Well, every school has its stereotypes, and I had heard that Chicago students were hypercompetitive, arrogant, and elitist. But in the course of researching schools, I spoke with at least a dozen students and recent alumni from Chicago, and didn't find this to be the case at all. In fact, I found Chicago students to be MUCH friendlier than some other programs that tout "community" as their strongest asset.
But my interviewer fit all the stereotypes, and I didn't handle it well. She was obviously very successful, but seemed a little narcissistic--she told me her GPA (4.0) and the number of people she managed (35) just out of the blue. She showed up late to the interview, didn't reserve a conference room at her firm (so we had to hunt around for an open room), called me by the wrong name (she was doing multiple interviews that day), and generally seemed pretty pessimistic about the school (she didn't like the social scene) and an mba in general ("just a stamp").
But what killed me was that I tried to ask her "WHAT part of her Chicago experience motivates her to give back (in the form of interviewing prospective students)", but it must have come out like "WHY do you give back?" And then she said that combined with my minimal community service, my question "was a tell" (that presumably I'm not the type of person who likes to give back). I can't believe she actually said "was a tell" to my face.
So it was a good learning experience. The program is still my top choice, though maybe a little less so now.
Now I'm looking for another finance school to apply to. The NY schools won't work for family reasons. Do schools like Cornell, Duke, and Dartmouth have good finance programs? They don't make the US News top ten for Finance, but some of the schools that do (NW, Haas) I don't think of as "Finance" schools. I'm leaning towards UCLA.