The Chicago Booth School of Business is world-renowned. Ranking in the Financial Times’s top 10 best MBA programs this year, its stellar reputation is in no doubt.
We’ve put together these highlights on what makes Booth stand out from other MBA programs. What can this business school offer students in terms of its curriculum, community, and career options?
Read on to find out.
Academic Quality
Rooted in Business Fundamentals
The Booth School of Business’s curriculum approach is simple: “markets change. The fundamentals of business do not.” The fundamentals of business—listed by Booth as accounting, economics, psychology, sociology and statistics—are what underpin the entirety of Booth’s curriculum. The idea is that, with these fundamental features perfected, MBA grads are prepped to become leaders in any industry, any company size, and any country.
The Chicago Approach to Leadership
At the core of the Booth School of Business’s curriculum is the drive to influence current—and educate future—leaders. The school purports to do this by teaching its students to face ambiguity confidently, and by equipping them with the skills necessary for overcoming any business-based challenges.
Madhav Rajan, Chicago Booth dean, explains that the Booth MBA teaches “students how to think… how to reason. How to make decisions and implement them. How to bring others along, and guide organizations to better outcomes. In short, we teach them how to become leaders.”
And their leadership drive works, with faculty research and influencing “businesses, governments, and leaders around the globe.”
To ensure that leadership is at the center of all that they do, the Booth School of Business designed a specific leadership course in which all students participate: LEAD. The course is hands-on and experiential, designed to foster good decision-making in its students and to reveal student strengths and opportunities for growth. LEAD centers experimentation, encouraging students to test new leadership strategies and collect data on their success. The course is one of the first of its kind, and is a major part of all Booth MBA programs.
The sum of this leadership training is the “Chicago Approach to leadership,” a proven approach to building skillsets on which Booth prides itself. It’s a framework that students can continue to lean on and learn from, well beyond Booth and into their career.
Flexibility
The Booth School of Business builds its MBA curriculum on flexibility. LEAD is the only required course, and then students are free to tailor their program to fit their career goals, adjusting their learning according to their interests and experience. This shows up in Booth’s more than 100 elective courses, enabling MBA students to investigate and dive deep into their interests.
World-Class Faculty
Booth’s excellent curriculum is delivered by world-renowned faculty. The Booth professors are teachers, scholars, and mentors, passionate about both their research and the success of their students. The faculty members number more than 200 business scholars, have won many awards, and are turned to for their expertise by global business leaders.
The Booth School of Business’s faculty lead their students to excellence through three features of the school.
First is the school’s academic freedom, which gives faculty the opportunity to teach in their preferred style and to develop new and innovative courses. The second is the curriculum, which Booth tailors to be as timely and effective as possible. And finally is the faculty’s research, which significantly impacts both the Booth classrooms and the business industry.
Ten of the Booth professors are Nobel Prize winners. You can view the recent achievements of the faculty here.
The Booth Community and Culture
Collaborative and Supportive Environment
At the heart of the Booth School of Business’s culture is community. Two features define this community: collaboration and competition. These two things might seem in opposition, but at Booth they work in harmony, cultivating an environment that supports student success and fosters continuous improvement.
The Booth community aims to encourage critical thinking and celebrate curiosity, to inspire growth and to support constructively. The entire community supports the success of every one of its members.
Diversity and Inclusion
Booth puts the quality of its community down to its students’ differences. These differences are to be celebrated and learned from—the greater the student diversity, Marcus Wordlaw, senior assistant director of Admissions says, the greater the richness of conversation and the depth of knowledge. The admissions process upholds this commitment to diversity, which prioritizes students that can engage with and contribute to the diverse Booth community, and the events and societies which take place on campus and throughout the year.
Career Outcomes and Alumni Network
Career Support
The career services team from Booth provide students with excellent support throughout—and beyond—their studies. Booth offers resources that span topics from promotions to company changes, entrepreneurship to career breaks. Career coaching and strategy is central here, and Booth promises to give students “the tools you need to go after your dreams.”
This support takes the shape of career coaching, career management workshops, thousands of annual job postings, and networking events. Booth offers many of its resources online, meaning that graduates can continue to access career support wherever they are in the world and whatever phase of their life they are in.
Placement Success
The Booth School of Business’s ranks highly amongst the elite business schools, due to its renowned success in placing students in great jobs. Leading companies across the world employ Booth graduates, and alumni hold leadership positions in over 120 countries.
The key to this job-placement success? Employers know that Booth graduates received a world-class education and are properly prepared to lead organizations.
Booth’s employment report for the Class of 2023 backs up their success with statistics. Some highlights include:
- 96% of job-seeking graduates received full-time job offers within 3 months of graduation.
- 77% of graduates were hired because of a school-facilitated effort, such as interviews, networking events, or Booth relationships.
- 202 unique companies hired Booth students for full-time jobs.
Lifelong Learning
Beyond the MBA program, Booth promises not just to support its graduates, but to nurture them. Graduates are able to keep learning after their program via the 300 units of credit that are freely available to them. This allows Booth MBAs to dive into courses at crucial points of their careers, prepping for a promotion with the aid of a Booth course or learning more before switching industries.
