Booth School of Business, University of Chicago

The University of Chicago Booth School of Business traces its roots back to 1898 when university faculty member James Laurence Laughlin chartered the College of Commerce and Politics, which was intended to be an extension of the school's founding principles of "scientific guidance and investigation of great economic and social matters of everyday importance." The program originally served as a solely undergraduate institution until 1916, when academically oriented research masters and later doctoral-level degrees were introduced.

In 1916, the school was renamed the School of Commerce and Administration. Soon after in 1922, the first doctorate program was offered at the school. In 1932, the school was rechristened as the School of Business. The School of Business offered its first Master of Business Administration (MBA) in 1935.  A landmark decision was taken by the school at about this time to concentrate its resources solely on graduate programs, and accordingly, the undergraduate program was phased out in 1942. In 1943, the school launched the first Executive MBA program. The school was renamed to Graduate School of Business (or more popularly, the GSB) in 1959, a name that it held till 2008. That year alumnus David G. Booth gave the school a gift valued at $300 million, and in honour of the gift the school was renamed the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

During the latter half of the twentieth century, the business school was instrumental in the development of the Chicago School of economics, an economic philosophy focused on free-market, minimal government involvement, due to faculty and student interaction with members of the university's influential Department of Economics. Other innovations by the school include initiating the first PhD program in business (1920), founding the first academic business journal (1928), offering the first Executive MBA (EMBA) program (1943), and for offering the first weekend MBA program (1986). Students at the school founded the National Black MBA Association (1972), and it is the only U.S. business school with permanent campuses on three continents: Asia (2000), Europe (1994), and North America (1898).

The University of Chicago Booth School of Business offers three main courses to choose from:

Data Mining: 

This course centers on the analysis, exploration, and simplification of large high-dimensional datasets. You will learn how to model and interpret complicated big data and become adept at building powerful models for prediction and classification. Techniques covered include an advanced overview of linear and logistic regression, model choice and false discovery rates, multinomial and binary regression, classification, decision trees, factor models, clustering, the bootstrap, and cross-validation

Machine Learning:

They focus on techniques emphasising how machine learning can be used to create value and provide insights from data in the context of business applications. Making the students work on predictive analytics: decision trees, nearest neighbour classifiers, boosting, random forests, deep neural networks, naive Bayes, and support vector machines. Students will also learn about unsupervised techniques for extracting actionable patterns from data, such as clustering, collaborative filtering, probabilistic graphical modelling and dimension reduction with applications to customer segmentation, recommender systems, graph and time series mining, and anomaly detection.

Artificial Intelligence: 

There are many excellent courses that teach you the mechanics behind artificial intelligence. In this course, you will take a different approach by deploying these tools to foster understanding of what these tools do well and what they do badly. You will develop a functional, rather than mechanistic, understanding. You’ll become an expert at identifying ideal use-cases and be well placed to create new products, businesses, and policies that use artificial intelligence.

Data Science for Marketing Decision Making:

Marketing decisions in the era of big data are increasingly based on a statistical analysis of large amounts of transaction and customer data that provides the basis for profitability and ROI predictions. The goal of this class is to introduce modern data-driven marketing techniques and train you as a data scientist who can analyse data and make marketing decisions using some of the state-of-the-art tools that are employed in the industry. You will be exposed to a wide range of topics, including demand modelling, the analysis of household-level data, customer relationship management (CRM) and database marketing, and elements of digital marketing. The focus throughout is on predicting the impact of marketing decisions, including pricing, advertising, and customer targeting, on customer profitability and the return on investment (ROI) from a customer interaction.

Best U.S. Business Schools 2019 on the Forbes List

Chicago Booth was ranked No. 2 by Poets & Quants in their 2021-2022 annual MBA rankings.

According to Forbes, 95.5% accepted a job within 3 months of graduation with a median base salary of $130,000.