Top 10 List: What LEAD Teaches You About Navigating Booth

Your first “real” experiences at Booth come from the LEAD program. LEAD stands for Leadership Effectiveness and Development, and it is the only required class you’ll take at Booth. The class starts during orientation and lasts about six weeks into your first quarter.  It’s composed of various modules designed to prepare you for leadership roles. Modules range from learning about your personality traits and how that impacts your conflict resolution skills to practicing your presentation skills. It’s also where you meet many of your friends. In honor of the ten LEAD cohorts, here are the Top 10 things LEAD can teach you navigating life at Booth:

1. LOR (the Leadership Orientation Retreat) is a microcosm of your life at Booth. LEAD starts with a three-day retreat in Lake Geneva, WI. The days you spend at the retreat mirror what you can expect from life at Booth – you’ll be challenged during the three days, but you’ll also get personalized and reflective training through the LEAD programming. By the time night falls, you’ll be relaxing and partying with 600 of your closest friends across the resort.

2. Your Cohort and Squad from LEAD will be where you find the first of many friends you meet at Booth. Through LEAD, you’re divided into one of ten cohorts. You’ll attend LEAD programming in these cohorts. Even after your formal class time ends, you’ll still have events organized in/by the cohort throughout the year. To get more personal attention, you’ll be divided into 7 or 8 person squads. Since much of LEAD becomes very personal and intimate, you’ll get to know the members of your squad better than anyone else you meet at Booth.

3. Cohorts give you a sense for the uniqueness of Booth students. Knowing that Booth has a flexible curriculum, you’d expect a diversity of interests among students and your experience in LEAD really showcases that.  Unlike some other schools, your cohort isn't determined by an intended concentration or future function/industry. This ends up being a great benefit, because you’ll end up meeting people with the same interests through classes, student groups and recruiting events. But by mixing things up in the cohort system, you’ll already have a great start on a diverse network for when you graduate.

4. Culture of giving back. One of the greatest attributes of the Booth community is the prevalence of second-year students ready, willing and able to help first-year students succeed. While first-year students see this happening in a multitude of ways, your first taste of this culture comes from LEAD, where, instead of a professor, 40 second-year students design and run the course and make the various modules relevant to you.

5. Booth (and LEAD) are all about taking risks. As Dean Kole likes to say, business school is your off-season, and there’s no better time to take risks. Through LEAD you’ll give a speech in front of your cohort, participate in the high-ropes course at LOR and be asked to at least try things that you wouldn't normally do with your job on the line. These will all help make you a more effective leader after graduation. For example, business school is probably the best time to bomb while giving a presentation, especially compared to the final presentation nearly all internships will require!

6. LEAD (and B-School in general) mark a transition point. While your classmates come from a variety of backgrounds, everyone here is a high performer. By the time you graduate and have your first post-MBA job, it’ll no longer be enough to do well on whatever you’re assigned. Instead, you’ll have to accomplish goals by leading teams and working with others. LEAD will teach you that great leaders are made and not born, and that we all have individual areas to work on to make us better leaders. Through the introspective approach to development, you’ll learn exactly what those areas are for you.

7. To succeed at Booth, you have to be humble. Aspects of LEAD are intentionally uncomfortable, especially as you learn how others see you. The key to the LEAD program is your ability to take what you learn constructively and to not become overly defensive. If you can’t force yourself to listen, these programs become very difficult. For example, one LEAD module looks at how you are initially perceived by your colleagues. I learned I am initially perceived as being direct, candid and tough (as opposed to being warm and non-judgmental), likely because I often rely on sarcasm. Getting feedback like this can initially be unsettling, but it’s also important information to learn. Knowing this, I can try to avoid sarcasm when meeting new people and try to make myself more approachable.

8. But humility doesn't mean we don’t compete. LEAD helps foster a sense of healthy competition. From Fall Frolics (a field day-like competition) to the Golden Gargoyles (the Oscars, but for Cohort-produced videos), your cohort will be competing against the other nine. Eventually, these competitions build into the year-long cohort cup sponsored by the Graduate Business Council. There are also opportunities to compete as an individual through LEAD, with things like day-long leadership and/or public speaking competitions. While we’re not allowed to disclose what actually happens at these competitions, the thing that surprised me most was the school’s ability to bring in incredible alumni judges (including top partners at some of the best-known consulting firms), which indicates how the culture and community built at Booth doesn't end with graduation.

9. The diversity at Booth means you can always learn something from your classmates. In the Class of 2015, 36% are international students and 49% were born outside the United States. With the huge multi-cultural community, LEAD devotes an entire session to living and working in a country other than your own. For U.S.-born students, you get a sense of how your actions can easily be misinterpreted in other cultures and how you can help make the transition for your international peers easier. For international students, the session demonstrates some of the cultural norms of working in the United States and how these may differ from other countries.

10. LEAD creates a shared experience with Booth Alumni. Just as LEAD starts to wind down, recruiting will kick into high gear (for those recruiting on-campus, at least). Since LEAD is the only required class at Booth, and since the experience is pretty unforgettable, you’ll instantly have something in common with the many Booth Alumni who come back to campus to recruit. It’s not uncommon to hear them talking about how much fun they had at the ropes course during LOR, how they've ended up using  what they learned in the presentation workshop  in their new jobs and/or how they’re still in touch with the people in their cohort. 

Admit Weekend on the Horizon: Meet your Co-Captains!

Admit Weekend is a terrific opportunity for admitted students to experience life as a Chicago Booth MBA for a weekend. Admits learn about the Booth curriculum, tour Chicago neighborhoods, and have plenty of time to get to know fellow future Booth MBAs.

It takes lots of planning to make this happen, but fortunately we have a huge team of great volunteers. The students involved on the Admit Weekend Planning Committee take a “Co-Captain” role in a specific, key aspect of the Admit Weekend experience, from neighborhood and housing tours to partners’ programming.

Several of our Co-Captains offer reflections on their experiences and discuss why all admitted students should come to Admit Weekend!
--Matt Richman


Mary Cate Waris and Jennifer Phillips
Admit Weekend Squad Leader Co-Captains

We both attended Admit Weekend last year and we had such a great time meeting everyone and learning more about the Booth community that we were excited to be involved in planning and organizing the 2014 events. As the Squad Leader Co-Captains we are responsible for selecting and training the squad leaders (current students who help lead admitted students through the Admit Weekend activities) and for organizing many of the events that you will take part in over the weekend. As you may know, Booth uses a cohort and squad system for the LEAD course that all first year students will take. After LEAD, students take whatever courses they want independent of any cohort; however cohorts and squads still function like your home base throughout your time at Booth. Admit Weekend squads work the same way. The squad and cohort activities of Admit Weekend will give you an opportunity to have fun and get to know both your new classmates and Booth’s current students. We hope that you will enjoy participating in the activities as much as we have enjoyed preparing them. Your Admit Weekend squad will introduce you to many of your closest friends during your time and Booth, as it did for us. We look forward to meeting you soon!

Emma Tan
Partners Co-Captain

Starting business school is an exciting journey for not only us, but also for our partners. While moving to a new city can be hard for a couple, Booth has great resources, such as the Partners Club, and an inviting culture that help make our significant others feel like an integral part of the Booth community. The experience so far at Booth for me and my husband has been wonderful, and I wanted to give back as part of the Admit Weekend team. Working as a co-captain to plan the partner-specific programming is a great opportunity for me and my team to share our experience and help admitted students and partners get ready to make the most of their time at Booth. Through the partner experience panel, we will invite students and their partners to talk about the fun and surprises they had living in the Booth community, offer tips, and answer questions about Chicago. We also planned a Chicago resource fair to create an opportunity for partners to share information, make new friends, and bond with this amazing community at Booth! It has been an incredible experience for us to be part of the Admit Weekend Planning Committee to share our excitement about being at Booth with the incoming class!

Prakriti Mishra
Neighborhood and Housing Tours Co-Captain

I am a former UChicago undergrad, and although I moved to NYC after graduation, I was hesitant about coming to Admit Weekend last year, because I felt like I already "knew" Booth and Chicago. However, I am glad I went against my instincts, and flew out for Admit Weekend. The Booth that I saw at Admit Weekend was vibrant, intelligent, and incredibly fun! In the three days over Admit Weekend, I met my current roommate, talked to 2nd years who got me interested in technology and consulting, and saw the city of Chicago in a completely new light. Now, as a Co-Captain for the Neighborhood and Housing Tours, I hope to provide admitted Booth students with a fun, informative and engaging way to see the city for themselves. We have student hosts and tour guides to take our guests around some of Chicago's most popular neighborhoods, and give them a chance to see some of the apartments that current Boothies live in. I hope many of you will take this opportunity to get to know Chicago, and I look forward to seeing you on a tour around one of Chicago’s many exciting neighborhoods!

Why I Am Here and Not Somewhere Else: My Admit Weekend Experience

By Jatin Jindal, Class of 2015

On behalf of the Admit Weekend Planning Committee, I would like to congratulate Round 1 admits on being selected to join the best business school in the world! When I got the call from the Booth Admissions staff last year, the first thing I did was book my tickets to Chicago for Admit Weekend. I knew that the 24 hour-long flight from Mumbai to Chicago would be well worth the experience I would have at Admit Weekend.

Modern Families: Booth's Flexible Cohort System

Chicago Booth has a cohort system which matches our independent and flexible outlook on the MBA experience.  We start off with our cohorts during orientation and our leadership development class in the first few weeks of school, but our flexible curriculum means that we have the opportunity to take the classes we want, with any of the other 1,000+ first- and second-years at Booth.

Jen Tan is a first year MBA student at Booth, and was elected by her peers as president of the Bond Cohort.  Jen is currently the only dual-degree MBA-MSW in both of her programs. Her earlier career includes unicorn hunting (“recruiting”) for the Clinton Foundation and rainmaking (“fundraising”) for Facing History and Ourselves, two non-profits headquartered in her hometown of Boston, Massachusetts. Jen is transitioning into healthcare as part of her pursuit of social justice.

Here, she shares her unique perspective on what the Booth cohort experience means to her, but before you get started, she’s just got to say that Bond is the best cohort at Booth of all time. OF. ALL. TIME.

--Matt Richman (Bond Cohort)

For the first decade of my life, I grew up in a house that contained 15 people: my two parents, three brothers, four cousins, and six aunts and uncles. In the years that have followed, the families have moved apart. But my big family, which has only gotten bigger and closer, has provided me with a lifetime of experience in building and maintaining relationships that are as deep and complex as they are diverse and time-tested.

For me, the Booth cohort experience creates that same sense of home for its individual members, much in the way that sharing a house together provides the essential bonding experience by which most families grow together. Booth students are assigned to cohorts which operate primarily during the first two months of school. Students begin orientation together as a cohort by participating in our one required course, Leadership Effectiveness and Development (LEAD) and spending a weekend out-of-state competing against other cohorts in the Leadership Orientation Retreat (LOR), Fall Frolics, and a host of other events offering equal parts delight and aggressive competition (at least, for Bond cohort). Throughout the remainder of the MBA program, the Graduate Business Council (GBC) hosts occasional cohort competitions, trivia nights, or t-shirt days to show cohort spirit.

The Booth cohort experience is unique among business schools. At other programs, cohorts take all of their classes together for part or all of the first year, sometimes in the same assigned seats. At Booth, however, the onus to maintain the cohesion that was initiated at the beginning of the year is largely up to the cohorts themselves. Specifically, it is a responsibility of the cohort president to set the tone for the culture and to help foster the sense of community that each cohort ultimately has. For all of these reasons, I decided to run for president of my cohort, a role that I serve with joy and pride.

Much in the way that one’s family can often feel like a household that has randomly gathered together people who share very little aside from an address and, perhaps, some facial features, the Booth cohort provides students with a space to share with people who are smart, social, and passionate in an infinite combination of ways. But while your cohort is assigned to you and you to your cohort, ultimately, each person is given the choice to determine how much meaning that designation can have. It is an arrangement that provides us with the opportunity to forge deep relationships with people we might not have met otherwise, while also allowing us the freedom to hang out with other people if we choose. As one would expect at Booth, given the similar flexibility provided by the course selection process, students are trusted to learn to the best of their abilities and respected for the choices they make in doing so.

Indeed, the opportunities and challenges that are uniquely presented by the Booth cohort echo the school’s philosophy toward the community it has created: that people can find a social environment in which their individualities are respected and appreciated, and that every person feel encouraged and supported in pursuing whatever it is that makes her/him happy.

Growing up in a large family wasn’t without its challenges. As with any large group, you find variety across interests, personalities, and communication styles. But being able to grow into our individual selves and forge unique relationships with each other in the process is the thing I love most about my large family and the lives we now share, no longer in the same house but now across states and time zones.

The same is true for this school we love: your Booth cohort is the big family that will always welcome you with open arms—all you have to do is reach out.

A Quarter of Booth, Told in Photos

Rather than compose a traditional blog post, Chris Hauck has shared the story of his first quarter of Booth through photographs. I hope you'll have as much fun as I did following what seems to have been a very busy and exciting quarter!

Dana
***

In my initial blog, I wrote a long post about the constant challenges you face in business school. However, now that you are working on another round of applications and probably reading and writing constantly, I wanted to do something lighter and actually show you my first quarter in pictures. This is an abbreviated list, but for even more pictures and updates from my first quarter, you can visit the photo album on the Booth Experience Facebook page.

With that said, let me take you through a very busy first quarter:

Uniquely Chicago
Understanding my first quarter at Booth means knowing the city I have called home for the last five months. The city you get your degree in will have a big effect on your overall experience. Does this mean Chicago is perfect for your experience? No. Each person thrives in different settings. However, it has been perfect for me. Let me show you...

My first week in the city, I met some of my new friends and headed down to the pier where they have a fireworks show every week during summer. This was one of the first moments it really clicked for me that I was actually going to Booth and kicking off a new adventure.

In October we took a trip out to a Cider Farm. For the record, I had very low expectations, but acquiesced to my friends. After eating a big meal, watching pig racing, driving Go Karts, navigating a corn maze and playing with farm animals, I was happy to admit I had been wrong.

Chicago’s annual Color Run. I normally hate waking up before 9:00am on a Sunday, but this was worth it. This “race” (some people run it, some people dance it) – is a corlorful trip through Chicago culminating in a DJed dance party at the finish line.

There’s perks to being a student. We secured $10 tickets from the University to see Les Misérables at the Cadillac Theater in Downtown Chicago.

And this is the view from my roof. After a long day of studying or recruiting, there are few better ways to unwind than having a glass of wine with my roommies up here.

LEAD
For those of you not familiar with LEAD, it is Booth’s leadership class. While I don’t have any pictures of the classroom portion, an important part of LEAD is the Leadership Retreat that happens during orientation.

Unlike the other sections, I can’t get into many details with LEAD. You just have to experience it. But I will tell you this is a “victory” picture after a heated competition. Ok, so maybe no one else would describe it as heated. I am just way too competitive. I’m working on it. In fact, I will be the best at not being too competitive.

And no retreat would be complete without an end of the weekend social. This is my roomies and me in our themed costumes preparing to head to the event.

The Booth Experience
If you are reading this, it’s probably no surprise that Booth has a lot of unique social, business and academic events. Here’s a few of them.

This is the Booth formal held early in the quarter. It’s a chance to dress up and socialize with your new classmates.

Booth holds an annual Leadership Challenge involving students and many of our prestigious alumni. Like LEAD, I can’t give details about the event. But it was undoubtedly one of the quintessential moments of my first quarter and helped me to network and grow as a person.

Booth brought in the CEO of Burger King to discuss the evolving concept of intrapreneurship and how it has helped spur growth in their organization.

Socializing with Boothies
Business school is also a great opportunity to network and make lifelong friends. And it’s a very unique setting. Similar to college, you’ll find yourself feeling very close to people here after the first couple of months. Having a great community is a key part of business school and has been a wonderful part of my Booth experience.

This is my first night hanging out in Chicago with my new roomies. Finding new roommates, thought mechanisms provided by Booth, and coordinating your move to Chicago are the first big business school challenges.

Of course everyone gets dressed up for Halloween. Zombies, fairy tale characters and business bunnies everywhere.

We had an unofficial Canadian culture night with some of the people in the Canadian Business Club. We started off by eating poutine at a local Canadian restaurant. Afterwards we drank Molson beer and watched episodes of Corner Gas.

For Thanksgiving, we hosted a big potluck for everyone who wasn’t flying home to enjoy the holiday with their families. Here, I made everyone smile and take an embarrassing picture for the blog before I would give them any Pumpkin Pie. I can be kind of evil like that.

The Startup Trek
The Startup Trek is a Booth tradition organized by the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Group, where students travel to various parts of San Francisco and Silicon Valley to meet with entrepreneurs running both brand new and relatively established startups. We also visited a firm that does legal work for starts ups and a VC firm. The following pictures are two of the highlight collages from specific days on the trek.

Day 2 Highlights:
Upper left: Sitting in the offices of Fenwick & West getting a lesson from a former University of Chicago MBA/JD on important structural considerations for new ventures.
Middle left: Riding the BART back to San Francisco at the end of the day to meet the rest of the group for dinner.
Lower left: Speaking with the CEO of Agile Diagnosis, a medical information startup run by multiple Boothies. It was also a winner of the New Venture Challenge, which helped them get into the prestigious Y Combinator.
Right rail: Group dinner at an Italian restaurant in the city with some executives from Tinyco.

Upper left: Talking with Booth graduate and Gen 110 co-founder inside of their offices in downtown San Francisco
Bottom left: Two trekkers checking directions between companies after leaving 42Floors
Upper right: Beautiful Christmas tree erected in the middle of the city we saw while walking to dinner
Bottom right: We joined a Booth alumni event for fine food and cocktails at the end of a fun day.

This was my first quarter. Obviously, this doesn’t include class or recruiting where you can’t walk around taking pictures. For even more pictures and updates from my first quarter, you can visit the photo album on the Booth Experience Facebook page.

Golden Gargoyles: a crazier, glitzier version of the Golden Globes!

Golden Gargoyles is one outlet at Booth that allows students to express themselves creatively. Whether it's acting, directing, screen-writing, or dancing, Golden Gargoyles gives everyone the opportunity to showcase their talents and contribute to a fun event that signifies the official end of LEAD. In this week's TBE post, first-year student Ying Liu recounts all of the highlights of the evening and what it was like to star in her cohort's video. For photos of the event, check out Photobooth's Flickr album.

Dana
***

What an amazing evening! After 3 months, I’m still constantly surprised by the diversity and talent of Booth students. As a first-year student (I’m from Seattle and have a background in management consulting), I expected to meet lots of smart, driven, and talented people at the BusinessWeek #1-ranked business school (we just repeated this accolade for the 4th time in a row!), but as I found out at Golden Gargoyles, there's a lot more to us than our smarts.

So what is Golden Gargoyles? It’s Booth’s version of the Golden Globe Awards; the show is entirely produced, written, and performed by students to showcase the first years’ cohort films. Each of the 10 first year cohorts created a 6-minute video highlighting our first few months’ experience at school. This year’s films ranged from spoofs of TV shows and movies to music videos to musicals covering topics as wide as recruiting, FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), LEAD class, and case competitions. Prior to Golden Gargoyles, the first year class watched the videos and voted on the Viewer’s Choice award. The remaining category winners were selected by the “critics” (our second-year LEAD facilitators) and awards were presented at Golden Gargoyles on Saturday, November 17.

As typical of awards ceremonies, there were beautiful hosts dressed in sparkly gowns and skits and performances scattered throughout the evening. We saw acts by a live band, comedy skits, lots of singing, a full on dance performance by our local PSY (impersonator) to “Gangam Style”, and even an opera performance! These shows were all organized and performed by first- and second-year Booth students, which leads me back to my first comment of this post: I am constantly amazed at the wide array of talent and diversity present in our class. Everyone has a hidden talent. For example, I knew the opera singer taught Zumba classes in her spare time, but I didn’t realize she could also SING. The admissions team really does an amazing job of putting together a diverse group of people from around the world who probably bring every talent/skill you can think of to Chicago.

My favorite video of the night was the Walker cohort’s video, which was a spoof on “The Office”. The acting and editing team did a really great job of making the film look and feel like The Office. They took home both the Viewer’s Choice and the Best Film awards. Of course, my cohort's film, the Gargoyles' rendition of "The Little Mermaid", was pretty amazing as well, and having starred in our video, I kept getting comments all week leading up to Golden Gargoyles from people whose main question was, “how did you manage to fit inside a dryer?!”. We were nominated in the categories of “Best Musical” and “Best WTF Moment” (for the dryer scene).

Golden Gargoyles has been one of the best events of the year and I’m so glad to be a part of such a vibrant and talented community at Booth!

Getting Comfortable with Being Vulnerable

When Chris Hauck first approached me to be a DSAC Blogger, I immediately knew he would be a perfect fit for the team. Although it's only his first quarter at Booth, he is extremely involved and his photographs always capture the energy of the Booth community. In his introductory post, Chris truly lives up to expression "nothing ventured, nothing gained".

-Dana
***

I remember my hands sweating. My heart racing. Laying awake at night trying to quiet my mind as it raced to think of possible solutions to whatever hurdle was ahead. GMAT, applications, interviews – every step left me feeling exposed and forced me to examine every nuance of my life. And while getting into my dream school was a great feeling, it wasn’t the end of the process of opening myself up to critique and letting myself feel vulnerable. Every moment at Booth thus far has centered around stepping outside of my comfort zone and learning how to be a better person and professional than the day before.

For me, the first big adjustment was leaving California. I’ve spent my whole life there. I grew up in Sacramento and moved to Los Angeles to attend UCLA. I loved LA; the city was filled with great friends, great opportunities and so many beautiful people. It’s a wonderful place to be young and explore the world. I spent the next few years there doing recruitment and then transitioned into strategy for an agency that specialized in online marketing and digital products. But I was also a little too comfortable and I realized that growing as a person would mean leaving California and getting outside of my bubble. Selling everything, leaving all of my friends behind and moving halfway across the country was harder than it may sound. However, learning to live with two new roomates coming from divergent backgrounds and meeting new friends who were previously living all over the world has been a tremendous experience, even if I still find myself thinking longingly of LA weather every time I see snow falling outside my window. Still, I have loved growing as a person and adapting to Chicago, my new home.





When LEAD started, suddenly I had to become vulnerable again. LEAD is Booth’s leadership development program. It’s a fantastic class which will help you grow as a leader both personally and professionally. However, it’s not a theoretical class where you read about great leaders from history. It’s experiential. It involves receiving constant feedback from facilitators, peers, past coworkers and even having to watch yourself on video. I have rarely experienced so many moments as simultaneously exciting and frightening as receiving detailed feedback on every word, interaction and non-verbal cue I have exuded in real-life situations. However, it’s not just sitting in a chair that constitutes vulnerability. It was letting my defenses down and hearing that I don’t always listen well enough or seeing a video where I clearly touch my face too often as a physical crutch that was difficult, but these instances spurred real growth for me in a short amount of time. And receiving positive feedback on that growth and seeing it for myself as the class progressed was a transformational experience.





And then my classes began. I came to Booth with a strong background in marketing and strategy. While my job entailed doing regular analysis, none of it was very complex. One of my big motivations for coming to Booth was the school’s strong reputation for rigorous academics and its focus on analyzing data and questioning assumptions. As great as my professors have been, this isn’t like "The Matrix". They haven’t quite mastered a way to download advanced regressions and econometrics into my brain. So stepping foot in the classroom for the first time and actually learning these concepts was a challenge. It would have been easy for me to take marketing and strategy classes aligned with my work experience, but that isn’t why I came here. Committing to hours of studying and the highs and lows of significantly upgrading my quantitative skills meant leaving behind what was comfortable, and challenging myself to grow as a person each and every day. Fortunately, I’ve found that I am not alone in this process. I have great friends, study groups, peer groups, second years, faculty and school advisors there to push me and support me even on the days where I am exhausted trying to overcome another plateau.



It’s not easy. And it’s not something I will be finished with this quarter. Recruiting. Co-organizing the Reaching Out MBA conference for next fall. Interning in a new city and in a new industry this summer. Even submitting this blog to my peers for review and no doubt, some tough editing. Becoming vulnerable and stepping outside of your comfort zone is a quintessential part of the Booth experience. It’s how you grow as a person. It’s how you become a better professional. And it will continue well beyond school and into your career. But despite the challenges, it’s been an energizing and amazing experience. And it’s why I encourage you to make yourself vulnerable and learn to embrace this process as you finish your applications for all of your dream schools. Even as your hands are sweating, your heart is racing, and you are lying awake at night trying to quiet your mind as it races to think of possible solutions to whatever hurdle is ahead of you now. Take a risk and learn to be comfortable outside of your comfort zone.