One of the most difficult parts of my b-school experience, especially during the first year, has been the constant juggling between academics, recruiting, and socializing. I had to prioritize a few things over others depending on the quarter/year. I was always amazed by myriad well-known Booth offerings. However, during my conversations with fellow Boothies, I realized there were several other resources that the school has to offer that largely remain untapped. Whether lesser publicized or I simply missed the memo, I’m opening up Pandora’s Box and sharing a few of these under the radar resources that I appreciated taking advantage of at Booth.
- Integrated Design Thinking Club: This club was established to help students navigate a career in the highly competitive design thinking industry and introduce Boothies to foster this methodology. The club partners with various organizations to give its members hands on experience. Students are taught frameworks to structure their thinking and then they apply these learnings in the real world by working with a client (this year it was the Art Institute of Chicago).
- Booth Voices: This is an event series hosted by the Graduate Business Council (GBC) at Booth. The events aim to bring students together through storytelling. The sessions are themed (such as “Finding My Voice”) and facilitate an open and honest conversation. Speakers tell stories (about 5-8 minutes) from their lives and experiences relating to the theme. Once the speaker sessions are done, breakout rooms are organized in which the students interact with the speakers to understand the story better by asking questions and sharing their own experiences. This is a great venue to establish mutual trust and relationship with other Boothies.
- Booth Insights: Booth Insights are a series of small-group discussions where the discussions center on topics such as life stories, family and value sets. For instance, one week the theme was about the “river of life”. This meant we had to draw the crests and troughs at different points in our life and we discussed these instances as a group. This was a very effective way to understand people at a personal level and better empathize with them.
- Booth Women Advance: This is a six-week program that supports women’s leadership development by examining challenges specifically faced by women and developing leadership skills to counter those challenges. This is also a great avenue to meet women in other business programs as people from the Evening, Weekend, and Full-Time MBA programs take part. The cohort system helps facilitate good conversations and bonds.
- Free resources: As Booth students, we get free access to Microsoft Office (the code is provided on Intranet i.e., Booth’s internal page). Also, we have free access to resources such as Qualtrics (the quantitative survey tool), Pitchbook, and few market reports etc.
I encourage you to look deeper to find resources that would benefit you and engage in discussions with fellow Boothies
