Chicago Booth 2021-2022 MBA Application Essays

 This post is on the University of Chicago Booth's MBA application essays for 2021-2022 admission to the Class of 2024. The University of Chicago is a very intellectually serious place.  Booth reflects that culture. Not everyone who goes there is an intellectual, but most are quite smart.  Your objective is to show you understand yourself, understand what you want to do in the future, and understand why Booth is right school for you.  You can find testimonials from my 59 clients admitted to Booth here.

 

Overview: Booth is, like the University of Chicago as whole, a school that values intelligence and independence. Many consider the University of Chicago to be the single most academically rigorous school in the US (even compared to Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and MIT).  Beyond its reputation in finance and economics, it is strong in analytics (including quantitative marketing, which it has long been dominant in) and entrepreneurship. Regarding entrepreneurship, the school is extremely well resourced. Most students live in downtown Chicago in the same buildings and commute to Hyde Park. Beyond taking classes on campus in Hyde Park, they can also take the same exact classes downtown with evening MBA program students, which is unique amongst the M7.

 

 

START WITH YOUR GOALS

To get into Booth it is critical that you know what your future goals are, can state them simply in the application form and elaborate as necessary in Essay 1. Given that it is impossible to effectively explain why you want to go to Booth without knowing what your goals are, starting with this part is critical. In general, for any application, starting with the goals always makes sense because what you say in it will impact what you say elsewhere. After all, you want to show how other aspects of who you are will support your goals.

 

 

For detailed discussion and analysis of goals, please see my posts Columbia Business School and/or Stanford.

The Booth app form contains short questions related to goals:

What is your immediate post-MBA career goal? (250 characters)

What is your long-term post-MBA career goal? (250 characters)

-In the two short answer questions state your goals as clearly possible. You can fully leverage the essay to explain your motivations in depth and elaborate further on such details as potential employers for your immediate goal.

Immediate (Short-term)

• Be clear on your industry and job function.
• Provide specific examples of potential employers.

Long-term:

Be ambitious!

Think about your wider impact beyond a short-term post-MBA role.

 

For more about writing goals that are both ambitious and visionary, see here.

 

The Essays

 

Keep the guidelines for Booth's two required essays in mind:

Response Guidelines:

• Length:There is no maximum length, only a 250 word minimum. 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.

Adam's Comment:  My admitted clients typically write from 500-800 words for each essay.

• Acceptable Formats: Submissions must be entered into the text box provided in the application

Adam's Comment:  With text boxes, use simple formatting. For example, you can't put anything in italics or bold.

 

 

 Essay 1: How will the Booth MBA help you achieve your immediate and long-term post-MBA career goals? (250-word minimum)

If you have already written Essay 1 for Wharton (links to my essay analysis), the goals essay and CBS fit essay for Columbia and/or Essay B for Stanford, answering Booth's question should be easy because you will be making the same and/or similar kind of argument.  For those whose first school is Booth or who have written a "Why MBA/What your goals?" essay before,  read my blog posts cited above.

 

Why Booth?

• You need to explain to Booth what your professional objectives and learning needs are.  As I discuss in my CBS, Stanford, and Wharton posts, you need to explain what your learning needs are. Refer to the links above for further discussion of this issue.

 

• Given that Essay 2 cannot focus on professional experience and there is no specific word limit, discussing past professional experience that relates directly to your goals and/or learning needs can work here. Such past professional experience can be used to make a better argument but just keep in mind that it means providing a short analytical summary of an experience, not telling detailed stories. Caution: I know this advice will not always result in the 30-60 words  I have in mind but rather be misinterpreted to result in longer stories of 100 or more words that are likely to be ineffective in the context of this question.

 

• Given that Booth has great online sources available for this purpose, even if you don’t visit, you can learn about it. Start here. In particular take a good look at Chicago Booth Dean's Student Admissions Committee (DSAC) blog. To learn more about the GSB's research, see University of Chicago Booth's Working Papers and The University of Chicago's Capital Ideas. Remember that Booth is not just for finance! Just go explore Booth and you will see that goes way beyond finance. For instance, it is a great school for those with entrepreneurial goals.  It is also incredibly strong in analytics.  This is not exhaustive list by any means.

 

• Booth has the most flexible curriculum of any MBA program: LEAD (Leadership Effectiveness and Development) is the only required course at Booth and one that involves becoming aware of one’s leadership style in an attempt to eventually improve it. You can conceive of this essay as a pre-LEAD exercise. You may also want to consider why your future goals  will fit with Booth's mission: "We are the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Since 1898, we have produced ideas and leaders that shape the world of business. Our rigorous, discipline-based approach to business education transforms our students into confident, effective, respected business leaders prepared to face the toughest challenges."

 

ESSAY 2: An MBA is as much about personal growth as it is about professional development. In addition to sharing your experience and goals in terms of career, we’d like to learn more about you outside of the office. Use this opportunity to tell us something about who you are... (250-word minimum)

 

This is an open-ended essay with only two requirements:

1. Don't write about work.
2. Tell them something about who you are as a person.

 

General Advice
Tell them about you, but don't focus on what they can find elsewhere in the application. I think they are looking for a meaningful assessment of your personality and/or values.

 

Some Questions to get you brainstorming:

1. What do you want Booth to know about you that would positively impact your chances for admission?

2. What major positive aspects of your life have not been effectively INTERPRETED to the admissions committee in other parts of the application?

3. If you were going to tell admissions 3-5 things about you that would not be obvious from rest of the application, what would they be? Why should Booth care?

4.  What story or stories about yourself would really help admissions understand you and want to admit you?

5. Are there aspects of your values or personality that relate to the goals you discussed in Essay 1? If so, make the connection.

6.  What makes you unique as a person?

7. How have you demonstrated leadership or teamwork outside of your professional work?

8.  Are you driven intellectual curiosity and how has that effected your life decisions? University of Chicago is a place where intellectual ability is highly valued.

9. How will your past non-professional experiences or personal qualities make you an effective contributor at Booth?  You don't have to write about contributions in this essay, but some of my admitted clients do make the connection.

 

For those who have written essays for HBS or Stanford, it is likely to be relatively easy to make this essay depending on the amount of non-professional content in those applications.  For more ways of thinking about yourself, please see both my HBS and Stanford essay analysis.

 

 

Re-applicant Essay: Upon reflection, how has your perspective regarding your future, Chicago Booth, and/or getting an MBA changed since the time of your last application? (300 words maximum)

Unlike some schools, the reapplicant essay and optional essay are different.  (Note: You will not see the Reapplicant Essay online on the essay page unless you have already clicked that you are a reapplicant on the "Chicago Booth and You" page).  Booth wants all reapplicants to write this essay regardless of the number of years ago that someone applied.  Use this space to specifically explain what has improved about you since you last applied. You can certainly mention improved test scores, but I would not use every much of your word count for that. Typical topics include the development of a new skill, promotions that demonstrate your potential for future success, involvement in an extracurricular activity, learning significantly more about Booth, and why your goals discussed in Essay 1 now are better than the ones you presented last time.

An effective answer here will do the following:

1. Showcase what has changed since your last application that now makes you a better candidate.

2. Refine your goals. I think it is reasonable that they may have altered since your last application, but if the change is extreme, you had better explain why.

3. Make a better case for why Booth is right for you.

For more about reapplication, please see "A guide to my resources for reapplicants."

 

 

Optional Question:

• Is there any unclear information in your application that needs further explanation?(300 word maximum)

Like with other US MBA programs, THIS IS NOT A PLACE FOR WRITING A NEW ESSAY ON SOME POSITIVE TOPIC!  It is a place to explain any issues of concern, something that could not fit in the app form that you specifically want to mention, or address anything else that might require explanation. Some applicants write nothing here.  Don't use this as place to tell extended professional experience stories because clearly they don't want them. If they did, they would not exclude them from Essay 2.

 

 

 

 Finally, do consider the application as a whole:  Consider  whether your application meets Chicago Booth's three central evaluation criteria: curriculum, community, and career.