I will teach you how to bring your life stories to essays faster with F1GMAT's essay guides. Download below or subscribe to F1GMAT's Service and work with me - Atul Jose, Author/Editor/Founding Consultant, F1GMAT(16 Years of helping applicants gain admissions to M7 and Top 30 schools) Schools that rank in the top 10 clearly define the traits they look in a candidate. Although the differences are subtle, Chicago Booth laid out a matrix of qualities and performance metrics for the MBA program.
8. Leadership
11. Resourcefulness
13. Sense of personal direction
14. Strong interpersonal skills
1. A track record of success
Success is subjective based on your job function, industry, team size, country, and the unique problems you were handling. However, examples of success in any context would involve metrics that demonstrate that your contribution:
• Facilitated closing a deal, acquiring a new client, or finding new revenue streams
• Spearheaded a change in the culture of an organization (professional, non-profit, or family business)
• Enabled the company to develop tools/processes/strategies that gave them a unique competitive advantage
The confusion arises when team success and individual success diverge.
If you were not at the forefront of a project that had visible success, taking credit for your minimal involvement in addition to being inauthentic is easy to spot for an experienced reviewer.
The recommendation letter becomes a double-checking tool. The tone & the details that the supervisor offers would determine whether your story adds up.
2. A unique perspective
Everyone has a book in them.
You have one based on the unique challenges you overcame, the opportunities you leveraged, and the worldview guiding your daily action.
The uniqueness is lost when you mold the worldview to a popular meme or narrative on success, persistence, and resilience.
I joined Instagram for a week and soon began sharing the motivational quotes that the platform enables. The next week, realizing that I was just another cog in the machine, creating streams of meaningless motivational quotes, I quit.
We are social animals too scared to carve our unique path and share worldview that might not fit neatly into demographic expectations.
You don’t have to worry about offending or creating strategies outside the ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ or the popular templates that business schools have created.
Booth values applicants who can create narratives on problems that are unusual and challenges widely held belief systems.
Explore and find life lessons from your career that are unique and valuable to understand an approach or a culture.
Related Chicago Booth Sample Essays
- Sample Booth Goals Essay #1: Oil & Gas to Consulting (474 Words)
- Sample Booth Goals Essay #2: Social IMPACT to Marketing (469 Words)
- Sample Booth Goals Essay #3: Accounting to Entrepreneurship (490 Words)
3. Academic preparedness
Have applicants with low GMAT, and GPA received admit to Booth MBA? Of course, they have. However, if we must underline one quality that the school watches closely in a profile, it is the preparedness to take on the rigor of the MBA curriculum.
Quant and logical skills displayed from taking the GMAT, Math Olympiad, professional certification in Statistics, Data Analytics, and even programming has value. However, an achievement that will set an applicant apart is the history of proving one’s academic competence through a merit-based scholarship for the undergraduate course and even for short-term engagements (science exhibitions and academic deliverables). Highlight them in your resume.
Related Chicago Booth Sample Essays
- Sample Booth Goals Essay #4: Technology (Programming to Product Development) (493 Words)
- Sample Booth Goals Essay #5: Media Sales to Consulting (Food and Beverages Industry) (522 Words)
- Sample Booth Goals Essay #6: Economic Development to IMPACT investing (586 Words)
4. Collaboration and teamwork
We have analyzed school clubs extensively in our essay guides. Booth stands out in the depth and breadth of the offering in Business, Professional, Cultural, Regional, Religious, Personal Affiliation, Leadership, Social, Special Interest, and Sports.
The clubs are a manifestation of the school’s culture of valuing teamwork and converting the foundational human need to maximize their impact through collaboration.
In essays, the evidence of a team-first attitude is how you narrate the responsibilities, the delegation process, and the challenges your team managed. The approaches of recognizing talent, and the critical success factors for the team, the organization, and the client, will confirm this valuable quality.
The recommendation letters are another vital part of the puzzle where recommenders can emphasize your approach of uniting and strengthening the team. It could be in examples of your contribution outside what was required or any contribution that impacted the organization’s culture.
A long-term commitment to a cause or a non-profit, the challenges your team faced, and how you brought a unique perspective to the challenges or approaches is another way to emphasize this quality.
5. Communication skills
Chicago Booth prides itself as a school that attracts candidates, faculty, and speakers who have diverse perspectives on tackling the ills and opportunities in society. Regardless of the approaches, each person brings, the ability to communicate the nuanced differences and takes on capitalism, incentives, economy, entrepreneurship, and strategy, requires grasp over communicative English and capturing the attention of a knowledgeable audience.
MBA Applicants who have shown a strong Verbal score (V45 and above) in the GMAT has crossed the first hurdle. The second point of reference is through experiences that portray excellent oral and written communication.
Publishing your opinion in a newspaper or a recognizable digital platform with strong editorial oversight would help you stand out. Any public speaking engagement, even if it they are presentations related to your profession, is meaningful in an MBA application.
A systematic participation in the toastmasters club or similar clubs where public speaking is required will demonstrate that your communication skills are in the top 1%.
6. Fit with Chicago Booth and contribution to school community/culture
The fit with the Chicago Booth culture is encapsulated in the 15 qualities that we are highlighting. However, if you want to summarize the five profiles that will fit perfectly with the Chicago Booth culture, they are:
• Thinking for yourself: A self-reliant applicant with unique ideas, who work exceptionally well in teams
• Challenge Status Quo: A courageous applicant who challenge the status quo and embraces approaches that might not be comfortable in the short-term
• Data-driven discovery: A professional who relies on data-driven discovery over intuition and unchallenged cultural norms
• Opportunities in Challenges: A leader who can turn around any dire challenges into opportunities by reframing and finding optimism in the team’s experience and skills
• Grounded and Ambitious: A leader who is driven but empathetic to accommodate time for mentoring and guiding the less experienced
The fit with the culture and the potential contribution in the school community are not mutually exclusive. The qualities enable the candidates to choose clubs that complement or supplement their skills or allows them to challenge themselves.
The choices are not strategic as candidates have a history of continuous involvement in non-profits that satisfied a calling to contribute beyond their narrow career goals. The purpose-driven volunteering also influences the impact as the metrics demonstrating their contribution would be unique in terms of scale, diversity, and reach.
7. Intellectual curiosity
Chicago Booth is not the only school that has emphasized this quality. Intellectual curiosity has become a cliché requirement now.
The irresistible urge in a candidate to acquire knowledge in a related or a non-related field, to understand the world, economy, or the people that manage them is Booth’s definition of intellectual curiosity.
An applicant’s diverse engagements in extra-curricular or volunteering without one theme – poverty alleviation, fostering entrepreneurship, championing the adoption of renewable energy, or empowering the differently-abled, will demonstrate your restless energy to contribute to social, political and cultural causes.
8. Leadership
Combining the classic skills in listening, initiative, motivating, and focussing on the bigger picture, translates to an ideal narrative on Leadership. Booth has incorporated LEAD and leadership development courses on the promise of one pre-requisite – the candidate should be malleable to behavioral changes when offered with feedback.
The recommendation letter question on feedback and the response becomes the critical question to evaluate the applicant’s emotional intelligence and feedback-seeking tendencies.
The two essay questions themed around professional and extra-curricular should be strategically crafted to incorporate the leadership narrative. Ideally, mention the classic leadership traits for the goals essay and a bigger-picture narrative for the volunteering experience.
Related Chicago Booth Sample Essays
- Sample Booth Tell Us who you are: Father’s Restaurant Business and Leadership (451 Words)
- Sample Booth Tell Us who you are: Teaching and Scientific Temperament as a Virtue (654 Words)
- Sample Booth Tell Us who you are: Learning from Tragedy (610 Words)
- Sample Booth Tell Us who you are: Risk Taking and Learning (Reimagining the Food Supply Chain)(628 Words)
- Sample Booth Tell Us who you are: Nature or Nurture (Hunting and Conservationism) (497 Words)
- Sample Booth Tell Us who you are: Single Parent and Entrepreneurship (631 Words)
9. Philanthropic tendencies
The transformation of the School of Business to Chicago Booth happened in 2008 with the $300m donation from David G Booth. The impact was immediate. From a formidable to a dominating force in MBA education, the school’s research centers, and superstar professors, the fund nurtured is the biggest evidence of the impact a philanthropic gesture had on an entire eco-system.
It is unusual that the school specifically values a philanthropic impact when most of the narratives we have crafted for top schools is about volunteering time, effort, and expertise.
Regardless, break down the impact of your contribution on the communities and non-profits you had associated in the past. If the scale of the contribution is a deterrent from mentioning the gesture, the ripple effect of your contribution would also make an interesting read.
10. Realistic expectations for the MBA
The first draft that we receive has several instances of narrative exuberance with no valid experiences to back unusual career moves.
Switching from a routine corporate job to a green energy evangelist with a vague reference to an epiphany or starting a business with a lemonade story or turning into an interior designer from Investment Banking, all arises from your genuine interest in the post-MBA career. However, Booth expects a logical connection between your pre-MBA experience (professional, extra-curricular, and volunteering) and post-MBA goals.
The latest Employment report is the first place that you should scavenge before creating a narrative on post-MBA goals. Even if your real post-MBA goal is to become an Entrepreneur in green energy, without experience, the earnestness in itself doesn’t work in persuading the admission team.
11. Resourcefulness
The unlimited budget, expertise, and time to tackle challenging client and strategic problems are not possible even for a Fortune 50 company. The problems are diverse, the attention sparse, and the motivation of the ‘superstar’ employees varied.
The MBA program needs candidates who can maximize the utility of any resources by thinking in systems that accentuate the team’s strengths, plug the weaknesses with creativity, and face the challenges with courage.
Resourcefulness = Courage + Creativity + Thinking in Systems
If you have a leadership experience where Resourcefulness was a way of life, preferably with teams that were deemed the underdog, create a narrative around it for Essay #2.
12. Respect for others
I was impressed while reading the blog of a current student who praised a renowned professor for going the extra mile in making the student feel like an equal. The respect for others is a cultural attribute of a society, country, or a university, not something that is developed overnight.
While discussing with clients who received admit to Booth, this characteristic becomes apparent. The candidates are confident and ambitious, but never in any part of our engagement do they pursue a discussion with a higher opinion about themselves.
They listen, engage, and respectfully disagree.
Interviews become the defining moment for the Booth admission team to validate this unique cultural trait.
Listening skills could be used as a measure of ‘respect for others’ in the recommendation letter. The essays don’t have enough space to capture nuances outside the core qualities.
13. Sense of personal direction
Crafting post-MBA goals is an exercise we engage in during the essay review service. Applicants have a sense of their possible post-MBA goals based on their experience and potential, demonstrated through their professional career, extracurricular, and volunteering.
There are applicants who are also open to crafting goals narrative that improves their admission chances.
By using strong phrases that convey confidence, you can demonstrate a sense of direction.
“I would” instead of “I would like.”
“I will” instead of “I would.”
“I have shortlisted” instead of “I have found.”
The grade of confidence varies across applicants. Choose the phrase that captures who you are. An aggressive positioning with strong phrases could be misconstrued as arrogance.
Mix & match to convey confidence without sounding arrogant.
In addition to the phrases you use for the goals essay, the admission team would look into your career trajectory.
If you had more than 3 job changes in 3-5 years, in similar roles, any wording or phrasing would not mitigate the impression that you lacked a sense of direction.
14. Strong interpersonal skills
An excellent oral and written communication is no guarantee that you would have excellent interpersonal skills.
If you misjudge the motivation of your peer, client, or supervisor, excellent communication skills won’t mend the faux pas moments.
Avoid using examples of miscommunication into the essay narrative and focus on other external circumstances (changing market dynamics, client demands, or resource constraints) that derailed your plan or posed a challenge for your leadership.
15. Time-management skills
A Booth MBA program is an intense engagement when you consider the student clubs, the experiential learning modules, and the numerous options for leadership development.
The school expects the candidates to manage the schedule competently.
The capability cannot be suddenly developed.
The first evidence would be in the supervisor’s narrative on how you managed the changing demands of the clients or the ability to switch gears when the stakes are high.
Another data that schools measure is your volunteering engagements.
The #1 reason why applicants don’t engage continuously with a non-profit is from the lack of ‘free’ time.
Those who could meaningfully engage in non-profits had to plan their schedule to the last minute to balance the rest, personal, work, and volunteering time.
Interestingly, the diversity and volume of the engagements outside your work should be mentioned strategically in the resume. Although the number of hours dedicated to volunteering is the easiest way to capture the data, it never conveys passion for a cause.
Instead of hours, capture as many engagements as possible in a one-page resume in the additional information section or divide the engagement in the non-profit to multiple small projects/roles to demonstrate continuous involvement and superior time management skills.
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