MBA Recruiting Policies

To recruit at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, prospective employers of students or alumni from Chicago Booth must evaluate candidates without consideration of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, or veteran status.

First-year orientation begins after Labor Day, and classes typically start in late September. The recruiting period for first-year students begins in October after our students have had a few weeks to acclimate to business school. Please do not host recruiting events for first-year students before October 14, 2024.

Interviewing

• No interviews may take place during final exams (December 9 - December 14, 2024).
• For the 2024–25 academic year, Booth-facilitated internship interviews begin on Monday, January 6, 2025. 
• If you invite students to a second-round interview, you must offer at least two date options. Please review your second-round dates with your relationship manager to avoid potential conflicts. 

Making an Offer

• For interviews during the Booth-facilitated interview period in January, you may extend internship offers to Booth students any time on or after January 6, 2025.
• All internship offers must remain open until February 1, 2025.
• You must give students at least three weeks from the date of the written offer to make a decision.
• Offers should be based on a student's interview performance and not contingent on outside factors; asking students to remove themselves from consideration from another firm’s' recruiting process would violate the spirit and intent of this policy.
• You may ask students to respond in a shorter time frame as the summer approaches, but please continue to give students enough time to think seriously about their decision. Offers that explode without a reasonable consideration period violate the spirit and intent of this policy.
• If the amount of time is not considered sufficient for a student to make a decision, the student should communicate to the firm how much time is required and why the time is needed. We ask you to consider such requests seriously. When asked by the student or the firm, we will attempt to facilitate this negotiation and find a mutually agreed-upon time frame.

Interviewing

• You may interview students for full-time positions at any time. Companies may conduct interviews before the start of the Autumn Quarter.  
• If you invite students to participate in a second-round interview, you must offer at least two date options.

Extending an Offer

• You may extend an offer for full-time employment to Booth students at any time while adhering to the offer decision guidelines below.
• Once you have made an offer, please give the student a reasonable amount of time to make a decision.
• If you make a full-time offer in the summer, before the start of the Autumn Quarter on September 30, to a student who interned with your organization, the offer must remain open until November 1.
• For full-time offers extended after the start of the Autumn Quarter, the offer must remain open until December 1 or for 30 days, whichever is later.
• If a student asks for more time, please consider the request seriously. We can help you and the student negotiate a time frame if necessary.
• You may ask students to respond in a shorter time frame as graduation approaches, but please continue to give students enough time to think seriously about their decision. Offers that explode without a reasonable consideration period violate the spirit and intent of this policy.

In 2001, Full-Time MBA students in the class of 2002 adopted a policy of “grade nondisclosure” and procedures to affirm or reject this policy annually. This was a student-led initiative, and subsequent Full-Time MBA classes have reaffirmed this agreement.

This grade nondisclosure policy is not an official policy of Chicago Booth; however, the faculty and administration have respected the policy. In keeping with this approach, Chicago Booth requests that employers refrain from asking students to disclose grades or academic honors during the recruiting process until a student has accepted a full-time, postgraduation employment offer.

In addition to this policy, Chicago Booth is bound by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which prohibits an educational institution from disclosing grades to external parties without explicit direction from the student. 

Our full-disclosure policy allows us to inform students of employer actions such as rescinding job offers, postponing start dates, and making exploding offers. We disclose these types of actions on our student-facing Full-Disclosure website.

We encourage our students to report these actions to us so that we can communicate with the employer, assess the facts, and attempt to resolve the issue. Issues that are not resolved remain on our website for three years.

We also ask employers to notify us of students who have accepted more than one job offer or are continuing to search for positions after accepting an offer. Such behavior may be a violation of Chicago Booth's Standards of Scholarship and Professionalism, which govern student behavior.

Company actions that warrant full disclosure include the following:

• A commitment (such as a verbal offer) that is withdrawn
• An offer that is withdrawn before the student has accepted or declined
• An accepted offer that is rescinded
• An offer that is not accompanied by a reasonable amount of time to make a decision (an “exploding offer”)
• A summer internship that is substantively truncated (shortened internship duration from original offer)
• A delayed start date (start date pushed back from originally agreed-upon start date)
• A significant change to an agreed-upon offer, such as salary or location

Why We Disclose

In adopting a full-disclosure policy, Chicago Booth has opted not to impose sanctions on employers who fail to abide by our recruiting policies. However, we think it’s important to disclose this information to students for two reasons:

• Disclosure supports students in their job search. Knowing that a firm conducted interviews before the start of formal campus recruiting or failed to honor the terms of an offer gives students useful information as they make decisions. It also encourages students to reach out to the firm with questions instead of relying on secondhand information.
• Collecting and evaluating such information helps us engage employers in constructive dialogues about hiring Chicago Booth students and alumni. In many cases of adverse actions by companies, we’ve been able to work with employers and students to reach a mutually satisfactory solution. We also ask corporate partners considering such actions to inform us beforehand and to minimize the consequences for our students. Such actions have served to foster goodwill between parties.