The United States is one of the most diverse countries in the world, with each major city having earned its own place in history and culture through the years. Chicago, for instance , was the hunting grounds for the infamous gangster Al Capone, is the home of deep dish pizza, and was the city where Barack Obama began his political career on his way to becoming President.
While each of those stories is fascinating, we’ll keep them saved for another day. Instead, we bring you one of the institutions most synonymous with Chicago today, the Booth School of Business.
Chicago Booth MBA: The Basics
Booth School of Business was founded in 1898, making it the second oldest business school in the world. The school has two campuses within the city of Chicago itself; one near Hyde Park which houses the full time MBA program and another in downtown Chicago for the Executive MBA and weekend programs. In recent years, they have also added campuses in Hong Kong and London, two of the foremost business capitals on the world.
While most top business schools have a fairly impressive alumni base, Booth’s can give most schools a run for their money. Just a few notable names from their 54,000+ alumni across the globe include Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft), Eric Kriss (co-founder of Bain Capital), Susan Wagner (co-founder of BlackRock) and James O. McKinsey (founder of McKinsey & Company).
The current class size is 621 students with average full time work experience of 5 years, with a median GMAT score of 730.
The program was ranked 10th and 7th in the FT Global MBA rankings for 2020 and 2019 respectively.
Chicago Booth MBA: Key Program Details
LEAD program: Booth welcomes its MBA students with LEAD; a hands-on, experiential course intended to help students identify their strengths and opportunities as a leader and integrate those insights into an active, intentional and ongoing process of leadership development. LEAD begins during ‘Orientation +’, a two-week orientation to life at Booth, and continues into the first quarter of classes, and is facilitated by second year students.
Concentrations: Booth calls its MBA ‘the world’s most flexible full-time masters of business administration program’. With this claim, it should come as no surprise that it offers its students a wide variety of concentrations to choose from, ranging from Analytical Finance, Economics, to Behavioral Science and Operations Management. While not required, most Full-Time and Part-Time students earn three to four concentrations.
Chicago Booth MBA: Admissions, Essays and Deadlines
While evaluating the applicants to its MBA program, the Chicago Booth MBA looks at three broad areas,
Curriculum: The schools seeks students who can cope and thrive in the environment of a top business school. This is defined as academic preparedness, intellectual curiosity, and communication skills. Evidence of these qualities are found through academic history, professional exams, communication displayed, and an interest in current affairs and areas outside of work.
Community: The school equally looks at the applicant’s personal qualities and interests. This includes signs of collaboration, respect, leadership and strong interpersonal skills. These can be showcased through examples in the work environment and in society. The interview is also one of the best indicators of an applicant’s personality, so make sure you make a great impression!
Career: At the end of the day, to get into a top MBA program, you need to have had an excellent career track record from the start of your career. Evidence of this is seen through your resume, and from your letters of recommendations which provide external validation to your wins!
The application for Booth’s Full Time MBA program consists of an online form, professional resume, two letters of recommendation, transcripts, GMAT/GRE scores, and two compulsory essays.
The two essay topics are very clearly segregated for applicants to express their professional ambitions through one, and their personal experiences and beliefs through the other. Interestingly, unlike most other applications, the two essays do not have an upper word limit but do have a minimum word limit of 250 words each.
While it’s tempting to write entire stories without the barriers of a word limit, applicants must continue to be vigilant of making the best use of their words. Remember, longer essays don’t automatically equal better essays!
Chicago Booth MBA: Career Outcomes
95.1% of graduates seeking employment received an offer within 3 months of graduation.
81.8% of hired graduates received offers through school facilitated efforts.
The median base salary was $150,000 and the median sign on bonus was $30,000.
The top industry destinations for graduates were consulting (39.1%), finance (24.1%), and technology (14.1%).
92.1% of students accepted offers in the US, with 27.7% of those being in the Chicago.
So if you’re tired of the big debates between West Coast and East Coast, why not just opt for one of the best programs you can find in the Windy City itself, and open yourself to a transformational experience!