Category Archives: Student Groups

Community, Student Groups

4 Reasons to Go to Booth for Your Career in Marketing

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Chicago Booth has always had a strong reputation for finance and economics (8 Nobel Prizes, but who’s counting?). Much has been said about its offerings in those disciplines so I’ll let Booth’s reputation speak for itself. What I really want to do is shed light on what it means to study marketing at Booth. I want to share why I decided to come to Booth to pursue marketing and why I believe Booth is a fantastic marketing school, particularly in these data-driven times.

Here are 4 reasons I chose Booth for a career in marketing.

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Admissions, Boothie Life, Outside the Classroom, Student Groups, Trips and Treks

Random Walk 2018: Booth’s Global Orientation

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We’re loving fall on campus right now, but today we’re flashing back two months to where it all began for the Class of 2020: Random Walk.  Check out some of the greatest shots captured on Instagram from Booth’s 31 August 2018 trips across the world!

This year, before descending on Hyde Park for a month of Orientation,  420+ incoming students joined 100+ second-year leaders to trek across the world and kick off their Booth experiences with epic week-long trips. Who wouldn’t want to start b-school hiking the Inca Trail, riding camels in Morocco, or kayaking the Aegean in Santorini? Boothies went everywhere from South Africa to Indonesia to Iceland, and for the second year in a row, a new service-focused trip in New Orleans was a big success.

Spoiler alert: the 2018 Mystery Trip was Slovenia!

Check out Random Walk 2018 highlights below, and search #theboothexperience on Instagram for more.
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Admissions, Community, Leadership, Pay it Forward, Student Groups

Why I Became a LEAD Facilitator

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At Booth, we pride ourselves on the flexible curriculum, but there is one required class every first-year student must take their first quarter: Leadership Effectiveness And Development—or LEAD for short. Through LEAD, students explore how their personality and cultural experiences impact their leadership style and receive valuable 360 feedback on how their professional behavior is perceived. But the course doesn’t only provide value to first-years. For a select group of ~40 second-year students (including me), it provides the unique opportunity to develop and facilitate a curriculum for the incoming first-years that directly impacts the culture of leadership at Booth.

We call ourselves LEAD Facilitators (Facils for short)—recognizable by our stylish Leadership Development Office polos and unmistakable charm. But we don’t do it (just) for the free swag and recognition. Every Facil’s motivations may be different, here are mine…

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BoothMBAs, Chicago, Community, Diversity, Leadership, Outside the Classroom, Partners and Family, Student Groups

Reflections of a Booth MBA: Family, Student, and Alumni Community

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As I’m wrapping up my last quarter here at Chicago Booth, my mind is running through a whirlwind of what seems like far-off memories.  The drive from Colorado, first day of classes, investment banking recruiting, trips across the world, and the list goes on.  Contemplating what I imagine will eventually seem like a small glimpse in time, I find myself reflecting on one aspect of this experience that I feel is illustrative of the whole.

My first year at Business School was tough.  Awash with a number of competing tasks—moving to a new city, navigating the waters of recruiting, maintaining a family, nurturing lifelong friendships—it was critical that I had the right network in place to help alleviate some of the stress, so that I may successfully emerge from this experience.  More often than not, I came to find that members of the African American MBA Association (AAMBAA) were more than willing to fill this gap.  AAMBAA has served as more than just a professional resource, it has been my family. 

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Academics, Careers and Recruiting, Diversity, Outside the Classroom, Private Equity, Student Groups, Trips and Treks

Booth through the decades: Impact of an MBA in Africa, with Earl Van Zyl ‘07

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In this second installment of our Booth through the decades series, we speak with Earl Van Zyl, ’07, who works in investment management in South Africa. Earl chose to pursue his MBA despite the observed differences in educational expectations between South Africa and the US. Whilst the chartered accounting qualification is a more popular and recognized post-graduate degree in his home country, Earl saw a unique need for and opportunity in pursuing the Booth MBA: here is his take on how his experience stands out from the rest.

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