Tag Archives : Chicago Booth

Last week Chicago Booth’s Associate Dean for Student Recruitment and Admissions, Rose Martinelli, wrote a followup to her first blog post about how reapplicants can approach the MBA admissions process. While the first post gave very general information that our readers have seen multiple times (e.g., think about what aspects of your application you need to bolster, consider if your goals are the same this year…), Rose’s second post contains some more concrete info that provides a good insight into how Chicago Booth reads reapplicants’ applications.

The Chicago Booth admissions office recently announced its admissions deadlines and application essays for the coming year. These will help you start planning your Chicago Booth application. Our comments follow in italics:

An ongoing trend in the law school world over the past few years is that the University of Chicago Law School has been losing top professors to rival schools at an alarming rate. And not just any old professors either – the attrition has included some of the most brilliant and famous legal minds in the country, as well as several other prominent subject matter experts and prolifically cited researchers.

More good news is on the way for international business school applicants. Last week the University of Chicago Booth School of Business announced a new loan program for international students. Launched in partnership with JPMorgan Chase, the new program will give these students access to private educational loans without requiring a co-signer.

The new program will provide loans to international students who are not eligible for federal assistance in the U.S. and cannot qualify for standard private loans because they do not have a U.S.-based co-signer.

The University of Chicago announced yesterday that David Booth (in conjunction with his wife and family) has donated $300 million to the Graduate School of Business. Considering this is the largest donation in the history of the university and three times bigger than the previous business school donation ($105 million from Nike’s Phil Knight to the Stanford Graduate School of Business, it comes as no surprise that the university will be renaming its business school the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

The University of Chicago Law School’s increasingly helpful blog A Day in the Life has posted a particularly interesting bit of advice regarding addenda and supporting materials in the application process.

Yesterday the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business announced changes to the school’s curriculum to increase the program’s flexibility and to add a leadership development component to the evening program’s requirements.

The University of Chicago blog, A Day in the Life, which was detailed here yesterday, has also posted a helpful missive on the elusive letter of recommendation.

The University of Chicago is considered by some to be the most “old fashioned” of the elite law schools – quick to ban Internet use in classrooms, slow to add cutting edge cirriculum additions (although it is clear that Justice Scalia would prefer they move even more slowly).

The Internets are alive with chatter about United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s comments regarding the University of Chicago’s loss of conversvative street cred.

In a Tuesday speech before the Federalist Society, Scalia expressed dismay and regret over the fact that Chicago had “changed considerably and intentionally” from a “rigorous and conservative law school” to … well, a rigorous and less conservative law school, apparently. He complained about the addition of more nuanced classes, stating: “I took nothing but bread-and-butter classes, not ‘Law and Poverty,’ or other made-up stuff.”

While we earlier posted Chicago’s application essays for 2008-2009, we wanted to get the word out about Chicago’s deadlines for this season:

Chicago GSB Application Deadlines
Round 1: October 15, 2008
Round 2: January 7, 2009
Round 3: March 11, 2009

Although Chicago GSB hasn’t yet released its full 2008-2009 application, the school recently announced its admissions essays for the upcoming year. Our comments are in italics:

Chicago GSB Application Essays

The U.S. News & World Report grad school rankings for 2009 came out a few weeks ago and revealed some interesting developments. (By the way, what is with the “2009″ rankings coming out in April of 2008? Have academic rankings gone the way of automotive companies?).

For me, the most interesting development of all could be found in the Law School Rankings, where the 5-10 spots continue to undergo a major transformation.

Obviously, one of the primary factors that govern a graduate school applicant’s enrollment decision is The Almighty Dollar. As in: how much will this cost, what kind of aid can I get, and what sort of earning potential am I looking at once I finish? Analyzing educational cost is a complicated task because students must first identify actual numbers (sticker price – available scholarship and grant money) and then put those numbers in the proper context by understanding loan repayment and properly estimating future salary figures.

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The University of Chicago does! In fact, they now require it as part of their business school admissions process.

There are a few potential benefits to this new change. First and foremost, it shows that prospective students are technologically savvy enough to create four pages of PowerPoint slides. Because such presentations are so ubiquitous in the business world, this is crucial knowledge for any prospective business student to have.

Business schools are working hard to instill a sense of ethics into their students, especially in the wake of recent corporate scandals. Many programs have some kind of business ethics class as a requirement for MBA students, though they admit that teaching ethics is the easy part; it’s much more difficult to ensure that students will actually practice these values once they venture into the business world. Still, schools are taking this requirement very seriously. The University of Chicago even has their “Guide to Business Ethics” course taught by a Nobel laureate (Robert Fogel).