, interested students partake in Brand Week Trek, a networking blitz during

which they visit firms in New York and on the West Coast. Firms visited in recent years include American Express,

Kantar, Pfizer, Johnnie Walker, and Campbell’s Soup. According to a first year with whom we spoke, a West Coast

Marketing Trek was offered for the first time in 2013, targeting firms in the areas of retail, consumer packaged

goods, pharmaceuticals, and technology. And a first-year club member told mbaMission, “There are fewer Mar-

keting Group treks because the company presentations tend to be a lot longer and more in-depth.” In addition,

according to another first-year member, the group sponsors a Retail Trek (coordinated with the Retail, Apparel,

and Luxury Group), which runs concurrent to the Brand Week Trek. On the Retail Trek, students have visited such

companies as Coach, Cynthia Rowley, Rue La La, and Urban Outfitters.

The school’s Web site lists two management labs dedicated to the marketing function, with firms such as Abbott,

Barclays, Campbell’s Soup, and Honeywell International, Inc. sponsoring these lab classes, for which students

take on semester-long consulting projects. Arthur Middlebrooks, executive director of the James M. Kilts Center,

explained to mbaMission that each management lab consists of eight to ten students with one or two coaches per

team who meet three days a week. The class involves no curricular component: the class is the consulting project.

Said Middlebrooks of the lab course, “You learn a ton about the subject and a lot about your own work style.”

In addition, professors in Chicago Booth’s marketing department realized opportunities for increased practical

involvement and created “hybrid” classes in “Marketing Research” and “New Product Development” that involve

a lecture component but that also allow students to work on shorter-term projects with a more narrow scope for

firms large and small. More than 200 students participate in these courses each year and work in teams of five

with such companies as GE Healthcare, Procter & Gamble, and Chicago Public Radio. Plus, in 2009, Chicago Booth

started the Kilts Mentoring Program, wherein students interested in marketing are paired with one of approxi-

mately 40 Chicago Booth alumni mentors from leading marketing firms (e.g., General Mills, PepsiCo) who provide

their assigned students with career guidance and support.

Chicago Booth continues to expand its experiential learning opportunities through its partnership with The

Nielsen Company, a global market researcher. Chicago Booth houses both Consumer Panel and Retail Scanner

store data for Nielsen. Middlebrooks told mbaMission that through classes such as “Data Driven Marketing,” fac-

ulty teach students how to use this kind of data in their decision making. For example, the Consumer Panel data

provide a record of what people buy in 60,000 homes, and through these records, students are able to “infer shop-

ping behavior and track spending,” explained Middlebrooks. Students can access the data only through Chicago

Booth courses and with faculty supervision. According to Middlebrooks, this partnership is meant to create “a

clearinghouse for data for the academic community.”


Of Chicago Booth’s 2016 graduates, 7.9% accepted positions with a marketing function (also 7.9% in 2015, and 9.5%

in 2014) at such companies as Amazon.com, Inc.; Anheuser-Busch InBev; Pepsico, Inc.; Samsung Group; Apple Inc.,

and the Kraft Foods Group, Inc.

Nonprofit/Social Entrepreneurship

No major is dedicated specifically to nonprofit work or social entrepreneurship at Chicago Booth. However, be-

cause of the MBA program’s flexible curriculum, students can define their own major in the area and might thus

consider a variety of courses in corporate governance, public policy, and social enterprise. Because students may

take up to six classes in other departments within the University of Chicago, they can take advantage of the exten-

sive academic offerings available via the Harris School for Public Policy.

In 2013, Chicago Booth received a $5M gift from alumnus John Edwardson (’72), the former chairman and CEO of

CDW, to support the school’s Social Enterprise Initiative. This initiative “brings together researchers and their

social interests from across Chicago Booth’s academic disciplines, including economics, finance, marketing, and

psychology,” states the school’s Web site. The initiative sponsored several distinguished speakers in 2016–2017

related to social entrepreneurship, including a consultant at the Bridgespan Group, the president and CEO of Hon-

est Tea, and the authors of The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty (Princeton

University Press, 2017).

Speakers in 2015–2016 included the founder and CEO of Khan Academy, the director of education and community

engagement at Chicago’s Goodman Theater, and an executive chair of TeacherMatch. In 2014–2015, the initiative

welcomed such presenters as the vice president of green innovation at NASCAR, the CEO of OneGoal, and the dep-

uty commissioner of youth services for the City of Chicago The previous year, the initiative brought to the school

the executive director of the Office of Strategy Management and Chicago Public Schools and the senior director of

sustainability for Keurig Green Mountain.

In addition, Net Impact offers students a significant experiential/leadership opportunity—its Board Fellows pro-

gram, in which students join the boards of nonprofits as nonvoting members and complete a strategic project with

the guidance of a board member who acts as a mentor. Students make a significant commitment to the nonprofit

with which they align—projects often demand eight to ten hours per week for six months.

Although the Giving Something Back Group (known as the GSB) is less managerial than the Board Fellows program,

students interested in the nonprofit world may be interested to learn that it facilitates a wide variety of commu-

nity volunteer opportunities. Currently, the GSB offers more than 20 project options. For example, students may

commit to tutoring disadvantaged children, assisting families with tax preparation, or preparing food for families

staying at the Ronald McDonald House. mbaMission learned that this program, which has more than 200 members,

is quite popular among Chicago Booth students, and participants enjoy not only “giving back” but also bonding

with their classmates through these volunteer opportunities. A first-year GSB member told mbaMission that a goal


of the group is “to reinforce the importance of volunteerism among business school students in an enjoyable and

rewarding fashion,” adding, ”We hope that our efforts will promote long-term commitments and sensitivity to the

importance of good citizenship.”

In addition, students can make an impact in the developing world through the International Development Group

(formerly the Chicago Global Citizens Group), which harnesses MBA students’ skills to benefit those in need in-

ternationally. In recent years, Chicago Booth students have worked on consulting projects for the Inter-American

Development Bank, the New York University/Gates Foundation Microfinance Project, and the Clinton Foundation

HIV/AIDS Access Initiative, among other high-profile, international developmental projects. Further, the group

sponsors a Spring Trek to a developing country—past trips have been to Kenya (2007), Tanzania (2008), Botswana

(2009), the Philippines (2010), Columbia (2011), Vietnam (2012), Nepal (2013), the Dominican Republic (2014), and

Peru (2015)—where students spend one week volunteering, meeting with local nonprofits and nongovernmental

organizations, and sightseeing.

On the 2013 Spring Trek, for example, 16 students traveled to Nepal and volunteered to work with the Kevin Rohan

Memorial Eco Foundation, which was created in 2008 to “bring sustainable practices to the local communities by

establishing programs that are deeply rooted and are serving the needs of the community,” explains the group’s

site. The students witnessed firsthand how the organization’s programs have introduced basic social services to

Nepalese villages and even visited a leprosy treatment center. During the 2012 Spring Trek, 12 students worked on

two projects in Vietnam: teaching English to the White Thai (one of more than 80 minority groups in the country)

and assisting a local entrepreneur who employs disabled women in her handcraft business. A second year who

participated in the 2012 trip told mbaMission, “We talked to some of the people that are investing in the country,

among private equity funds and institutions like World Bank. In one week, we covered the more developed south

with super lively Saigon, and the more traditional north, where we visited the capital Hanoi and surroundings.”

Students concerned with environmental issues will likely be interested in the Energy Policy Institute at the Univer-

sity of Chicago (formerly known as the Chicago Energy Initiative), a research center devoted to studying the eco-

nomic, environmental, and geopolitical impacts of energy use. Although students do not typically deal with cli-

mate change “hands on” through the initiative, they have many opportunities to address energy use in academic

forums through the speakers and workshops the initiative regularly hosts. For example, in 2017, a former assistant

administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance

discussed “The Future of Regulatory Enforcement: Action from Data” and a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berke-

ley National Laboratory gave a presentation titled “Expert Judgments on Future Wind Energy Costs: How Low Can

Costs Go?” In 2016, the chief economist and manager of business and market analysis for ConocoPhillips discussed

“U.S. Shale Renaissance: Implications and Challenges” and the director of the program on Sustainable Mobility at

the Earth Institute presented the topic “Transforming Mobility and Logistics.”

The previous year (2015), the technology manager for natural gas technology programs at the U.S. Department

of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory spoke on the theme “Energy and Environmental Implications


of Gas Hydrates,” while a Harvard Kennedy School professor presented on the topic of “Solar Geoengineering:

Technology and Implications for Public Policy.” And in 2014, the CEO of Alliant Energy presented on the topic of

“Generating Results in an Environmentally Conscious World,” and a senior scientist for the Union of Concerned

Scientists addressed the topic “Renaissance Lost? The Future of Nuclear Power.”

Organizations such as the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and Education Pioneers recruited Chicago

Booth students in 2015–2016. According to the school’s most recent employment report, eight members of the

Class of 2016 (1.6%; down from 19 and 3.3%, respectively, in 2015, and 13 and 2.2% in 2014) entered full-time posi-

tions in education/government/nonprofit.

Notable Professors and Unsung Heroes

Sanjay Dhar (www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/d/sanjay-k-dhar): If one were to say that a star marketing

professor could be found in the city of Chicago, one would likely guess that that person would be found at Kellogg.

However, Chicago Booth has worked hard to develop its marketing program, and the school can claim the profes-

sor who wrote what the Journal of Marketing Research deemed its best article of 2008 and who has received sev-

eral other awards and citations, including being recognized as an outstanding faculty member in three Bloomberg

Businessweek guides to the best business schools. In 2012, Dhar was honored by his executive education students

at Chicago Booth with the Hillel J. Einhorn Excellence in Teaching Award. In addition, students told mbaMission

that they are pleased that Dhar is teaching more and researching less. He keeps the energy high in his classroom

by constantly walking up and down the aisles during discussions and then literally running to the board to write

down salient points.

Nicholas Epley (www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/e/nicholas-epley): As a result of bringing social science

to bear on management practices, Nicholas Epley has received such noteworthy recognitions as the 2011 American

Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology. In 2014,

Poets&Quants named Epley one of “The 40 Most Outstanding B-School Profs Under 40 in the World.” “Most people

are intuitive psychologists in their daily lives,” he explains on the school’s Web site, “wondering why people think

or behave as they do. I just happened to find a profession that enables me to answer these questions for a liv-

ing.” Epley’s work has been featured in top media outlets and published in leading social and behavioral sciences

journals, and in 2014, he published the book Mindwise: Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel,

and Want (Deckle Edge, 2014).

An alumna we interviewed called Epley one of her favorite professors and praised him for his approach to teaching

behavioral analysis, saying it familiarizes students with “the psychology behind making decisions and also what

people’s biases are, how that works.” She added, “He’s done a ton of research behind that, and it was great to get

that soft learning behind decision making and work with other teams and other people, just because it’s obviously

something that you’re going to be doing in the real world.”

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/d/sanjay-k-dhar

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/e/nicholas-epley


Eugene F. Fama (www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/f/eugene-f-fama): Among the most distinguished mem-

bers of Chicago Booth’s faculty is Eugene Fama, widely recognized as the “father of modern finance.” For his re-

search on asset pricing and market efficiency, he received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economic Science jointly with

Lars Peter Hansen (University of Chicago) and Robert Shiller (Yale University). Fama is reportedly one of the most

cited researchers in the country, having published more than 100 articles and claimed a number of other presti-

gious awards in the field, including the 2007 Fred Arditti Innovation Award from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s

Center for Innovation, the 2007 Award for Excellence in Finance from the Morgan Stanley American Finance Asso-

ciation, and the 2005 Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics.

The Nobel Laureate also serves as chair of Chicago Booth’s Center for Research in Security Prices. Although he

does not regularly teach MBA courses, Fama’s notoriously challenging PhD course “Theory of Financial Decisions

I” is open to MBA students who are willing to take on the extra workload. As the course description states, “the

expectation is that the average student spends 15+ hours per week on the course, outside of class.”

Scott Meadow (www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/m/scott-f-meadow): In both 2003 and 2005, Scott Mead-

ow was featured as one of the most outstanding professors of entrepreneurship in the United States in Business-

Week’s (now Bloomberg Businessweek) “Guide to the Best Business Schools.” He is widely recognized as an expert

in private equity investment and has served since 2000 as clinical professor of entrepreneurship at Chicago Booth.

As a testament to his decades of experience, Meadow was honored with the 2011 Richard J. Daley Award by the Il-

linois Venture Capital Association for his contributions to the industry.

Meadow has taught more than 8,000 students, claims the school’s site, and received several recognitions for his

teaching, including the 2010 Faculty Excellence Award. An alumna we interviewed identified Meadow as one of

her favorite professors. “I thought that was a really great class,” she said of his “Commercializing Innovation”

course, adding, “Basically, the class is like a week-long due diligence session for different companies. … Professor

Meadow’s worked in venture, worked in PE, has all of that real-world experience. So I was really able to apply what

his methodology is to a lot of different companies in a lot of different areas.”

Arthur Middlebrooks (www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/m/arthur-middlebrooks): A 1988 Chicago Booth

alumnus, Arthur Middlebrooks is also executive director of the Kilts Center for Marketing and a management con-

sultant who has helped notable companies—including the Bank of America, IBM Consulting, and BP/Amoco—intro-

duce novel services and products. With these experiences in hand, Middlebrooks is prepared to take students in

his “Lab in Developing New Products and Services” class through the entire product development process, start-

ing from scratch. In his class, rather than being instructed to dream up a product, students are given raw data and

hold focus groups as they strive to identify a consumer need. Recently, students in this course conceptualized new

bag products for Ziploc and presented their findings to a panel of entrepreneurs. Students with whom mbaMis-

sion spoke described Middlebrooks as innovative and gushed about his passion and energy. Plus, several were

impressed that he knew each student’s name on day one of class.

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/f/eugene-f-fama

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/m/scott-f-meadow

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/m/arthur-middlebrooks


Kevin Murphy (www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/m/kevin-m-murphy): In 2005, Kevin Murphy, who has

a joint appointment in the department of economics at the University of Chicago, where he teaches PhD-level

courses, became the first business school professor to win the MacArthur Genius Grant, which he received for his

groundbreaking economic research. Murphy’s course “Advanced Microeconomic Analysis” is affectionately called

“Turbo Micro” because of its enormous workload. One recent graduate told mbaMission that a typical Chicago

Booth class is supposed to be complemented by five hours of homework per week but that Murphy’s course de-

mands roughly 20 hours of work per week outside class. So why would students clamber to take the course? The

alumnus with whom we spoke raved that it was taught at the PhD level and that Murphy is deserving of his “ge-

nius” title, pushing students to think about their opinions in profoundly different ways. A first year we interviewed

identified Murphy’s course as the most impressive he had taken thus far, saying it offered “a very complicated but

logical way to view the world.”

Lubos Pastor (www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/p/lubos-pastor): Still relatively young, Lubos Pastor has

already received considerable recognition for his research on the stock market and asset management and was

featured among “The Best 40 B-School Profs Under the Age of 40” by Poets&Quants in 2011. Pastor’s work has

been influential, earning him such high-profile accolades as the NASDAQ Award, the Goldman Sachs Asset Man-

agement Prize, and the Barclay’s Global Investors Prize, as well as Chicago Booth’s own Faculty Excellence Award

for MBA Teaching in both 2009 and 2010. One student quoted in the Poets&Quants article said, “his witty style

elevates classroom conversations and facilitates retention of core concepts.”

James E. Schrager (www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/s/james-e-schrager): Although he has a PhD from

the University of Chicago in organizational behavior and policy, James E. Schrager is not just an academic but also

a practitioner, able to claim that he helped take the first private American company public on the Tokyo stock

exchange and assisted in turning around aspects of the Pritzker family holdings, which were ultimately sold to

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. Students we interviewed noted that Schrager brings his high-level experi-

ences to class but remains entirely in touch with students’ more modest perspectives, adapting his anecdotes

accordingly and creating practical learning points that pertain to what students will face early in their post-MBA

careers. Schrager is also a three-time recipient of the university’s Emory Williams Award for Excellence in Teaching

(in 2007, 2001, and 1996). One second-year student told mbaMission, “He is not up in the sky, but very practical,

and by the way, his class is always full.” Students’ grades in Schrager’s “New Venture Strategy” class are based

in part on the success of a business idea the students present to their peers—the other students act as venture

capitalists and give feedback on the idea.

Luigi Zingales (www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/z/luigi-zingales): Luigi Zingales is known on the Chicago

Booth campus for his charm, sense of humor, and humility, but students with whom mbaMission spoke also call

him an innovator, citing as evidence his perspective on the discount rates used to evaluate the future cash flows

of new and risky ventures (i.e., his ability to mathematically explain why some firms deserve a 30%–50% discount

rate). Zingales’s novel approach to solving the mortgage crisis was profiled in The Economist, and Bruce Bartlett of

the National Review Online called his book Saving Capitalism from Capitalists: Unleashing the Power of Financial

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/m/kevin-m-murphy

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/p/lubos-pastor

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/s/james-e-schrager

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/z/luigi-zingales


Markets to Create Wealth and Spread Opportunity (coauthored with Raghuram G. Rajan; Crown Business, 2003)

“one of the most powerful defenses of the free market ever written.” In 2015, he became director of the school’s

Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State. His students call him an “emerging finance superstar”—

significant praise, considering the company he keeps at Chicago Booth.

Social/Community Life

Booth Partners: Booth Partners is an official school club that supports the significant others and families of Chi-

cago Booth students by hosting social events, offering advice about moving to and living in Chicago, and provid-

ing a networking resource for members who hope to work and volunteer while in Chicago. During admit weekend,

sessions are run by current partners to inform admitted Chicago Booth students and their significant others about

life at the school, showing, said a partner with whom we spoke, “that the partner is recognized as an important

part of the decision-making process.” She added, “Upon acceptance to Booth, not only does the student receive

a letter, the partner does as well!”

Partners, with or without children, who move with their students to Chicago Booth can take advantage of what

the group has to offer by paying a $150 one-year membership fee or a $230 two-year membership fee. Member-

ship benefits include invitations to partner parties, such activities as a Japanese cooking class or a beer-tasting

event, and inclusion in sub-clubs, such as a Book Club, a Wine Club, etc. Events take place on average one to four

times a week. The Booth Partners Web site offers information on moving to Chicago, with links to descriptions

of area neighborhoods and apartment buildings as well as specific resources for international students and their

significant others.

Within the Booth Partners club is Partners of Little Ones (POLO), a resource specifically for students/partners with

children. Said the partner with whom we spoke, “There are lots of resources available to make everyone that is

special to a Booth student feel welcomed and cared for! As a Chicago Booth Partner, I have found the Booth Part-

ners club to be an excellent organization in which to meet new people and participate in fun, interesting activities.”

Chicago Booth Ski Trip and Tuck Winter Carnival: Candidates who decide to attend Chicago Booth can look for-

ward—with hundreds of their closest friends in the community (partners are invited as well)—to the school’s two

annual ski trips, which take place in December and February in varying locations. In December 2016, the trip at-

tracted more than 400 participants to Aspen, Colorado. In February 2016, Chicago Booth students and partners

headed for Park City, Utah, for the event. (Approximately 400 traveled to Aspen, Colorado in December 2015, with

previous years’ destinations being Vail, Steamboat Springs, Telluride, and Breckenridge.) After skiing and snow-

boarding all day, trip attendees spend their evenings enjoying back-to-back parties.

“There was no shortage of board shorts, bathing suits, Hawaiian shirts, blow-up pool toys, beach balls, and glow

sticks on the dance floor,” recalled a second year of a “Summertime Fun” themed party in 2014 on The Booth Ex-


perience blog in January 2015, noting, “Half of my suitcase was snowboarding gear, and the rest was costumes.”

Other party themes that year included Choose Your Decade, Ugly Holiday, Boots N’ Brews, and Broomball. The

previous year, the participating students donned their “most radical attire,” said a first year in a January 2014 post

on The Booth Experience blog, for an ’80s-themed happy hour before partying late into the night at a “Heaven and

Hell” rave. Other ski trip activities have included a flip cup tournament, a pub crawl, a grilled cheese bake-off, and

a visit to a local hot spring. Students and partners who are not interested in skiing or snowboarding can typically

take advantage of the selected location’s other offerings, such as spa treatments, bumper cars on ice, snowmobil-

ing, and snowshoeing.

Members of the Chicago Booth Ski and Snowboard Club also participate in the annual Tuck Winter Carnival (at

Dartmouth), for which many of the country’s top business schools send teams to compete in a ski race—though we

learned the event tends to be more about beer than competition.

Liquidity Preference Function (LPF): LPF gets its name from a financial term coined by John Maynard Keynes, and

these gatherings are held on Fridays at Hyde Park. Students and their partners/families get together after classes

in a communal area in the Harper Center called Winter Garden for free food and drinks. LPF is a school-sponsored

event organized by the Graduate Business Council (a group of students elected by the student body to organize

activities). LPFs are often theme based, such as the Mentor-Mentee LPF and one at which the Booth Arts Group

displayed the finalists in a photography contest it sponsored, and music and dance performances were featured.

Random Walks: Each year, Chicago Booth students can choose to take part in one of more than 30 trips abroad,

called Random Walks, as an orientation to the school and a way to kick-start their MBA social lives. Three to four

second-year students organize each of the weeklong excursions, which take place toward the end of August each

year. Because students organize these trips, they can become quite specialized—for example, two trips have typi-

cally been offered to Belize, one for singles and one for couples. As trips fill up, they become “suspended” to allow

admits from Round 2 time to sign up. Still, students who have their hearts set on a particular destination would be

wise to claim a space as early as possible.

Students interested in participating in a Random Walk but have not set their sights on any particular destination

can elect to join the “mystery trip,” for which participants do not find out where they are going until they arrive

at the airport to depart. (In recent years students on the “mystery trip” have traveled to the Galapagos Islands;

Japan; Finland and Estonia; Barcelona, Spain, and Dublin, Ireland; Jordan; and Portugal.) One first-year student

wrote in a 2016 post on the Booth Experience blog: “I couldn’t imagine my Booth Experience without Random Walk,

and it seems like this year’s first years feel the same way,” while another expressed similar sentiments: “Taking

part in Random Walk Panama was a fantastic way to kick off my Booth experience. It provided a brilliant oppor-

tunity to unwind before diving fully into MBA life, as well as some solid friendships to make the whole thing a bit

less daunting.” A third student said simply: “The best part about Random Walk are the relationships you form.”


Thursday Night Drinking Club (TNDC): According to a first year with whom we spoke, Thursday Night Drinking

Club, or TNDC, is “a Booth tradition that everyone goes to and a weekly staple.” This event is organized by six

second-year students (“chairs”) who are hand-chosen by the previous year’s chairs and who select a new location

each week where students and their partners/families can gather in downtown Chicago. A member of the Dean’s

Student Admissions Committee told mbaMission that TNDC is “just one part of the vibrant city-based social en-

vironment of Booth,” and a recent alumnus remarked, “I think that our Thursday night events were really great

because they provided an avenue for all students to come together and hang out outside of school.” Noting that

attendance regularly numbers 200–400, a first-year student we interviewed remarked, “Booth frequently takes

over the venue.”

Winter Formal and Spring Fling: Later in the academic year, both first and second years don their tuxedoes and

cocktail dresses to enjoy the Winter Formal, which draws approximately 700 attendees. Students told mbaMission

that they enjoy these opportunities to get their energy pumping and break up the long winter with a party. The

Field Museum of Natural History and the Shedd Aquarium have served as the event’s venues in recent years. The

2017 event, which was held at the Museum of Science and Industry, featured a black tie dress code, a dinner, and

dancing. The Spring Fling follows, which students we interviewed likened to an American prom. This party has typ-

ically been held at Venue SIX10 in downtown Chicago and has even involved a semiformal cruise on Lake Michigan.

Academic Summary

Curriculum: Chicago Booth is renowned for its flexibility—its LEAD Program is the school’s only mandatory course.

Nonetheless, this claim to flexibility can be a bit misleading. Chicago Booth breaks its course selection down into

different categories; students must take three foundation courses from among 15 financial accounting, microeco-

nomics, and statistics options. Then, students must take six courses from the selections offered in the Functions,

Management, and Business Environment categories. Each of these three categories is broken down into subsets:

the Functions subset includes finance, marketing, and operations; the Management subset includes decisions,

people, and strategy; and the Business Environment subset is eponymously named. Students must ultimately

take six courses from among these seven subsets, for which they have more than 40 options. Thereafter, 11 elec-

tive options remain for students among the 21 total courses (including LEAD) they need to complete to graduate.

Students can take up to six courses outside the business school at the University of Chicago.

Grade Disclosure Policy: Chicago Booth students voted in 2001 to adopt a grade nondisclosure policy, preventing

recruiters from asking students for information about their grades. This policy is believed to still be in place, given

that students have not voted to reverse the decision. However, Chicago Booth’s Web site notes that this is not an

official school policy and is therefore not enforced by faculty or staff.


Majors: Rather than official majors, Chicago Booth offers students 14 available concentrations, which each require

the completion of three to six courses within the study area. Concentrations are not required, but students typi-

cally fulfill one to three of the following options:

• Accounting

• Analytic Finance

• Analytic Management

• Econometrics and Statistics

• Economics

• Entrepreneurship

• Finance

• General Management

• International Business

• Managerial and Organizational Behavior

• Marketing Analytics

• Marketing Management

• Operations Management

• Strategic Management

Teaching Method: Chicago Booth does not adhere strictly to one method (case method or lecture). Professors are

free to select the format that best fits the subject matter being conveyed.

Research Centers and Initiatives:

• Accounting Research Center

• Applied Theory Initiative

• Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics

• Center for Decision Research

• Center for Population Economics

• Center for Research in Security Prices

• Energy Policy Institute at Chicago

• Fama-Miller Center for Research in Finance

• George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State

• Harry L. Davis Center for Leadership

• Initiative on Global Markets

• James M. Kilts Center for Marketing

• Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation

• Social Enterprise Initiative


Admissions Basics

Note: Any specifics discussed in this section related to application requirements were valid for the 2016–2017 admis-

sions season (unless otherwise noted). Be aware that requirements for any subsequent admissions cycles may differ.

Always check with the school directly to confirm all application details.

The Chicago Booth admissions committee regularly hosts hour-long online chats and gives very candid responses

to all sorts of applicant questions. If you have a query or concern about the school’s MBA program or applying to

it, these chats provide a forum in which to connect and get “straight talk” on the issue.

Application Process: Once a complete application has been received, it is given to an admissions fellow (a trained

second-year student or an admissions staff member), who reads the application and makes a decision as to

whether to interview the candidate. The application is then passed on to an admissions director, who reads the

application and makes a similar decision. If these two decisions differ, another director breaks the tie with a

third decision. When a candidate is interviewed, a subsequent interview report is made, processed, and given to

another director, along with the rest of the applicant’s file, for a third, or possibly fourth, read. That director then

votes to either admit the candidate, deny the candidate, or bring the decision to committee for further discussion.

In a 2011 admissions blog post, Associate Dean of Student Recruitment and Admissions Kurt Ahlm described the

application process as such: “There is no formula that we use to determine who is admitted. We strive to select

the people we feel most thoroughly embody the values that we live every day, which is why each admitted student

is reviewed by at minimum five members of our committee (student fellow, first admissions director, interviewer,

second admissions director, me). As we have tried hard to express to thousands of prospective students who

read our materials, attend our events, or visit our campus, our applicant pool is full of interesting and successful

people, but not all of them leverage the application in a way that truly conveys strong fit with those values. At the

end of the day, it is fit that proves to be our final litmus test.”

Admissions Rounds: Although applying in Round 1 rather than Round 2 may confer a slight statistical advantage—

because Round 1 involves fewer applications, and no decisions have yet been made (thus, no limit exists at this

point on the number of spaces available)—admissions staff at Chicago Booth have emphasized in various com-

munications that quality is more important than speed when one is applying to the school and that candidates

should wait until Round 2 to submit their application, if necessary, rather than rushing through their application

to submit it in Round 1. By Round 3, fewer spaces and scholarships are available. The admissions committee does

recommend, however, that international students consider applying in Rounds 1 or 2 so that they may have suf-

ficient time to acquire their visas.

An associate director of admissions noted in a 2010 online chat, “There are some differences between the rounds,

but they are nominal. In Round 1, the slate is clean and we have yet to review applications. In Round 2, we typically

receive the largest number of applications and make the largest number of admissions offers.” Ahlm similarly


commented in a 2012 admissions blog post, “The most common question to the Admissions Committee is ‘When is

the best time to apply?’ The answer to this question is quite simple: consider whether or not you’ve leveraged each

and every part of the application to support your fit with Booth. When you feel confident about your application,

you are ready to apply.” He added, “Rounds One and Two are competitive, but statistically your chances for admis-

sion are almost equal in either. Round Three is more competitive simply because there are fewer spots left in the

class. Regardless of the round, the Admissions Committee will always seek the candidates of best fit.”

GMAT/GPA Cutoffs: Chicago Booth has no GMAT or GPA cutoffs and stipulates no ideal score or average. Applicants

are evaluated on a holistic basis, and all their attributes are considered (work experience, community/leadership

activities, etc.).

Word Limits: Chicago Booth’s admissions committee members expect candidates to adhere to the guidelines pro-

vided when asked to submit a written essay.

PowerPoint Presentation/PDF/Essay: For past application seasons, Chicago Booth offered applicants a virtual

blank slate as one of the school’s essay questions: four PowerPoint slides with which candidates could do any-

thing they pleased. For the 2016–2017 and 2015–2016 cycles, however, candidates were given just one presenta-

tion/essay topic and could choose their desired submission format (e.g., PowerPoint, PDF, Word document). “Ei-

ther [format] is fine, and we’re hoping to get a better ‘snapshot’ of who you are and your interests,” a member of

the admissions committee explained in a 2014 admissions chat. “At the end of the day, we are looking for you to

bring a new element about yourself into the essay, something that you haven’t already shared in other sections of

the application,” Kurt Ahlm wrote in a 2015 post on the MBA admissions blog.

Community Leadership: Chicago Booth seeks well-rounded candidates but understands that some careers may

limit the amount of activities in which certain applicants can participate. Sometimes, an individual who is “too

busy” now can make up for a lack of current involvement once he/she arrives at the school. In a 2011 admissions

chat, an associate director of admissions noted, “We value leadership and community involvement in whatev-

er form it comes from each individual applicant. Some are really involved in traditional activities, while others

choose to get involved in community organizations—churches, nonprofits, etc.” There is no right number of com-

munity engagements an applicant should have; the admissions committee is simply trying to understand the

candidate’s interests—quality trumps quantity. Applicants should not be hesitant about discussing faith-based

community engagements.

Unemployment/Layoffs: The school does not necessarily view a layoff or period of unemployment unfavorably.

International Quotas: Chicago Booth does not have any specific quotas by country or industry. Student numbers

by country fluctuate a great deal each year.


Recommendations: The school requires that applicants submit two letters of recommendation and specifies that

one of the two should be provided by a supervisor. If a candidate’s recommenders miss a deadline, the candidate

can email the admissions committee to ask for additional time and may be granted a one-week extension. Third

recommendations are not recommended, but the school will read them if they seem substantially different from

the others. In a 2010 online chat, an associate director of admissions stated, “We ask for two letters. If you submit

more than two, make sure the third letter adds value by touching on points your other two may not. This is a place

in the application where you’ll want to use your judgment as the committee really only requires two. Think quality

over quantity.”

Similarly, an associate director of admissions noted in a 2013 admissions blog post that candidates ought not

lose sight of a recommendation’s quality, saying, “Letters of recommendation are a crucial part of the admissions

process, and while you may be tempted to impress the Admissions Committee with the connections you’ve made,

you’ll want to work with someone who knows you and your accomplishments, talents, and skills well. Your cur-

rent or former supervisor and a colleague or client who can speak at length about your value to your company or

organization is a much better choice than someone who may have an impressive title, but little insight into you as

a person or future Chicago Booth student. Choose your recommenders carefully.” An assistant director of admis-

sions made a similar point in a 2012 online chat, saying, “It is important to choose someone who knows you well,

has observed your work, and can comment on the areas listed on the reference form.”

Interviews: Interviews are mandatory for admission for all candidates, including reapplicants. The percentage of

applicants who are invited to interview is based solely on the quality of the applicant pool, and no set number ex-

ists. Traditionally, 40%–60% of applicants are interviewed. Interviews are conducted by admissions committee staff,

students, or alumni and are held on campus or in a location convenient for the prospective student. All interviews,

regardless of who conducts them, receive equal weight in the evaluation process. Interview invitations are randomly

distributed. The timing of a candidate’s interview invitation has no bearing on his/her chances of admission.

A 2012 admissions blog post by Ahlm (http://blogs.chicagobooth.edu/blog/Booth_Insider/Preparing_for_Your_

Booth_Interview/boothinsider/75?nav=entry) reminded candidates to dress in business attire and bring a resume

to their interview. Ahlm also suggests that candidates ask themselves the following questions in preparation for

their interview:

• What do I really want from my MBA experience?

• What can I bring to the Chicago Booth community?

• Why is Booth the right place for me?

• How do I plan to use my MBA in my career?

Although interviews are important, they are not “make or break.” Interviewers are primarily attempting to assess

the candidate’s fit with the program (i.e., whether the applicant has done his/her due diligence on the school and

understands how it connects with his/her MBA needs and career goals). An associate director of admissions said

http://blogs.chicagobooth.edu/blog/Booth_Insider/Preparing_for_Your_Booth_Interview/boothinsider/75?nav=entry

http://blogs.chicagobooth.edu/blog/Booth_Insider/Preparing_for_Your_Booth_Interview/boothinsider/75?nav=entry


in a 2010 online admissions chat, “Be prepared to tell your story, even if you feel like you’ve already done so. That

includes your interest in Booth, your goals, and your motivation for the MBA. Finally, come armed with some great

questions to ask your interviewer.”

Similarly, an assistant director of admissions explained in a 2013 post on the Booth Insider Full-Time MBA Ad-

missions blog, “We have a long-standing philosophy that the interview is to be a two way exchange—an organic

conversation—so our advice still rings quite true. But we’ll never miss an opportunity to remind you that a bit of

self-reflection is key to good preparation. Don’t neglect to become confident with the answers to these types of

questions: Why do I want an MBA? Why now? How will an MBA help me achieve my goals?”

Said a second year in the same chat about his own experience interviewing at Chicago Booth as a candidate, “My

interview was really conversational, and it was really about my interviewer getting to know me and having a feel-

ing whether I would have a good fit with the community here.” In a 2013 admissions blog post, Admissions Fellows

shared tips with interviewees, echoing this sentiment and saying, “Relax! It is a conversation, not a job interview!”

and “Be prepared. Be able to anticipate the interviewer’s questions but, more importantly, be mentally ready. …

Don’t stress out. If you’re here, it means you have talent and have the potential to succeed.”

The Waitlist: Chicago Booth’s waitlist is “used to gauge the pool of candidates in a subsequent round before of-

fering a final decision to those candidates placed on the waitlist,” states the school’s Web site. If a candidate is

waitlisted, he/she will remain on the list until at least the next round. While the school is unable to provide spe-

cific feedback to waitlisted applicants, it does not rank the candidates on the list, and applicants are welcome

to submit supplemental materials. In 2010–2011, Chicago Booth began evaluating applicants who were waitlisted

for Round 1 as part of Round 2 admissions decisions. This means that while some applicants may remain on the

waitlist, others may receive their decision earlier in the process. Some applicants will not receive a decision until

Round 3, however.

A 2011 Chicago Booth admissions blog post describes a relatively new option available for those on the waitlist.

Waitlisted applicants may now upload a 90-second video for the admissions committee as a way of introducing

themselves. Noted an associate director of admissions in this blog entry, “In the age of digital media, we recognize

that video is a common tool of communication and want to provide any interested candidate with the opportunity

to use it. A video provides the opportunity to create a personal connection in lieu of visiting campus.” An associate

director of admissions later expounded on this option a bit in a 2012 online chat, saying, “We offered this as an

option to further connect with the Admissions Committee, not to assess your film-making skills or to cause stress

about them! As long as you like what it says about you, your video will be a success!”

Financial Aid: Chicago Booth applicants are offered a merit-based fellowship at the time of their admissions deci-

sion, if they have been granted one. These awards are based on the quality of the candidate’s application and on

any specific criteria identified by the donor. An applicant cannot do anything to enhance his/her chances of gain-

ing an award, aside from simply being a meritorious candidate.


Reapplicants: Reapplicants to Chicago Booth should understand that in the eyes of the admissions committee,

they are not starting from a “penalty” situation. However, they are expected to have a more profound perspective

on their decision to pursue an MBA and a stronger sense of fit with the school than someone who is applying for

the first time. The admissions committee will look to the reapplicant’s current application to provide all the infor-

mation needed and will only infrequently go back to and review the candidate’s previous file.

In response to a question about reapplicants in a 2010 online admissions chat, an associate director of admissions

stated, “We evaluate reapplicants much in the same way we evaluate first-time applicants. Your current applica-

tion is reviewed within the larger pool, and we have your previous application on file in the event that we need to

reference it. One of the major differences is the additional question for reapplicants, where we hope to get a sense

of what has changed since you last applied.” Reapplicants are directed to a specific page on the Chicago Booth

Web site: www.chicagobooth.edu/programs/full-time/admissions/apply/reapplicants.

University of Chicago (Booth) Essay Analysis, 2016–2017

Last year, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business introduced an “essay” question like no other—one

that we imagine gave some applicants serious pause. Candidates were presented with 16 photos depicting life in

the Chicago Booth MBA program and asked to choose the one that best correlated with their opinion of why the

school was right for them. Chicago Booth has chosen to maintain this photo-inspiration approach this year, but

with some key tweaks. First, applicants have ten pictures from which to select, rather than 16. Although the school

does not offer a reason for this scale-down, we can posit several theories. Perhaps several of the photos inspired

very similar essays, so only one such picture was needed this year. Or maybe some images were chosen by a very

small number of candidates, so Chicago Booth felt they would be superfluous this time and streamlined the op-

tions by cutting them. The school may also have wanted to focus applicants on specific aspects of the Chicago

Booth experience and therefore did away with any pictures not related to those elements. A second big change is

that this year’s photos include captions describing the depicted scene. This could add a layer of complexity in that

an individual may be strongly drawn to one particular scene, but the associated caption in some way alters his/

her initial interpretation of it. Third, and most importantly, the school now asks applicants to select the picture

that “best resonates with you” (italics ours) rather than with the candidate’s belief that Chicago Booth is the “right

fit.” By broadening the prompt’s scope this way, the school is allowing applicants to select from a wider range of

possible themes and present a more rounded picture of who they are as individuals. Do not let this unorthodox

question intimidate you—our analysis will help you navigate these potentially challenging waters.

View this collection of shared Booth moments (www.chicagobooth.edu/~/media/3A4A342E7DCB4900B7C91A3C37

33AFDB.pdf). Choose the moment that best resonates with you and tell us why.

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/programs/full-time/admissions/apply/reapplicants

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/~/media/3A4A342E7DCB4900B7C91A3C3733AFDB.pdf

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/~/media/3A4A342E7DCB4900B7C91A3C3733AFDB.pdf


• Choose the format that works for you. Want to illustrate your response visually? Submit a slide presenta-

tion. Like to express yourself with words? Write a traditional essay. Use the format that you feel best cap-

tures your response, the Admissions Committee has no preference.

• Determine your own length. There is no prescribed minimum or maximum length. We trust that you will use

your best judgment in determining how long your submission should be, but we recommend that you think

strategically about how to best allocate the space.

Technical Guidelines

• File Size: Maximum file size is 16 MB.

• Accepted Upload Formats: Acceptable formats are PDF, Word, and PowerPoint. We strongly recommend

converting your piece to a PDF file prior to submitting.

• Multimedia Restrictions: We will be viewing your submission electronically and in full color, but all submis-

sions will be converted to PDF files, so animation, video, music, etc. will not translate over.

In a June 16 post (http://blogs.chicagobooth.edu/blog/Booth_Insider/The_201617_FullTime_MBA_Essay/boothin

sider/303?redirCnt=2&nav=entry) on the Chicago Booth Admissions blog, the school’s director of operations and

evaluation says of this rather unusual essay prompt, “The exercise is about showing us something we cannot learn

elsewhere in the application. There is no wrong way to approach this. The question and moments are yours to an-

swer and yours to interpret.” If you are feeling nervous about this essay, we hope this quote helps calm you a bit.

Every MBA program’s essay questions share a common purpose—to help the admissions committee learn about

you—and this is just a very pure and creative way of approaching the issue. Chicago Booth is not testing to see

whether you will choose the photo that it deems “right” or “best.” It is offering a rather unique way of starting the

conversation about something you feel is fundamental about you, something you want the school to know about

who you are, where you have been, and/or where you want to go in the future. The photos provided are very mal-

leable, so do not get too hung up on which one to choose. And with ten picture options, you should be able to find

one to which you feel a genuine connection.

You might pick an image that connects with or recalls an important event from your past that had a significant im-

pact on you and colors the person you are today. You could instead opt for a photo that relates to your aspirations

as a Chicago Booth student or in your career. Another option is to select a picture that elicits a more emotional

response from you and correlates with one or more of your core values or beliefs. In the end, letting the photos

decide for you might be the best approach. With this essay—as with all application essays, of course—being sin-

cere is crucial, so you will likely be able to craft your most compelling response when you feel a genuine attraction

to the photo you choose. And do not merely identify an attribute in a photo and riff for a thousand words on what

you feel are your most impressive accomplishments; instead, really get to the heart of how and why the image

http://blogs.chicagobooth.edu/blog/Booth_Insider/The_201617_FullTime_MBA_Essay/boothinsider/303?redirCnt=2&nav=entry

http://blogs.chicagobooth.edu/blog/Booth_Insider/The_201617_FullTime_MBA_Essay/boothinsider/303?redirCnt=2&nav=entry


speaks to you personally. If you truly own your experiences and provide sufficient detail in showcasing them, your

message will come across as authentic.

You can choose from multiple format options beyond the traditional essay for your submission, which no doubt

adds to this prompt’s intimidation factor for some applicants. We offer no recommendation with respect to

whether a written essay, a PowerPoint presentation, or any other format is “best” in this case. Opportunities are

certainly available in both traditional and creative approaches, depending on where your strengths lie. We do,

however, recommend that if you choose to write an essay, you limit yourself to no more than a thousand words.

Optional Essay: Is there any additional information that you would like the Admissions Committee to know? If so,

please address in an optional essay. (300 words maximum)

Chicago Booth’s optional essay prompt is rather open-ended in that it does not specify that you discuss only prob-

lem areas in your candidacy, though it does restrict you to just 300 words. Nevertheless, this is still your opportu-

nity to address—if you need to—any lingering questions that an admissions officer might have about your candida-

cy, such as a low GMAT or GRE score, a poor grade or overall GPA, a gap in your work experience, etc. Do not simply

try to fill this space because you fear that not doing so would somehow count against you. And however tempted

you might be, this is not the place to reuse a strong essay you wrote for another school or to offer a few anecdotes

you were unable to share in your required essay. But if you truly feel that you must emphasize or explain some-

thing that would render your application incomplete if omitted, write a very brief piece on this key aspect of your

profile. For more guidance, see our mbaMission Optional Essays Guide (https://shop.mbamission.com/products/

mbamission-optional-essays-guide), in which we offer detailed advice on when and how to take advantage of the

optional essay, with multiple examples, to help you mitigate any problem areas in your application.

Reapplicant Essay: Upon reflection, how has your perspective regarding your future, Chicago Booth, and/or get-

ting an MBA changed since the time of your last application? (300 words maximum)

With this essay question, Chicago Booth is testing your resolve and your reasoning. We surmise that the school

wants to be certain you are not just stubbornly following a path and trying to “finish what you started,” so to

speak, but that you have truly reassessed your needs in the aftermath of your unfortunate rejection. We recom-

mend that you discuss your subsequent growth and development as they pertain to additional personal and

professional discovery, which validates your need for an MBA. In the interim, some of your interests or goals may

have changed—that is not a bad thing, and the admissions committee will not automatically assume that you are

“wishy-washy,” unless you give them good reason to do so. Just be sure that any of your goals that have changed

still logically connect to your overall story and desire for an MBA. Your aspirations—new or original—need to rep-

resent a compelling progression of the growth you have achieved in the past year.

https://shop.mbamission.com/products/mbamission-optional-essays-guide

https://shop.mbamission.com/products/mbamission-optional-essays-guide


Insider Interview: Alumna, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Class of 2012

Having grown up in New York, the recent Chicago Booth alumna we interviewed attended an undergraduate institu-

tion in the city, majoring in finance and accounting. Multiple internships during her college years led her ultimately

to a summer position in the health care investment banking group of a large firm—an opportunity that turned into

a full-time analyst position that lasted two years. She then became interested in switching to a career in private

equity, and this inspired her to pursue her MBA.

mbaMission: Thank you so much for speaking with us about your experience at Chicago Booth. How did you ulti-

mately choose the school for your MBA?

Chicago Booth Alumna: Sure. Well, I wanted to go into private equity, but I didn’t want to do health care services.

When I was choosing colleges, I had gotten into the four-year business program at [a New York–based college] and

I also had gotten into a seven-year med program. So I was trying to choose between medicine and business, and

I’d always loved science. So when I went into the four-year business program, I knew I wanted to be in health care

in some form, I just didn’t know what. And that’s why I chose health care investment banking. So when I got out of

my two years as an analyst, I didn’t want to go to a large traditional shop, just because I’d be doing something very

similar to what I’d been doing as an analyst. So I wanted to go to a smaller PE [private equity] shop that focused

more on pharma/biotech. I was at [a New York firm] for about two and a half years, and then applied to business

school in the middle of my third year.

So I was specifically looking at just health care programs, so Penn [Wharton] and Duke [Fuqua] were at the top of

my list. I actually hadn’t even thought about Booth. It wasn’t on my radar at all, but I had a really good friend from

undergrad that went there, and so I went to go visit her when I was in Chicago and visiting Northwestern [Kellogg].

So when I went to visit her, I loved the school. I loved everybody that I met. It was a great personality fit, and I

didn’t feel that personality fit anywhere else. And so I applied to Booth, was actually on the waitlist and then got

accepted off the waitlist. I was actually going to go to Duke [Fuqua]. I had gotten into Duke. They had given me

some money as well, and then I got into Booth off the waitlist and lost my deposit and stuff, which is fine.

I kind of had go to business school because I felt like I didn’t have enough of a finance background, especially

after being in banking PE, and what I wanted to do was very specific. I wanted to be in corporate development at

a large pharma/biotech company, and I wanted to work in M&A [mergers and acquisitions]. I wanted to work in

industry for a while in terms of my long-term plans and going back to being on the investing side, because I knew

how important having industry expertise is before I go back. And so I wanted to get that experience, and I wanted

to kind of get my life back, because I’d been working 100-hour weeks for years. I just wanted some semblance of

work/life balance before I went back to it later. So my goal was very specific. I actually tried to do it without going

to business school, but every company that I spoke to was like, “We want an MBA.” And so I thought, “All right,

I guess I’m going back to get an MBA.” So it wasn’t in my mind an ideal choice, but I wouldn’t have changed the

experience at all.


mbaMission: So did Chicago Booth’s career development office help you with finding the job that you wanted?

CBA: They were actually really helpful. Because I was so focused, it was a lot easier for them to go out and be like,

“Okay, this is your list of companies. Let’s start finding alums,” and they helped me compile a list of alumni at a

lot of these companies that I could just start talking to. Some were active alums with the school, and so they were

pretty easy, but even alums that weren’t as active, once I emailed them, they were very helpful. There weren’t a

lot of people on the finance end at a lot of the pharma companies, there were a lot more on the marketing end, but

they knew a lot of the finance folks.

I actually started talking to career services right as I got in at the end of May, the middle of June. I didn’t go to any

admit weekends. I just contacted them and was like, “Hey, I’m a newly admitted student, and this is what I am

looking for.” I wanted to start conversations over the summer, because the advice that I had gotten was that things

just get really crazy when you’re a first year. So I wanted to get a head start during the summer. I was working at

a nonprofit in New York part-time, but I thought that this would be a good way to segue into school and talking to

people. A lot of the alums were really great in terms of connecting me. It just took two or three connections to get

to the right person to speak to, which was expected.

mbaMission: Sure. What resources at Chicago Booth do you think were most helpful in preparing you for the job

that you have now?

CBA: I think two areas. I think the first one is the Polsky Center, which is our center for entrepreneurship. We have

something called a PEVC [private equity venture capital] Lab, which is basically where you get to go in and work at

a private equity or venture capital shop in Chicago while you’re going to school, and then you take a class in the

evening to kind of augment that experience. And so I had done that when I was a first year, and I thought that that

was really great in terms of introducing me to VC. I did a health care VC shop at that point. And I thought it was a

really great segue from doing later-season investing to earlier-season investing, and it also connected me with

the Chicago investing community. Because I was coming from New York, my entire network was in New York, so I

didn’t know a ton of people in Chicago in the PEVC community. And I got to know the start-ups really well, I got to

know the incubators really well, and I got to know a lot of the professionals.

mbaMission: That sounds exciting. How would you describe your classmates and the Chicago Booth community?

CBA: I’m trying to think of like a good way to describe it. Whenever somebody came onto campus—and I did a ton

of tours, I was a LEAD facilitator—and I would talk to prospective students, the one thing that I would say to them

was that you need to make sure it’s a personality fit for whatever school you go to. Any top ten school you’re go-

ing to go to, you’re going to get a great education, you’re going to have a great alumni network, but you just have

to make sure that you feel like you can fit into the community and can have friends that are going to be with you

going forward. So that’s the thing for me—it was a great personality fit. It was a mix of people that are obviously,

you know, really nerdy and love talking about weird topics but at the same time could just have fun. And I think


that everybody came into school with a great mentality of “Let’s make a network and let’s keep it strong.” I’ve seen

that a ton in terms of everybody in my class keeping in touch, everybody still being engaged with the community

and with our smaller network. And I think that if everybody goes in with that mentality, you’ve got a much stronger

bond coming out of it.

mbaMission: Definitely. A lot of the top business schools separate incoming students into sections or cohorts, but

Chicago Booth doesn’t do that to my understanding. Did that affect your ability to bond with your classmates or

make good friends in any way?

CBA: You actually do get cohorts when you first start, but it’s only for the first class [LEAD, the Leadership Effec-

tiveness and Development program]. So you get a cohort for that, but it’s literally for the first 12 weeks of your

business school experience, which I think is great, because when you’re first coming in and you’re meeting new

people, it’s great to have a way to do it. But I think that once you’re a couple months in, you kind of know what

you’re doing. And so at that point, you can tailor your experience to whatever you want it to be in terms of what

your groups are, what classes you’re taking, what you’re recruiting for, all that sort of stuff. So I think it’s a great

starting point and then it allows you to do what you want with it going forward. So you still do have kind of a cohort

experience, but it’s not forced upon you for the entire two years that you’re there.

mbaMission: Sure. So what was your impression of Dean [Sunil] Kumar?

CBA: I started in 2010. So Dean Kumar was kind of six months in, and I think it was a pretty easy transition. Dean

[Stacey] Kole is our dean of students, and she heads up a lot of the work that we do and interactions that we have.

And Dean Kumar’s been a great kind of proponent, but we didn’t actually have a ton of interaction with him. I think

he was still trying, in the first year that I was there, to get himself up to speed and meet all of our alums, all that

sort of stuff. He was a lot more involved my second year in terms of student events and that sort of thing. And I

think he actually fits the personality of Chicago pretty well, because, in a sense, he’s kind of nerdy and quantita-

tive, but at the same time, he’s pretty funny. He’s just a very approachable person, I’d say. I think that you want

your dean to somehow fit the personality that a lot of people at the school have. I guess “approachable” is a good

word for it, or “real” is a good word to describe it.

mbaMission: That’s great. Where did you live when you were a student?

CBA: I lived in downtown Chicago. So the majority of students actually live in Lakeshore East. It’s right downtown.

You can take the metro down, which is like a 15-minute ride, 20-minute ride in the morning, and a lot of the build-

ings actually connect to the metro. So in the wintertime, you can actually just walk inside and get to the metro to

go down to school. A lot of the students really wanted to have places to go have dinner and have social events and

all that sort of stuff, and so they tend to live downtown. A lot of first years tend to live in Lakeshore East, and then

a lot of people migrate north to Wicker Park, to Gold Coast, a lot more of the residential-type areas when they’re

second year, so you can get more of a flavor for Chicago rather than just being super close to Michigan Avenue.


mbaMission: How would you characterize social life at the school? How much do students tend to stay on campus

versus branching out into the city?

CBA: I think the majority of our stuff, our social events or evening social events, were all in the city. There were a

couple of things in Hyde Park when we were second years, like graduation-type ceremonies and that sort of thing,

but the majority of our events were all in downtown or in the Chicago area in a sense. All of our TNDCs [Thursday

Night Drinking Club events] were downtown. When you think about our student population, I don’t know the exact

stats, but I would say that 80% of our students lived downtown, and that the 20% that did live in Hyde Park had

families. They wanted a house, that sort of thing. They tended to live closer to the campus, but everybody else

lived downtown or a little bit north. So that’s why a lot of our events tended to be over there.

mbaMission: I see. Are there any particular social events that are not to be missed?

CBA: I think the one that I always pointed out was Random Walk. So I guess it’s not really a weekly social event,

but for me, Random Walk was great. I went to Ecuador my first year and then to South Africa my second year. And

I think it’s really just a good experience. Before you even start school, you’re meeting like 18 other people that

you know when you’re going in and you’ve had a shared experience with them, traveling in a random country

somewhere. It’s kind of like [MTV’s] The Real World, where you’re putting 18 strangers together and seeing how

it all works out. And it ends up being just a great bonding experience in terms of the experiences that you have,

the places you see. Then when you start school, all of you are not going to be in the same cohort. So you not only

have friends that are in your cohort, but you have friends outside your cohort that you know because you went on

Random Walk with them. It’s just a great social experience in terms of meeting new people that you wouldn’t have

necessarily met otherwise.

mbaMission: Definitely. Did you go on any treks while you were a student?

CBA: So those are like the fun kind of treks, but I went on our VC trek when I was a first year. We spent a week in

San Francisco just visiting a lot of different VC funds and start-ups in San Francisco. We were meeting with a ton

of Booth alumni and all that sort of stuff when we were there, networking and seeing the industry, seeing what

they’re doing, seeing if this something that you’re interested in, that sort of thing.

mbaMission: Right. That sounds great. As far as the facilities at Chicago Booth, what would you say are the best

parts and some areas that the school could maybe work on?

CBA: I think all of our facilities are actually pretty new, and so everything’s pretty great. All of our classrooms

are super high tech. So I think facilities-wise, our new building is pretty amazing. There’s a ton of places to read,

do your homework. There’s places to have meetings. There’s Wifi everywhere. It’s pretty amazing in terms of the

architecture. And we all, I think, took advantage of being on the University of Chicago campus, too. Some of the

other buildings are older and more historic, and it was actually just a very pretty campus, too.


mbaMission: Right. Did you go to Booth with a partner or a significant other?

CBA: No, I didn’t, but there’s a partners club that’s pretty active. And all of our social events were pretty open,

so all of the partners came to a ton of our social events. I think that any partner in that situation is going to be a

little bit put off by all of the business school talk, you know? But I think that all of them were really great sports

in terms of meeting us, and we were all very inclusive of them, too, just trying to make sure that they felt at home

and involved. And they’re invited to everything as well.

mbaMission: Did you have any professors that really impressed you?

CBA: One of the things I wanted to do coming into Booth was that I had such a super heavy finance background

that I was financed out to a certain degree. So when I came to school, I took a lot of strategy classes, operations

classes. I took a lot of classes that were kind of outside that realm. I took marketing classes that were outside of

what I had done before. And so I took a couple of entrepreneurship classes, just things that were different that

I hadn’t learned about before. That’s the way I tailored my experience. I’d taken one or two finance classes, just

initially, and they were more of the higher-level ones just because it was something that I wanted to make sure I

brushed up on, but I that’s the way that I tailored my experience.

The one class that I do want to mention was I took Professor [Scott] Meadow for “Commercializing Innovation,”

and I thought that was a really great class. Basically, the class is like a week-long due diligence session for dif-

ferent companies. So it’s over ten weeks. You have ten different companies, and you work in a group of four or

five people, and you do due diligence and you present at the end of it what your recommendation is—should you

invest, should you not invest. If you do invest, then what’s your plan, that sort of thing, and if you don’t invest,

then what’s your rationale and how would you move forward?

So it’s just a great way to practice and look at another way to evaluate a company. I think that when I was [working

in New York], my partners evaluated a company one way, but this is another way of evaluating a company accord-

ing to Professor Meadow, and Professor Meadow’s worked in venture, worked in PE, has all of that real-world ex-

perience. So I was really able to apply what his methodology is to a lot of different companies in a lot of different

areas. It was great to learn a different way to do it, and you can obviously take it and apply it in whatever firm you

go to or take snippets of it and use it in other places.

mbaMission: Definitely. How would you characterize the faculty overall?

CBA: I would say that it was a really good mix of classroom teaching and case studies. I thought it was really help-

ful to get lectures on certain topics and then to use a case study as an application of them. I just thought, for me,

it made a ton of sense to learn some of the theories first and then to do more applications of them, do real-world

scenarios and that sort of thing.


Oh, one of my other favorite professors is Professor [Nicholas] Epley. He did more of a behavioral kind of analysis

class, where you got to know some of the psychology behind making decisions and also what people’s biases are,

how that works. He’s done a ton of research behind that, and it was great to get that soft learning behind decision

making and work with other teams and other people, just because it’s obviously something that you’re going to be

doing in the real world. So it was definitely great to have that as kind of the background in terms of a lecture-type

class, too.

mbaMission: What do you think people should know about Chicago Booth that probably most people don’t know,

particularly candidates who might be considering the school—or who are not considering it and should?

CBA: I think that candidates need to go and visit the campus and see how they see themselves fitting in personal-

ity-wise. So I would just say to every candidate to go and visit, because I think that that will change your view and

will give you more perspective on the school. I feel like there’s a lot of misconceptions about different schools,

and different schools are known for different things, obviously. But I don’t think any school wants to be branded

as “the marketing school,” “the finance school,” that sort of thing. I feel like there’s a lot of different components

to it, and Chicago’s also been branded a certain way—“they’re quant heavy and that’s their thing.” That’s obviously

part of it, but I feel like there’s so many other elements that you just need to go and meet the students. Because I

think that will really be the selling point for the school.


Appendix:

Chicago Booth Facts and FiguresNote: Facts and figures in this section are prone to change. Occasionally, conflicts may exist between the school’s pub-

lications and its Web pages. Applicants are urged to recheck facts and figures for the most up-to-date information.

Basics

Year Established: 1898

Location: Chicago, Illinois; London, England; Hong Kong, China (London and Hong Kong are executive campuses)

Dean: Madhav Rajan (August 2017)

Associate Dean for Student Recruitment and Admissions: Kurt Ahlm (2011)

Programs:

• Full-Time MBA

• Evening MBA

• Executive Education

• Weekend MBA

• Executive MBA

• PhD

Joint Degrees:

• MBA/MA in international relations or area studies (South Asia, Eastern Europe/Russia, Latin America & the

Caribbean, and the Middle East)

• MBA/MPP with the Harris Graduate School of Public Policy

• MBA/JD with the University of Chicago Law School

• MBA/MD with the Pritzker School of Medicine

• MBA/MA with the School of Social Service Administration

• MBA/MPCS with the Department of Computer Science

Class Profile (Class of 2018)

Class Size: 585

Average GMAT: 726.3

GMAT Range: 590–570

Average GPA: 3.6

Female Representation: 42%

U.S. Minority Students: 29%

International Students: 36%

Countries Represented: 57%


Employment Statistics (Class of 2016)

Median Base Salary: $125,000

Median Signing Bonus: $25,000

Graduates accepted positions in the following industries:

• Financial Services: 36.0%

� Investment Banking/Brokerage: 13.6%

� Diversified Financial Services: 7.7%

� Investment Management/Research: 6.7%

� Private Equity: 5.1%

� Insurance: 1.2%

� Venture Capital: 1.2%

� Commercial Banking: 0.4%

• Consulting: 27.5%

• Technology: 16.7%

� E-Commerce and Internet: 9.4%

� Hardware: 3.7%

� Software: 3.1%

� Telecommunications: 0.6%

• Consumer Products: 6.9%

• Health Care Products and Services: 3.3%

• Education/Government/Nonprofit: 1.6%

• Manufacturing/Chemicals/Plastics: 1.6%

• Other: 1.6%

• Energy: 1.2%

• Media/Entertainment/Sports: 1.2%

• Retail: 1.2%

• Real Estate: 1.0%

Graduates accepted positions in the following functions:

• Finance: 37.5%

� Investment Banking: 15.1%

� Investment Management/Research: 8.4%

� Private Equity: 4.9%

� Company Finance (Analysis/Treasury): 3.9%

� Other Finance: 2.2%

� Venture Capital: 1.8%

� Real Estate: 1.2%


• Consulting: 29.3%

• Marketing: 7.9%

� Brand/Product Management: 6.1%

� Sales: 1.2%

� Other Marketing: 0.6%

• General Management: 7.5%

• Project Management (Tech): 5.1%

• Business Development: 2.9%

• Corporate Strategy/Strategic Planning: 4.7%

• Operations – Production/Supply Chain Management/Logistics: 2.4%

• Analytics/Data Science: 1.4%

• Other: 1.2%

Graduates accepted positions in the following locations:

• United States: 87.2%

� Midwest: 31.4%

� Chicago: 27.7%

� Minneapolis: 1.6%

� West: 23.4%

� Bay Area: 13.8%

� Seattle: 5.7%

� Los Angeles: 3.7%

� Northeast: 23.0%

� New York: 18.5%

� Boston: 4.3%

� Southwest: 5.3%

� Denver: 2.0%

� Dallas: 1.0%

� Houston: 1.0%

� Mid-Atlantic: 2.0%

� South: 2.0%

• International: 12.8%

� Latin America and the Caribbean: 3.9%

� São Paulo: 1.4%

� Santiago: 1.0%

� Asia: 4.3%

� Hong Kong: 1.0%

� Seoul: 1.0%


� Europe: 3.5%

� London: 2.6%

� Middle East and North Africa: 0.6%

� Australia: 0.4%

� Canada: 0.2%

Major Employers (companies that hired four or more graduates in 2016):

• McKinsey & Company, Inc.: 35

• The Boston Consulting Group: 23

• Amazon.com, Inc.: 19

• Bain & Company, Inc.: 15

• Accenture: 13

• Google Inc.: 12

• Bank of America Merrill Lynch: 11

• PwC Advisory/Strategy&: 10

• Deloitte Consulting: 9

• Morgan Stanley: 9

• Goldman Sachs Group Inc.: 8

• JPMorgan Chase & Co.: 8

• Deutsche Bank AG: 7

• Lazard Frères & Co. LLC: 7

• Citigroup, Inc.: 6

• Fidelity: 6

• PepsiCo, Inc.: 6

• A.T. Kearney, Inc.: 5

• Apple Inc.: 5

• Cisco Systems, Inc.: 5

• Credit Suisse: 5

• William Blair: 5

• Barclays Capital: 4

• Cornerstone Research, Inc.: 4

• PIMCO: 4

• Samsung Group: 4


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Byrne, John A. “Booth Dean Leaving for John Hopkins.” Poets&Quants. July 15, 2016.

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Byrne, John A. “Chicago’s New Dean Pursues Globalization, Stronger Alumni Network.” Poets&Quants. February

27, 2011. http://poetsandquants.com/2011/02/27/chicagos-new-dean-pursues-globalization-stronger-alumni-

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Byrne, John A. “The Gatekeeper to Chicago Booth.” Poets&Quants. September 9, 2012.

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Byrne, John A. “A Tale of Two Schools: Kellogg vs. Booth.” Poets&Quants. December 6, 2012.

http://poetsandquants.com/2012/12/06/a-tale-of-two-schools-kellogg-vs-booth/

Carter, Andrea. “The Best 40 B-School Professors Under the Age of 40.” Poets&Quants. February 15, 2011.

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Challenge Everything: The Full-Time MBA Program. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Graduate School of

Business, 2007.

“Chat Transcript: Chicago Booth Admissions.” Bloomberg Businessweek. January 24, 2011.

www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/jan2011/bs20110120_354672.htm

“The Complete 2014 Business School Ranking.” Bloomberg Businessweek. November 11, 2014.

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Damodara, Nish, and Matt Thorne. “Booth’s Million Dollar Student Managed Investment Fund Clocks Above

Average Returns.” Chicago Business. November 3, 2014. www.chibus.com/news/2014/11/3/

booths-million-dollar-student-managed-investment-fund-clocks-above-average-returns

DiMattia, Michelle. “A Week to Remember: Booth Ski Trip!” The Booth Experience blog. December 19, 2016.

http://theboothexp.com/2016/12/a-week-to-remember-booth-ski-trip/#more-3889

DiMattia, Michelle. “Reflecting on LEAD.” The Booth Experience blog. October 12, 2016.

http://theboothexp.com/2016/10/reflecting-on-lead/#more-3603

Employment Report 2008. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, 2008.










Everitt, Lauren, and Andrea Carter. “The 40 Most Outstanding B-School Profs Under 40 in the World.”

Poets&Quants. February 12, 2014. http://poetsandquants.com/2014/02/12/the-40-best-b-school-profs-

under-40/

Fang, Austin. “Random Walk-ing through the World!” The Booth Experience blog. October 7, 2016.

http://theboothexp.com/2016/10/random-walk-ing-through-the-world/

Friedman, Allan. “Axel Weber, Bundesbank President, to Join Chicago Booth Faculty.” University of Chicago

News. March 10, 2010. http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2011/03/10/axel-weber-bundesbank-president-join-

chicago-booth-faculty

“Fun Times at Booth.” The Booth Experience student blog. November 26, 2010.

http://boothstudents.blogspot.com/2010/11/fun-times-at-booth.html

“Global MBA Rankings 2011.” Financial Times. January 31, 2011. http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/

global-mba-rankings-2011


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global-mba-ranking-2013









Harris, Allegra. “Sixth Annual Marketing Conference Draws Over 150.” Chicago Business. November 6, 2011.

www.chibus.com/around-campus/conferences/sixth-annual-marketing-conference-draws-over-150-

1.2685383

Harris, Melissa. “University of Chicago’s New Booth School Dean, Sunil Kumar, Taking a Broad View.”

Chicago Tribune. January 27, 2011. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-01-27/business/ct-biz-0127-

confidential--20110127_1_booth-school-sunil-kumar-global-strategy


Jiang, Mimi. “Corporate Finance as a Strategic Role.” Chicago Business. November 1, 2012.

http://chicagobooth.edu/chibus/news/2012november1/2012-november-1-corporate-finance-symposium.aspx

Lavelle, Louis. “German Central Bank President to Join Booth Faculty.” Getting In blog, Bloomberg Businessweek.

March 9, 2011. www.businessweek.com/bschools/blogs/mba_admissions/archives/2011/03/

german_central_bank_president_to_join_booth_faculty.html

Legler, Joanne. “Myth versus Fact.” Booth Insider admissions blog. January 1, 2013.


“Losing the Blues.” The Economist. October 6, 2012. www.economist.com/node/21564204

Lydon, Carrie. “Advice From Your Interviewers.” Booth Insider admissions blog. February 13, 2013.


Lyndon, Carrie. “Waitlist Update.” Booth Insider admissions blog. December 20, 2011.


“Madhav Rajan Appointed Dean of University of Chicago Booth School of Business.” UChicago News. March 8,

2017. https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2017/03/08/madhav-rajan-appointed-dean-university-chicago-

booth-school-business

“Maestro Named 2015 New Venture Challenge Finals Winner.” Chicago Booth News. May 29, 2015.

https://research.chicagobooth.edu/nvc/news/2015/maestro-named-2015-new-venture-challenge-finals-

winner

Marketing at Chicago. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, 2008.

“MBA: What is TNDC.” Politics, society, economy, MBA, career: Booth/IIT grad – x-Banker/Consultant /Techie

blog. June 10, 2009. http://ibn-e-sina.blogspot.com/2009/06/funbooth-part-1.html

Middleton, Diana. “Chicago Names New Business School Dean.” Wall Street Journal. July 28, 2010.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703940904575395440248045692.html

Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, 2005.

“Prof. Douglas J. Skinner Named Interim Dean at Chicago Booth.” UChicago News. August 3, 2017.

https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2016/08/03/prof-douglas-j-skinner-named-interim-dean-chicago-booth

“School Ties” The Brain Dump: A Low GPA to Top MBA Story. Blog. April 22, 2013.

http://cheetarah1980.blogspot.com/2013/04/school-ties.html#more

Spicer, Darren. “Ski Trip! More Than Snow and Mountains.” The Booth Experience student blog. January 27, 2015.

http://theboothexp.com/2015/01/ski-trip-more-than-snow-and-mountains.html#more-1555

“Sunil Kumar Appointed to Second Term as Dean of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.” Chicago

Booth Press Release. August 20, 2015. www.chicagobooth.edu/about/newsroom/press-releases/2015/

2015-08-20

“Sunil Kumar Named Dean of Chicago Booth.” Chicago Booth News. July 28, 2010. www.chicagobooth.edu/news/

kumar/

“Top 100 U.S. MBA Programs of 2010.” Poets&Quants. December 14, 2010. http://poetsandquants.com/2010/12/

14/poetsquants-top-100-mba-programs-in-the-u-s

“Top 100 U.S. MBA Programs of 2011.” Poets&Quants. December 8, 2011. http://poetsandquants.com/2011/12/08/

the-top-100-u-s-mba-programs-of-2011



the-top-100-u-s-mba-programs-of-2012


poetsquants-top-100-u-s-mba-programs-of-2013

“Top 100 U.S. MBA Programs of 2014.” Poets&Quants. November 26, 2014. http://poetsandquants.com/2014/11/

26/poetsquants-2014-best-business-school-ranking

“Top 100 U.S. MBA Programs of 2015.” Poets&Quants. November 18, 2015. http://poetsandquants.com/2015/11/

18/harvard-business-school-tops-new-2015-poetsquants-mba-ranking

“Top 100 U.S. MBA Programs of 2016.” Poets&Quants. November 21, 2016 http://poetsandquants.com/2016/11/21/

2016-poetsquants-mba-ranking/

This is Chicago GSB. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, 2007.

University of Chicago Booth School of Business Admissions Chat. Booth Admissions Team. July 22, 2010.

www.chicagobooth.edu/fulltime/chat/transcript/2010-07-22.aspx

University of Chicago Booth School of Business Admissions Chat. Booth Admissions Team. August 17, 2010.


University of Chicago Booth School of Business Admissions Chat. Booth Admissions Team. September 7, 2010.


University of Chicago Booth School of Business Admissions Chat. Booth Admissions Team. October 12, 2010.


University of Chicago Booth School of Business Admissions Chat. Booth Admissions Team. January 13, 2011.


University of Chicago Booth School of Business Admissions Chat. Booth Admissions Team. February 15, 2011.


University of Chicago Booth School of Business Admissions Chat. Booth Admissions Team. February 23, 2011.


University of Chicago Booth School of Business Admissions Chat. Booth Admissions Team. August 10, 2011.


University of Chicago Booth School of Business Admissions Chat. Booth Admissions Team. October 20, 2011.


University of Chicago Booth School of Business Admissions Chat. Booth Admissions Team.

January 12, 2012. www.chicagobooth.edu/fulltime/chat/transcript/2012-01-12.aspx

University of Chicago Booth School of Business Admissions Chat. Booth Admissions Team. January 31, 2012.


University of Chicago Booth School of Business Admissions Chat. Booth Admissions Team.

April 25, 2012. www.chicagobooth.edu/fulltime/chat/transcript/2012-04-25.aspx

University of Chicago Booth School of Business Admissions Chat. Booth Admissions Team. November 19, 2014.

www.chicagobooth.edu/programs/full-time/admissions/events/online-chats/2014-11-19

“Which MBA? Global Full-Time MBA Ranking 2010.” The Economist. September 30, 2010. www.economist.com/

whichmba


“Which MBA? 2011 Full-Time MBA Ranking.” The Economist. October 13, 2011. www.economist.com/whichmba/full-

time-mba-ranking


time-mba-ranking

“Which MBA? 2013 Full-Time MBA Ranking.” The Economist. October 12, 2013. www.economist.com/whichmba/

full-time-mba-ranking?term_node_tid_depth=All


time-mba-ranking?year=2014&term_node_tid_depth=All


full-time-mba-ranking?year=2015


full-time-mba-ranking?year=2016

Williams, Chloe. “LEAD at Booth.” The Booth Experience student blog. November 2, 2011. http://boothstudents.

blogspot.com/2011/11/lead-at-booth.html

Web Sites

2011 University of Chicago Booth School of Business Management Conference: www.chicagobooth.edu/mc/2011/

2012 University of Chicago Booth School of Business Management Conference: www.chicagobooth.edu/mc/2012/

The Booth Experience, student blog: http://theboothexp.com

Booth Insider: Full-Time MBA Admissions Blog (University of Chicago Booth School of Business Admissions

Committee blog): http://blogs.chicagobooth.edu/boothinsider/

Booth Partners: http://student.chicagobooth.edu/group/chipart/moving.php

Chicago Booth International House: http://ihouse.uchicago.edu/admissions_fellowships/rates_terms/

Chicago Booth Partners: www.chicagoboothpartners.com

Corporate Finance Group: http://cfgbooth.com

Corporate Management and Strategy Group: http://cmsg.weebly.com

Hyde Park Angels: www.hydeparkangels.com

London Banking Summit: www.londonbankingsummit.com

Myron Scholes Global Markets Forum: http://research.chicagobooth.edu/igm/events/speaker-series/

Regents Park High Rise Apartment Pricing: http://regentsparkchicago.com/apartments-and-pricing.php

The Rose Report: Rose Martinelli on Full-Time MBA Admissions (University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Admissions Committee blog): http://blogs.chicagobooth.edu/rosereport

Trulia: Real Estate Overview, Chicago, Illinois: www.trulia.com/real_estate/Chicago-Illinois/

University of Chicago Booth School of Business: www.chicagobooth.edu

University of Chicago Booth School of Business Admissions Committee chat transcripts: www.chicagobooth.edu/

fulltime/chat/


University of Chicago Booth School of Business Entrepreneurship Conferences: www.chicagobooth.edu/

entrepreneurship/conferences/other.aspx

University of Chicago Booth School of Business Chicago Booth Corporate Finance Group: http://cfgbooth.com

University of Chicago Booth International Business Group: http://student.chicagobooth.edu/group/ibg/

University of Chicago Booth Marketing Conference: http://student.chicagobooth.edu/group/mktg/conference.

htm

University of Chicago Booth School of Business Partners Group: http://student.chicagobooth.edu/group/

chipart/

University of Chicago Graduate Student Housing: http://rs.uchicago.edu/graduate_housing/

University of Chicago International House: http://ihouse.uchicago.edu

Venture Capital Investment Competition: www.vcic.org

Interviews and Other

Administration Member, Chicago Booth. Personal Interview. May 17, 2011.

Administration Member, Chicago Booth. Personal Interview. May 25, 2011.

Ahlm, Kurt, Associate Dean for Student Recruitment and Admissions. Personal Interview. March 23, 2011.

Ancona, Tom. Assistant Director, Hyde Park Angels. Personal Interview. March 18, 2011.

Associate Director of Marketing, Communications and External Relations, Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship

and Innovation. Email Communication. April 19, 2013.

Association of Graduate Admissions Consultants. Tour of Chicago Booth/Meeting with Associate Dean for

Student Recruitment and Admissions Rose Martinelli. June 18, 2008.

Chicago Booth Alumna. Personal Interview. April 29, 2013.

Chicago Booth Alumnus. Personal Interview. June 16, 2008.

Chicago Booth First-Year Student. Email Communication. May 1, 2013.

Chicago Booth First-Year Student. Personal Interview. June 3, 2008.

Chicago Booth First-Year Student. Personal Interview. May 15, 2010.



Chicago Booth First-Year Student. Personal Interview. March 31, 2012.

Chicago Booth First-Year Student. Personal Interview. April 16, 2012.

Chicago Booth First-Year Student. Personal Interview. March 22, 2013.


Chicago Booth Partner. Personal Interview. May 26, 2011.

Chicago Booth Second-Year Student. Personal Interview. March 29, 2009.






Chicago Booth Second-Year Student. Personal Interview. May 15, 2010.

Chicago Booth Second-Year Student. Personal Interview. June 1, 2010.



Chicago Booth Second-Year Student. Personal Interview. May 16, 2011.

Chicago Booth Second-Year Student. Personal Interview. January 3, 2012.



Chicago Booth Second-Year Student. Personal Interview. April 2, 2012.

Chicago Booth Second-Year Student. Personal Interview. November 13, 2013.

Co-Chair, Chicago Booth Business Solutions Group. Personal Interview. May 16, 2011.

Co-chair, Chicago Booth Ski and Snowboard Trip. Email Communication. April 24, 2013.

Darragh, Linda L. Director of Entrepreneurship Programs, Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship. Personal

Interview. June 3, 2010.


Interview. March 18, 2011.


Interview. April 1, 2012.

Farrar, Janice. Associate Director of Relationship Management, Career Services. University of Chicago Booth

School of Business. Personal Interview. March 17, 2011.

Kreft, Linda. Senior Account Manager, Accent and Travel MBA. Personal Interview. March 11, 2011.

Martinelli, Rose. Chicago Booth Associate Dean for Student Recruitment and Admissions. Personal Interview.

May 8, 2009.

mbaMission Student Survey. Online via SurveryMonkey.com. December 5, 2012.

Member, Chicago Booth Dean’s Student Admissions Committee. Personal Interview. May 25, 2011.

Middlebrooks, Arthur, Executive Director, Kilts Center for Marketing. Personal Interview. April 5, 2011.

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