Chicago Booth MBA received 5,876 applications for the 635 seats in the Class of 2027. Finance professionals outnumbered consultants. Social science and humanities majors represented in the class jumped 7 points while STEM fell 12 points. The Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2027 analysis traces each shift to specific labor market conditions during the 2024-25 admissions cycle.
We cover:
- Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2027: Overview
- Chicago Booth MBA Class: Key Changes from Prior Years
- Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2027: Undergraduate Degree
- Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2027 Undergraduate Majors: Key Changes from Prior Years
- Where the Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2027 Worked Before Business School
- How the Chicago Booth Class of 2027 Pre-MBA Mix Compares to Previous Years
Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2027: Overview
Chicago Booth MBA's Class of 2027 shows a new record of 5,876 in application volume, and an enrolled headcount at a steady 635.
The median GMAT ticked up to 740, and a GMAT Focus median of 675 became the new standard.
Chicago Booth MBA Current Class Size and Number of Applications Received
The raw application surge, up sharply from 4,184 from the Class of 2025 to 5,125 for 2026, which both raises selectivity and lets Booth sit on a stronger, higher-scoring admit pool.
Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2027 Enrollment Statistics
The Chicago Booth MBA Admissions team did a commendable job in yield management. Despite the surge in application volume, enrollment barely changed.
630 to 635 is the sweet spot for the class size, where professionals with 5 years of experience and a GPA of 3.6 are accommodated.
The increase in competition meant the school could attract a stronger academic cohort - GMAT 740, without changing any other academic entry criteria.
Chicago Booth MBA Record Application Volumes: Why the Surge?
Two market forces help explain the numbers.
First, consulting and finance candidates pivoted to an MBA to manage the job market uncertainty.
Chicago Booth MBA salary by industry (2025)
Consulting candidates had a stable employer sponsorship opportunity. With the cut in budget and implementation milestones, incorporated as part of the deliverable, the bargaining power of consultants went down. Many found this as an opportunity to join Chicago Booth MBA and gain a strong quant foundation to come back to the job market, prepared to tackle the implementation expectations in consulting. Many of which are closely tied to AI integration.
Finance candidates faced a new dilemma. Although the deal volume rebounded, the concentration of deals just in AI, created uncertain outlook for professionals working in any deals outside AI.
A better alternative was to join Booth, with strong Finance placements, to cool off and return when the deals are evenly distributed to non-AI niches as well.
Chicago Booth MBA International Student Representation and Gender Diversity (Women in the Booth MBA)
Diversity signals are mixed.
Women slipped one point to 41%, and international representation held roughly steady at 37% despite visa disruption and negative sentiments against immigration.
Booth’s resilience with international class representation has a strong correlation to the Finance candidates, who apply to the MBA program. They tend to receive better visa outcomes compare to the technology candidates.
Chicago Booth MBA Class: Key Changes from Prior Years
Chicago Booth's Full-Time MBA's 2027 Class experienced a 40% increase in application volume, closing in on 6000.
Enrollment were identical to previous cycle 637 and 632 of the two prior classes, which means acceptance rate dropped to roughly 10.8%.
Reasons for the Application Surge in the Booth MBA Class of 2027
The application surge lines up with broader market conditions during the 2024 admissions cycle.
Global M&A dropped to $3.2 trillion in 2023, the lowest level in a decade Bain & Company.
Tech layoffs reached 262,735 globally that same year.
Government employment surged by 709,000.
Each of these forces pushed a different segment of the workforce toward business school. Finance professionals saw stalled deal flow and used the downturn to retool.
Finance professionals who were less exposed to deals in technology and AI infrastructure sought Booth MBA as a cooling point to relearn the basics. Laid off technology workers witnessing disruption in Saas and Product Managerial role, sought opportunities in Techno-finance roles with an MBA.
Government and nonprofit professionals who had entered an expanding public sector sought the management training their roles increasingly demanded.
All three groups landed in the same application cycle, and Booth absorbed the pressure without expanding its class size.
GMAT: The Primary Filter for Surge in Chicago Booth MBA Class Application Volume
GMAT scores climbed to 740, up from 730 in each of the prior two classes to counter the large class size. That 10-point jump was offset by a clever yield management strategy where the international student cohort was maintained in Finance while the declining Technology candidates from the international pool was offset by local cohorts.
GMAT Focus Edition Takes Center Stage: Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2027
The Class of 2027 is the first admissions cycle where the GMAT Focus Edition appears in Booth's reported data in high volume.
39% of admits submitted GMAT Focus scores at an average of 675. Another 42% submitted GRE scores - up from 38% in the Class of 2026.
GMAT and GPA scores across top 70 MBA programs
GRE is slowly evolving as a popular test score option for admissions to M7 MBA program.
Fewer than one in five admits submitted the traditional exam, down from a majority just two cycles ago.
GPA held flat at 3.6 across all three classes.
Average work experience remained at five years.
Booth draws from a consistent band of mid-career professionals, typically two to eight years out of undergrad, and the academic floor for a competitive application has not moved.
Booth MBA Admissions Team Not Changing the Class Experience and GPA
Booth's admissions team is selecting for the same experience profile even as the composition of that profile shifts underneath. The class welcomed more finance professionals, fewer tech workers, more social science graduates, and fewer STEM degree holders.
The average years of work experience of the Chicago Booth MBA Class remained at 5 years and the academic barrier remained strong with a median undergraduate GPA of 3.6.
Women Percentage: Affected by Rise in Finance Candidates
Women made up 41% of the Class of 2027, down one point from 42% in each of the two prior classes. The decline reflects the compositional shifts happening elsewhere in the class.
Women MBA Percentage in Top MBA
Finance's surge to 30% of the pre-MBA industry mix brought in more applicants from an industry where women hold roughly 30% of senior roles globally. The simultaneous drop in technology representation, where women's participation has been growing faster than in finance, was the big disruption that affected female representation in the Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2027.
International Students: Stuck in the Middle of the H1B Politics
International students rose to 37%, up from 35% in the Class of 2026, representing 63 countries. The increase tracks with the application surge.
A weakened global deal market and currency fluctuations in 2023 and 2024 made U.S. MBA programs more attractive to international candidates seeking dollar-denominated career outcomes in consulting and finance.
Booth's campuses in London and Hong Kong, along with its global alumni network of over 60,000, give international applicants a clearer path to post-MBA placement outside the U.S. if needed.
Booth is drawing more aggressively from an international talent pool. The 37% share is the highest in the three classes – a contrarian trend from the international percentage in other M7 MBA.
| Class Profile | Class of 2025 | Class of 2026 | Class of 2027 |
| Applications Submitted | 4184 | NA | 5876 |
| Enrolled | 637 | 632 | 635 |
| Work Experience (Average) | 5 years | 5 years | 5 years |
| GMAT Score (Median/Average) | 730 | 730 | 740 (Focus Edition: 675) |
| GPA (Median/Average) | 3.6 | 3.6 | 3.6 |
| GRE (V/Q) | 162/163 | 161/163 | 161/163 |
| % Women | 42% | 42% | 41% |
| % International Students | 36% | 35% | 37% |
Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2027: Undergraduate Degree
Chicago Booth’s undergraduate-degree distribution for the Class of 2027 shows a clear rebalancing that fits both the school’s identity as the school with one of the most flexible M7 MBA curricula, and broader shifts in the job market.
Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2027: Surge in Business/Economics Majors
Business/Economics climbs to 50%, continuing a steady rise from 46% and 49%.
Chicago Booth’s analytically heavy emphasis on markets and finance, naturally appeals to applicants with economics and business training, especially in a cycle where finance hiring has regained momentum.
The surge in applications also likely boosted the number of competitive business/econ candidates in the pool.
Drop in STEM Majors: Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2027
The drop in STEM majors to 21% (from 30% and 33% in prior years) at the Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2027 is a direct reflection of the tech hiring contraction across 2023–25. Earlier, product managerial roles were a guaranteed pathway for technologists to transition into new functional roles post-MBA. The AI automation drive removed the demand for these roles. Many instead opted for specialized master’s programs in AI or data science to gain specialized skills, despite the Booth MBA curriculum's customizability.
At Chicago Booth specifically, some STEM candidates who are deeply technical leaned toward MIT, Stanford, or Berkeley due to program fit, while those shifting into consulting or finance are increasingly captured in Booth’s Business/Econ pool.
Rise of Social Sciences/Humanities in Chicago Booth MBA Class
Meanwhile, Social Sciences/Humanities rises to 22%, its highest in three years.
With consulting, policy, and nonprofit professionals re-entering MBA programs after pandemic-era career stagnation, Booth saw stronger representation from applicants with liberal-arts backgrounds who bring communication-heavy, managerial roles into the classroom. This increase also reflects Booth’s ongoing effort to diversify professional and intellectual perspectives.
Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2027 Undergraduate Majors: Key Changes from Prior Years
Business and economics majors make up 50% of the Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2027, up from 46% two cycles earlier.
Finance's surge to 30% of the pre-MBA industry mix pulls the number upward.
An analysis of pre-experience hiring at McKinsey, BCG, and Bain found that 42% of new consultants in the U.S. and U.K. held business and economics degrees[1]. The concentration is even heavier in finance.
Roughly two-thirds of new undergraduate hires in front-office investment banking roles majored in finance, economics, accounting, or business administration[2]. In the U.S. specifically, that figure climbs to 75%.
Consulting and financial services together account for 53% of Booth's incoming class. Those two industries draw the majority of their junior talent from business and economics programs.
Editor’s Insight: When the finance share of the class jumps from 26% to 30% in a single cycle, the undergraduate degree mix follows.
AI and Pandemic-Era Overhiring IMPACTED Chicago Booth MBA STEM recruitment
STEM fell from 33% in the Class of 2025 to 21% in the Class of 2027.
Tech layoffs in 2023 reached 262,735 globally, a figure 59% higher than the 2022 total[3]. In the U.S. alone, around 200,000 tech employees were laid off that year[4]. The cuts continued into 2024, though at a somewhat slower pace. Companies that had doubled headcount between 2019 and 2022 spent the next two years downsizing.
The layoffs hit engineers, product managers, and data scientists hardest. These are the STEM-degree holders who historically show up at top MBA programs looking to transition into management or pivot into finance and consulting.
In 2014, only 6.1% of computer engineering majors were still looking for full-time work six months after graduation. By 2023, that number had climbed to 13.7%, while full-time employment dropped to just 64%[5].
The number of STEM degrees awarded over the past decade increased by about 34% Money, flooding the market with graduates at the same time that employers were pulling back.
For STEM professionals caught in that squeeze, the financial case for leaving a paying job, even a shaky one, no longer holds up against $200,000-plus in tuition and lost earnings. Others chose to ride out the downturn in their current roles. Both responses produce the same outcome: a smaller STEM share in Booth's incoming class.
Social Science and Humanities Background Joined Chicago Booth MBA: To Bridge the Quantitative Skill Gap
The rise of generative AI in 2023 and 2024 reshaped what employers' value. Earlier where research expertise and deep analytical skills were valued the most, now the expertise has expanded to non-quantifiable qualities like judgment and temperament.
An insight came from the Federal Reserve research published in 2025, which found that candidates with undergraduate degree from political science and government are most exposed to disruption from language modelling.
With 30% of its graduates working in management occupations, the number will expand as many Social science graduates who spent five years managing federal programs or running nonprofit operations saw AI reshape the analytical side of their work.
An MBA at an inflection point of the metamorphosis of the role is a logical move.
Booth's flexible curriculum, which lets students build quantitative foundations regardless of undergraduate background, lowers the barrier for these applicants at a program where self-directed course selection is the norm.
| Undergraduate Degree | Class of 2025 | Class of 2026 | Class of 2027 |
| Business/ Economics | 46% | 49% | 50% |
| STEM | 33% | 30% | 21% |
| Social Sciences/Humanities | 15% | 15% | 22% |
Where the Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2027 Worked Before Business School
Consulting and financial services account for nearly half the Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2027, followed by nonprofit/government and technology.
Consulting and Financial Services Lead the Chicago Booth Class of 2027
Consulting slips from 27% to 23%, a correction from the unusually high consulting intake in 2026. That earlier spike coincided with heavy post-COVID analyst turnover and unusually high numbers of consultants seeking MBAs during a period of delayed promotions.
By 2024–25, the consulting market had stabilized. The volume of sponsored applicants fell. Schools no longer had a reliable supply of consultants who were funded by the employers.
The standout movement is the rise in Finance to 30%, its highest share in recent years. This increase reflects the rebound in deal activity, renewed hiring in private equity and corporate finance, and stronger bonus cycles that restored both confidence and mobility for analysts.
Booth’s reputation as one of the world’s strongest finance programs makes it a natural beneficiary whenever the finance sector heats up; highly competitive candidates in banking, PE, and credit gravitate toward Booth as markets offer clearer post-MBA pathways and stronger returns on investment.
Non-Profit, Government, and Technology Representation in the Class of 2027
Technology declined to 10%, continuing a multi-year downward drift.
Prolonged layoffs and restructuring in big tech led many engineers to pursue specialized technical graduate degrees.
Booth tends to attract tech candidates with product or strategy orientation, and those roles were the ones most affected by hiring freezes in 2023–24.
Public-sector representation rose to 12%. The growing career mobility among policy, defense, and social-impact professionals, many from government job cuts, pushed the representation up.
Healthcare CPG and Entertainment/Media Representation in the Class of 2027
Healthcare stayed steady at 5%, CPG stabilized at 3%, and Entertainment/Media remained at 2%.
Apart from Healthcare, the modest representation of Entertainment and Media, from virtually no representation, is a shift driven by digital media and streaming platform consolidation after the pandemic era boom.
Chicago Booth accommodated this niche applicant pool.
Climate Tech Revives Energy Demand for the Class of 2027
Energy reached 3%, supported by expansion in climate-tech, renewables, and U.S. industrial investments that pushed more engineers and project managers toward MBA transitions.
How the Chicago Booth Class of 2027 Pre-MBA Mix Compares to Previous Years
Finance overtook consulting as the dominant feeder industry for the Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2027, climbing to 30% from 26% the year before.
Global M&A dropped to $3.2 trillion in 2023, the lowest Bain & Company level in a decade, and deal activity fell S&P Global another 26% that year to roughly $2 trillion in aggregate value.
Deals dried up.
Promotion timelines stretched.
For many financial services professionals in the 2024-25 application cycle, the downturn opened a natural window to step out and retool through an MBA.
How Government Employment Affected Chicago Booth MBA Class Profile
Government, non-profit, and military representation rose for the second straight year, reached 12%.
Government employment surged by 709,000 in 2023, more than double the growth seen in 2022[6].
Since January 2023, more than one in five new U.S. jobs were in state and local government or public education[7].
We haven’t seen such high rate of public-sector hiring since the onset of the Great Recession.
The federal workforce alone added over 80,000 employees in 2023, pushing the full-time permanent count past 2 million Partnership for Public Service, partly driven by staffing demands from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
More people working in government means more people eventually applying to MBA programs.
Booth's established pathways into public-sector career pivots make it a natural destination for these candidates.
The Class of 2027 applied during the 2024 admissions cycle, when federal hiring was still expanding.
Expect a Rise in Government MBA Candidates in 2028 and 2029 Application Cycle
What followed may amplify this trend further.
About 300,000 federal layoffs have been announced by the Trump administration in 2025, almost all attributed to the Department of Government Efficiency.
By August 2025, just under 200,000 federal workers had already left their jobs.
The cuts landed across 27 agencies, from the Department of Education to USAID to the Department of Defense.
The professionals who joined the federal workforce during the 2022 and 2023 hiring boom built careers around programs democratic-govt. funded Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act.
For a policy analyst whose entire portfolio was just defunded, an MBA offers both a credential for private-sector transition and a two-year bridge across an uncertain federal hiring trend.
If 12% of the Class of 2027 came from government, non-profit, and military during a period of expansion, the displacement of 200,000 federal workers could push that share considerably higher in the Class of 2028 and 2029 application cycles.
Public Sector Career Pivot at Chicago Booth
What is Influencing Chicago Booth MBA Healthcare representation
Healthcare held flat at 5% for the second consecutive year after dropping from 7% in the Class of 2025.
Healthcare and life sciences deal value for the first ten months of 2024 dropped by 28% compared with the same period in 2023 Bain & Company, and deal volume fell 20%, while total values declined 29% from the prior year [8].
The flat MBA share tells a different story from finance, though.
Healthcare employers were holding on to mid-career talent.
Pharma companies were sitting on $171 billion in cash reserves [9].
Revenue growth carries seven times the impact on shareholder returns compared to margin expansion in pharma. Companies with that kind of cash and that kind of incentive structure don't let experienced people walk.
Fewer mid-career healthcare professionals had reason to leave for two years of business school.
Top Employers hiring Chicago Booth MBA graduates
Energy & Media Candidates in Chicago Booth MBA
Energy and entertainment/media, both absent or unreported before the Class of 2026, now hold small but visible shares at 3% and 2%, respectively. The energy numbers tie directly to the Inflation Reduction Act. Clean energy employment grew by 142,000 jobs in 2023, accounting for more than half of all new energy sector positions[10]
Chicago Booth MBA essay examples
The energy workforce added over 250,000 jobs Department of Energy. The IRA-driven expansion produced a new wave of mid-career energy professionals, including project managers, policy analysts, and engineers, with enough operating experience and career momentum to be competitive at top MBA programs.
Entertainment and media followed a very different path to Booth's class profile.
The industry was contracting.
The media industry shed 20,324 jobs in the first eleven months of 2023[11]
Cord-cutting gutted legacy networks.
Major studios and sports broadcasters responded with round after round of cost restructuring.
Rights Fee Offset by Layoffs
U.S. sports media rights payments were approaching $29.5 billion in 2024 [12], roughly double the amount from 2015. The management had no option but to offset the rights cost with layoffs.
WGA Strike and Production Pause Pushed Professionals to Chicago Booth MBA
The 2023 SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes shut down production for months. Projects stalled. Jobs disappeared. For professionals caught in that collapse, an MBA became a practical next step when there was no active work to walk away from.
The consolidation of the studio system and the rise of Video AI tools will further push technical professionals working in Media to a Chicago Booth MBA, which continues to offer one of the most flexible curricula for professionals of all background.
| Pre MBA Industry | Class of 2025 | Class of 2026 | Class of 2027 |
| Consulting | 18% | 27% | 23% |
| Finance | 26% | 26% | 30% |
| Technology | 15% | 13% | 10% |
| Government/Non-Profit/Military | 7% | 11% | 12% |
| Healthcare | 7% | 5% | 5% |
| CPG | 3% | 4% | 3% |
| Entertainment/Media | NA | NA | 2% |
| Energy | NA | 2% | 3% |
Final Take – Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2027
The Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2027 leaned into its finance legacy. The 30% finance share, the 50% business/economics undergraduate mix, and the 740 median GMAT all point that Booth positioned itself for its strong finance cohort.
STEM's 12-point drop is the sharpest compositional shift.
Booth MBA felt the market correction.
The 7-point surge in social sciences and humanities is the less obvious story and possibly the more lasting one as the next generation of AI solutions would need humans with a holistic way of designing solutions.
If 200,000 federal workers displaced by DOGE cuts in 2025 enter the MBA applicant pool, expect the govt. and non-profit share to cross 12%. The program's flexible, self-directed curriculum and its proximity to Chicago's civic and nonprofit sector make it a natural landing spot for the trend.
Chicago Booth MBA total cost and funding
Applicants in the 2026 and 2027 cycles should expect continued pressure on acceptance rates.
Booth held enrollment flat at 635 against a 40% jump in applications. Nothing in the current market suggests that pressure will ease.
References
- [1] Case Coach - What degree majors in Consulting
- [2] eFinanceCareers - Undergraduate Degrees for Getting Investment Banking Jobs
- [3] 2023 Tech Layoffs Archive
- [4] Tech layoffs in US Companies 2024, 2025, 2026
- [5] Recent Graduates in Engineering Can't Find Job
- [6] Employment in government rose by 709,000 in 2023
- [7] Slowdown in Private Sector Jobs a Boon for State and Local Hiring
- [8] Healthcare Mergers & Acquisitions: Lessons from 2024 and 2025 Outlook
- [9] M&A in Healthcare and Life Sciences: A Shrinking Margin for Error in Deals
- [10] DOE Report Shows Clean Energy Jobs Grew at More Than Twice the Rate of Overall U.S. Employment
- [11] 2023 In Review: Layoffs Reshaped the Sports Media Landscape
- [12] Sports Right Costs Doubled in 2024
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