MBA Student Life

Hey, what's going on guys? Excuse my two-month tardiness--I shed most personal communications and non-essential tasks due to extreme over-commitment on my part to Booth. But with finals finished and a week-long recruiting trip, the first quarter is complete and I'm enjoying free time. Really enjoying it.

As far as the questions go, we are excited for the new dean to start but I don't have any rumors about changes that he may initiate. My best friend Rose Martinelli moved up and is now the VP of Enrollment Management for the whole university and Kurt Ahlm took her role. Because of the change, they changed the "Rose Report" to the "Booth Insider."

I think I can give some admit advice now that I feel I have a good pulse on the school:

1) Have a plan. Know your direction and how you can leverage Booth's resources. Because there's no set class path, there's no one to tell you what or when to take classes. I took a proposed two-year class schedule to my interview.

2) Visit campus and attend social functions. TNDC (Thursday Night Drinking Club) or LPF on Friday afternoons are great ways to meet current students. I think they value personal experiences at the school popping up in the applications.

3) Be a joiner and a collaborator. Most of this school is run by students so they need people who want to do more than just attend classes to keep all of our programs running. You will spend more of your time doing Booth things not related to classes than you will for your classes.

More to come....

Hi, I was wondering what an average class schedule is like (per week) at Booth, as in how many hours a day do you spend in class, etc...

Thanks!

This will vary by student, number of classes enrolled in, number of clubs active in, recruiting schedule, and Career Services workshop options.

Classes are usually held one per week for three hours, with an average of 5-8 hours of out-of-class work per class. You can take 3-5 classes per quarter. Class work will take about 30-50 hours per week. BUT, these are averages and some people can get by with skipping classes and only studying a few hours per week. Many more have very thorough study regiments consisting of group study sessions after the assignments are completed. So it's really up to you how much time you decide to dedicate to classes.

Clubs throw lots of breakfasts, lunches, and social events that you can attend for 0-20 hours per week. Totally optional, but I'd argue that these interactions just as important as the classes.

Recruiting is brutal, but not everyone participates in the same way. Aspiring bankers and consultants have it rough from the third week of the quarter on. Dozens of firms throw events (with attendance sheets) every day so you can find yourself attending four events in one day, ending with a handful of business cards that you need to write follow-up emails to. If you're really good, you'll start getting invited to dinners and mixer events with specific firms. These will add another 3 hours after the other events. An aspiring consultant myself, I'd say that I've spent about 30 hours on average attending these functions. It sounds like a lot of work, but these can actually be a lot of fun. You just need to enjoy talking with people.

Next on the time-taking list is Career Services. This team is amazing. They have dissected the entire recruiting process and designed a curriculum of 1-3 hour sessions (mostly optional) that thoroughly explore each particular area, going into details such as "How to write a follow-up email to a recruiter" or "Exit strategies when leaving a crop circle." These are really helpful to those who are unfamiliar with recruiting. Expect one or two of these each week.

With all of the options to chose from, you will often find yourself double-booked and need to prioritize or compromise. But remember that classes are the only mandatory part of this program, so you can take it really easy if you want. My advice is to keep a very detailed mobile calendar, add every event that you may want to attend, then participate in as many as your endurance will allow. And don't even think about skipping TNDC.

Thanks for that very detailed post about the recruitment process. It's one question I wanted to ask.

Booth is SAID to be one school in US that prefers older candidates (with say 10+ years of experience) as compared to others in top 10 who are SAID to be more inclined towards younger candidates.

Can you provide any supoorting or counter data on this based on your class profile? And for those with higher experiences, any typical profile that gets preference over others?