How To Get Into Chicago Booth

June 14, 2021

Are you applying to Booth and looking for MBA essay tips for your Booth MBA essay questions? Angela Guido is not only a Career Admissions Consultant, but this school is near and dear to her heart! She’s an alum!! In this week’s episode, Angela is dishing out more MBA admissions advice and this time it’s personal.

You’ll find everything you need to know about the Booth application, MBA essay questions and why school fit is more important than ever for Booth MBA success! With some truly valuable insights that only someone who’s been through it can offer, this week’s #MBAMonday is an absolute must-watch!

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Prefer to read? Here’s the transcript:

Welcome back to MBA Monday. I'm Angela Guido, the founder of Career Protocol, and today I'm talking about success secrets for my Alma Mater, Chicago Booth.

All right, as an alum, you might think I have a lot of insider secrets about Booth and how to get into Booth, but if you've been watching my MBA Monday videos, you also know that I don't really believe there are such thing as secrets for how to get into the school. You just have to have common sense to be able to read between the lines and then have just a little bit of nuanced interpretation of what's going on.

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So let me share with you what I think are the three things you really need to know if you want to maximize the likelihood of your success at Chicago Booth.

1. Before Applying to Booth – Make Sure You Know Booth

The first thing, and this is really not a secret, is that school fit is incredibly, incredibly important to Booth. And that's because it's a very unique and different program from most of the other MBA programs out there. In general, there's a lot more academic rigor in the Booth approach to the MBA education. It's known for being a quantitative program. It's known for being very academically challenging. And so the likelihood is that, whatever subject you're studying, if you're studying it at Booth, you're probably going to take it a bit farther than your class fellow classmates would be at other top MBA programs. This style of learning, this kind of intense academic experience really isn't for everyone. So, Chicago Booth is very keen to understand if that's really the learning experience that you want for yourself. Which is why, historically, their first essay question is “Why do you want to go to a Booth?”. They frame it in different ways, but effectively they're asking you to show that, you know what Booth is all about and that that's the learning experience, the community, the MBA that you really want.

2. Show You’re Ready For Future Leadership, Now

The second thing you need to know about Booth is more than attempting to train middle managers, the program is attempting to spawn CEOs and entrepreneurs. This is because baked into every aspect of the learning experience at Booth is the idea of decision making. It's known for being a data-driven program and that doesn't mean that you're going to take a lot of quantitative classes per se, it just means that the philosophy of the program is rooted in teaching you how to use information to make really good decisions as a business leader. Making decisions under uncertainty. Learning the various frameworks that will allow you to make good decisions and convince people of what you're trying to say. So when you construct your essays, when you write about what you hope to do post-MBA and when you talk about your own experiences to date, it's important to show your decisions and to show that you are seeking to lead through taking up the mantle of making good decisions. Even if you're embedded within the team, even if you are in the middle of an organization, Booth is going to equip you to lead at the level of making good business choices based on good data and good frameworks. So that has to be part of what you're looking for and you have to demonstrate that that's something you're seeking and that will contribute to your success post-MBA.

3. No Matter What Your Background Is, If You’re Right For Booth They Want You!

And number three, finally, is that Booth culture is known for being one of the most down to earth and diverse of all MBA cultures. A little bit ironically, I frequently talk to candidates who have ruled out Booth because they say “Oh, that schools too quantitative. I don't have any quant experience, I'm not going to fit in there.”. But little do people understand that Booth actually has one of the most diverse classes in terms of pre-MBA backgrounds. I was an English teacher before I went to Booth in my class. We had a concert violinist. We had an organic farmer. We had an opera singer. This is because Booth knows that they can teach anyone to be quantitative and thoughtful about analysis. That's their strength. That's what they're contributing to your profile. So, you don't have to come in with a lot of quant skills. You just have to be ready to learn. Still, you probably want to have demonstrated some quantitative aptitude through your GMAT or GRE, through your academics, through your job. You can demonstrate in a lot of different ways. You don't have to have had a quantitative background, however. So what this means is that when you write your more personal essay about who you are, you want to demonstrate a curiosity, a desire to learn, and a genuine character that is humble and willing to contribute and willing to learn from others. That's really the hallmark of the Booth student down to earth, humble, curious, eager to learn. So you want to show that you have those qualities. And I know you do. You want to show that you have those qualities in your essays. And don't worry if your background isn't a fit for the quant jock profile that you think makes up the booth class, because I assure you, that's actually a myth. The Booth class has great diversity in terms of backgrounds because they're teaching you how to be more thoughtful about analysis as you go forward and make decisions in your career as a business leader.

So I hope you'll all apply to Booth. I'm completely biased, but I think it's an awesome program. And really, no matter what you want to do in your career, you can't go wrong at Booth. Good luck. I'll see you next week on #MBAMonday.