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| University of Chicago Graduate School of Business |
OVERALL 1998 RANK: 3 BW corporate rank: 3 BW graduate rank: 9 BW 1996 rank: 8 |
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1999 Profile Update School Profile School Statistics Graduates' Comments: The outstanding point in GSB is its wide course selectiveness, especially in finance and in accounting. Students can concentrate in specific fields but also can diversify their selectiveness as much as possible. --Assistant Vice-President The University of Chicago was my first-choice school because of their reputation for rigorous analytics (5 Nobel prizes for the GSB). The school has a reputation as a finance school, which is well deserved. If you want to go to Wall Street, why go anywhere else (CEOs of both Goldman and Morgan Stanley are GSB grads)? However, I found that marketing, general management, and strategy are also incredibly strong. When I compared what I had learned with what fellow summer interns from top schools (HBS, Kellogg, Wharton, Stanford) had learned, I knew that the U of C was way ahead. Hyde Park doesn't have a great reputation, but it was a pleasant surprise. The caveat to my opinion is that I'm married. I wouldn't recommend Hyde Park to a person who is single. --Consulting The great thing about Chicago is that the school's administrators do a great job responding to student needs and concerns. For example, during my first year here, we asked for better classrooms and a nicer student lounge. By the start of my second year we had both. Also, contrary to the popular myth, Chicago is an impressively social place, full of terrifically enjoyable people, in addition to being a rigorously quantitative and analytical school. --Consulting I have had an exceptional time at the GSB. I gave up a relatively good job on Wall Street, and although I was apprehensive about returning to school, I felt that the GSB community gave me the opportunity to not only stretch myself academically, but to make friends and build a network which I believe will remain with me me for many years to come. I feel that the administration has been extremely responsive to the needs of the students over the last two years. They have renovated the classrooms, modified the curriculm and have done a lot to foster a community in Hyde Park. All the while, they have continued to attract some of the best professors and students in the country. --Consulting From course curriculum, professor quality, and student services to many other areas so important to a student's experience, the school was tremendous. The GSB was very responsive to the needs of the students and proactive when possible. It exposed me to more new learning and opportunities than I knew existed. With pride and confidence, I can recommend the GSB to anyone considering an MBA. --Consulting I decided to get my MBA at the University of Chicago, because I thought it was the best place for me to build the theoretical/academic foundation that I had not built as an undergrad but felt would be necessary to have in order to be a big-time businessperson. There is no doubt I got this at the U of C. Having heard the rap that Hyde Park was full of geeky quant jocks, I didn't expect I'd get much outside of the classroom. Gratefully, I couldn't have been more poorly informed. Here, I found not only a top-notch academic institution, but a thriving social community as well. I feel like I am thoroughly prepared for all that lies ahead and look forward to being an active alum for the rest of my career. --Consulting I expected Chicago's program to be academically rigorous, but I never ceased to be amazed at the extraordinary level of academic excellence expected of both teachers and students at the GSB. I knew Chicago would greatly improve my career opportunities, but I sorely underestimated the doors which would be opened to someone with as little prior exposure to business as myself. What surprised me most about Chicago, however, was the level of community that is present among students, faculty, administration, and staff. The great majority of people here are genuinely interested in helping, befriending, and learning from each other. Even my wife has been included from day one and has thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience. I can not think of a more enriching way to have spent the past two years. --Consulting My MBA at the University of Chicago was the most useful learning and the most fun experience I have had at school or work. The quality of teaching as well as the caliber of fellow-students was simply outstanding. I believe my analytical and management skills have improved tremendously, to a level that would have required at least 8 to 10 years to achieve through work experience alone. The Career Resources department and Office of Student Life, as well as the faculty and administration in general were certainly very proactive in addressing student needs and concerns. --Consulting The University of Chicago far exceeded my expectations with outstanding faculty, curriculum, and student body. The social and academic lifestyle at this University is second to none. The University of Chicago is always recognized as an outstanding Finance school, a designation well deserved. However, what is often inappropriatley overlooked but also deserves praise is the school's outstanding programs in marketing and general management. --Consulting The two most critical components of my MBA experience were the improvements I saw in two areas (1) the school's administration (2) career services. Both these areas were extremely responsive to our needs, especially during my second year at school. Also, I felt that the quality of my classmates was outstanding and helped to round off my business school experience. --Consulting Perhaps a key feature of Chicago's MBA program is the flexibility in choosing electives. The school does not force a long list of core courses down your throat. Instead, students tailor their own MBA programs around a small set of requirements. Student groups on campus are very active. As a participant in many groups and chair of two, I learned almost as much from student activities, speakers, and conferences as I did in the classroom. --Unknown Chicago's student body is significantly enriched by students from other countries (and not just in terms of class discussions -- who can forget the Belgian Halloween Party or the Latin American Dance Party?). Furthermore, the International Business Exchange Program lets students take a quarter off and learn business skills in another country -- I spent a quarter of my second year at the London Business School. --Unknown The faculty at Chicago are at the forefront of business research but are still very accessible to students. I can never forget getting feedback and suggestions on my term paper from Nobel laureate Merton Miller. Chicago's new entrepreneurship program also exceeded my expectations. The newly instituted New Venture Challenge lets students implement their business ideas. ARCH Development Corp., a university organization dedicated to commercializing new technology, lets students practice business in a new business setting. --Consulting I think that the MBA experience is rapidly evolving into a two-year job search. Students are basically paying a $100,000 search fee to their respective schools. Even before students arrive on campus, they are forced to update their resume and begin to prepare for interviews. Students who attend schools with effective placement offices are at a tremendous advantage. Business school is an expensive, labor-intensive, and humbling experience. I only hope it proves to have been worth it when I get to my full-time job later this summer. Those people who told me it was a two-year vacation where you get to play lots of golf obviously didn't go to the University of Chicago. --Finance If you're preparing to come to Chicago, be prepared for the first week of classes, when you realize that 200 people are there to try to get a job with McKinsey & Co., and 200 other people are there to try to work for Goldman Sachs. The classwork is a breeze when compared with the maddening job search. Chicago's professors are second to none. They are almost universally the leaders in their respective fields. The MBA workload can be summed up as 70% job search, 30% class work. If you're thinking that business school will be a nice educational sabbatical, think again! It's one long job scramble that starts on the first day of orientation. --Consulting This past year Chicago witnessed completely remodeled classrooms, a new lounge and cafeteria, cohorted classes to build community, a complete redesign of the orientation process, and rebuilt recruiting facilities. The administration took the previous students' complaints to heart and made some incredible and fast changes to turn the program around. This whole program well exceeded my expectations. I had a great time and got an incredible job doing exactly what I want. --Consulting If you look at the changes that have been implemented over the past two years at Chicago, it is obvious that the administration is listening. The best part of all the changes are that they are truly driven by the students. --Unknown Chicago has somehow gotten a reputation as a cutthroat school. I would like to dispell that notion. Despite a forced curve in most classes, I have never felt like my peers were working against me. I have never had one instance where someone would not help me if I asked. We are all here to learn and to challenge ourselves. --Consulting I feel that the education I received at the GSB was well worth the time and money. Besides the fact that I am better positioned in terms of my career, I enjoyed the opportunity afforded to learn about numerous arenas within the business world. The flexibility of the program was key in allowing me to select the types of classes that were of the most interest and value. --Consulting The academic program is difficult and arduous and generally academically stimulating. However, there is a very homogeneous student mix -- in the sense of backgrounds, interests, and career objectives. The school would benefit from bringing less traditional people in. Chicago is also too large (550+ students), with large and/or crowded classrooms resulting. Fewer students of higher quality would be better. --Entrepeneurship The school has made a conscious effort to recruit international students, but the lack of African-American and Latino-American students on campus is apalling. I would like to see a student body representative of the workplace, but Chicago does not achieve this. It is still difficult to ascertain why Chicago cannot recruit qualified minority students when other business schools in the vicinity, like Kellogg, can. It seems the number of African-American students is decreasing each year. --Finance The University of Chicago GSB has done a poor job in recruiting talented blacks into the MBA program. The number of blacks in the 1998 class is only 14 (approximately 2% of the 1998 class). The GSB has managed to attract only 6 blacks for the year 2000 class. These are dismal numbers!!! --Consulting Chicago MBA is a great program. Teaching is superb. The environment is very competitive. There is a backroom entry into programs at Chicago and Kellogg via the part-time program, which most campus students don't appreciate. --Consulting I believe the reason for Chicago's success in preparing me (and others) for investment banking is the combination of the school's top-notch accounting and finance faculty, along with the flexible curriculum that gives students the ability to take more electives than at other schools. --Finance Starting with the core requirements, the course work builds a strong theoretical foundation of business knowledge that the students apply to business cases and the current business environment. Professors are not only the top of their fields, but they also integrate current business events into the courses and challenge students to look at issues from many perspectives (i.e. long-term strategy, customer needs, cultural issues regarding customers, employees, etc.). By offering students the chance to take 11 electives, the program provides students the chance to design their curriculum to match their career interests. --Finance As someone who was transitioning from consulting to finance, I especially appreciated Chicago's flexible curriculum, which allowed me to take on many finance classes early in my studies. This prepared me for the summer internship interviews (which happen very early!), and allowed me to take more advanced finance classes sooner. This flexibility helped me not only land a great summer internship, but also to perform well. I am also delighted about the high regard for Chicago grads -- on Wall Street, and around the world. --Finance I became much more aware of the importance of Chicago's flexibility while spending a quarter abroad at London Business School. Hearing war stories, not only from the students at LBS, but from other students on exchange at LBS, made me appreciate Chicago's MBA program all that much more. Being able to choose your own classes and choose to take them when you want to is one of the unique characteristics about Chicago. I feel that I am close to my classmates, not because I was forced to be as other schools cohort the first semester and sometimes entire first year, but because I choose to be. Additionally, the flexibility of Chicago's program allowed me to take classes at the law school and social services, and if I chose, any other graduate program on campus. --Consulting I was very surprised by the well-roundedness of Chicago's program in light of its reputation as a quant school. The structure of the school is "do-it-yourself." From the social fabric to the curriculum, students are not coddled, but rather encouraged to take responsibility for their learning environment. As a former (and probably future) entrepreneur, this approach does more to build leadership and teamwork than any organized program. The result has been a strong community where students are highly exposed to other students, expanding one's network, rather than just students in their graduating year or in a pre-assigned section. --Unknown The quantitative nature of Chicago is a big plus. With business being driven more and more by data and technology, the analytical bent to a Chicago education is no longer just for Wall Street and marketing specialists, but highly relevant to business people at all levels in every industry. Chicago seems to encourage professors to bring research into the classroom. This leads to subtle pressure on academics to produce research that is relevant in business. But most importantly, graduates are more likely to carry away cutting-edge ideas along with their diplomas and you tend to see those ideas surface very quickly in business, especially on Wall Street. --Finance Chicago has really learned from the last few years. Deans Hamada and Hogarth have really done a lot to improve the classroom and recruiting facilities, as well as hire the top new PhD's as faculty. In the past, students complained about the responsiveness of the administration, but our deans have really improved the communications between the administration and students. Dean Hamada is staying on as Dean for five more years, which is great. The best thing about our faculty is not only are they tops in their fields, but they are available and approachable. Even our Noble Prize winners are available and teach. --Consulting The GSB has bent over backwards in the past two years to serve its students, in all areas including student affairs, curriculum, facilities, and career services. Our input has been solicited, listened to, and implemented in all facets of the program. It is committed to becoming the best school in the country and the world, and we're well on our way! --Marketing Many positive changes have taken place at the GSB since I arrived two years ago including: improvements in the facilities, greater community building, and administrative and faculty interaction with the students. I am greatly impressed by the responsiveness of the administration to student concerns. The faculty are excellent, and I leave the GSB knowing that I learned a lot more here than I feel I could have at any other business school. --Finance I went to Wharton as an undergrad and to Chicago for my MBA. The two most noticeable differences in the schools are the academic focus and the administration/faculty-to-student relationships. Chicago has a greater emphasis on academic rigor and intellectual integrity. There is an atmosphere of collegial respect among the faculty, with equal emphasis on research and teaching. The faculty and administration also have a great deal of respect for students. The faculty always tries to pull relevant student experience into the lessons, and the administration works hard to accommodate student requests for changes in the program. The combination of intellectual rigor and academic excellence, along with the atmosphere of respect between faculty, students and administration made my experience at Chicago far superior to my experience at Wharton. --Finance The superior strength of the high-caliber faculty at GSB is not limited to finance and accounting. There are great professors in strategy and marketing, especially enterpreneurship. As a foreign student with no formal education in the U.S., I benefited greatly from the flexibilty of the curriculum, which enabled me to develop my own schedule. The environment of intellectual challenge is extremely strong. Most professors are at the forefront of their field and they are ready to take any challenging questions. I feel very confident going to Wall Street with a Chicago MBA degree. --Finance I was most surprised at the level of professional recruitment on campus. I had expected to spend quite a bit of time finding and calling firms. Instead, from my first day at school, I was bombarded with firms who wanted to talk to me! The number of company-sponsored breakfasts, lunches, and dinners are so numerous, a University of Chicago business school student could almost go his or her entire two years without visiting the grocery store. --Unknown For one of my classes this year, we studied the political and economic dynamics of emerging market countries. Then for two weeks, the class split up into 15 teams and traveled to the countries of our choosing to interview politicians, business and labor leaders. I spent two incredible weeks in South Africa talking to opposition members of parliament, a local leader in a rural Swazi tribal village, and Johannesburg businessmen to name a few. Others in my class went to Indonesia, China, Brazil plus 10 other countries. --Finance Career Services was instrumental in guiding my resume development, career search, internship decision-making criteria, and post-MBA career plan. Thanks to them for providing the resources to facilitate my finding a killer job. Analytics are intertwined with logic and decision-making here, but the soft-side is strong, and its presence is solid. This school has brains, passion, and style. --Finance The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business provided me with the finest tools to succeed in today's business environment and, to a great extent, life in general. The professors were outstanding, my classmates were extremely bright and energetic, and the administration sought student input to continually improve the academic and social environment at the school. From a career standpoint, the Career Services Center helped me decide on a career path, trained me to sell my skills and abilities to potential employers, and attracted the finest companies from all fields. I can not imagine a better investment. --Finance The variance in teaching ability is quite high. I had both very good teaching and very bad teaching. Overall, I had at least one very good professor every quarter. After having problems my first quarter, I found that I had more good professors than bad ones. --Unknown One area I was extremely happy with was the school's reputation and alumni network. Despite a drop in the ranking, having the GSB on the resume gets people's attention. My career choice was investment management. The GSB's finance reputation is still extremely strong. I had many opportunities in a field that is typically very difficult to get into. Moreover, GSB alumni had important roles in of the many companies in which I sought employment. The alumni resources are incredibly valuable in areas where corporate recruiting is low. --Finance I have never been surrounded by such raw intellect, in both my classmates and professors, as I am at the University of Chicago. We are constantly bombarded with cutting-edge, sometimes counterintuitive, ideas and models of the economy and financial markets. The challenge of meeting the expectations of the professors and my classmates is invigorating. I realized the superiority of the curriculum at the U.of C. this summer. I was able to use many of the skills and concepts I had learned in my job. Furthermore, I was able to answer technical questions (related to valuation and accounting) from my co-workers from other top MBA schools. --Finance With an undergraduate degree in fine arts, I am an example of the diverse backgrounds at Chicago. I am 100% satisfied with the program. It is relatively traditional, not fluffy (it's not cheerleading camp). The quantitative aspect of the school was pleasantly challenging, but not overwhelming. I could not have been more satisfied with the caliber of the professors, especially the newer, younger profs. I even took Merton Miller's (Nobel Prize 1990) finance class - and loved it. He was extremely accessible and truly enthusiastic about what he was teaching. Students could not ask for more from the recruiting process. I was so satisfied with my summer internship, that I did very little recruiting second year, and started my full-time job in January. --Marketing Back to Top 1999 Profile Update School Profile School Statistics |
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