First Day Explained

I'm currently part of the team working on First Day so I can definitely speak to it.

First Day for Booth occur on a weekend for each round 1 and 2 from Thursday night to Saturday. The idea of First Day is to provide accepted candidates with an very brief introduction to Booth as a school, your fellow classmates, and the MBA program. The schedule is as follows (subject to change disclaimer!!)

You and your partner (if you have one who is free during that weekend) are welcome to the entire First Day event:

Thursday night:

There's a reception for all people that are coming as well as their partners. Everyone is divided into squads of roughly 10 people and each candidate will be given information on which squad they're in beforehand. At the reception, you will be stationed with your squad so you can meet them as well as your two squad leaders who are currently first year volunteers that are "in charge" of you for First Day. For the reception, you'll mingle around and get to know everyone.

Then, people will break for dinner with your squad. You'll get to know your squad members better over dinner.

Friday:

Friday takes place at Harper Center, Booth's building in University of Chicago in Hyde Park.

In the morning, there are mostly icebreaker activities and an introduction to the LEAD course for Booth.

There will be a breakout session afterwards for a variety of topics to answer people's questions. Some examples are breakout sessions on: international financing and visas, marketing, social impact at Booth, etc.

At the same time, your partners are welcome to join you for this event, or they can participate in a specific partner's only event. There are also rooms available for parents to be with their babies, and some quiet rooms where partners can stop in to work.

Everyone meets together for lunch, and a partner's specific lunch for partners to get to know each other.

Afternoon - Squad activities. You will be participating in anything from scavenger hunts to fun contests (tower building with popsicle sticks, beer pong without beer, etc.) and competing with other squads, etc.

Second breakout session: the big ones here are the partner's panel (from current students and partners) and alumni insights.

There'll be a fair to talk about student clubs, followed by a toast to your class

Dinner + afterparty

Saturday:

Saturday takes place in Gleacher, which is Booth's building inside the Loop in downtown Chicago. It begins with a a partner's brunch, followed by a student lunch. I remember last year the partner's brunch had waaayyyy better food, so a lot of students just went early for the food.

After lunch, early afternoon will be dedicated to a randomwalk fair. There'll basically be 2-3 hours where you're given the freedom to look at different randomwalk pitches from the Randomwalk leaders. For those who don't know, Randomwalk is the pre-MBA trip available for students and I strongly encourage everyone to go! Tangentially, students will be offering housing tours within the loop. We tend to let students and their partners stay together during the rest of today.

There's a trolley tour following the fair that will take everyone to a bar where First Day ends with a send-off!

Let me know if you have any additional questions!