Prospective business degree students who have always felt constrained by the traditional business school application may be happy to learn that more schools are changing the written essay format in an attempt to gauge applicants' creativity, BusinessWeek reported.

Kurt Ahlm, associate dean of student recruitment and admissions at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, told the news source that all the resources available to applicants had made traditional essay responses too familiar.

Since 2007, Booth has required applicants to its business degree programs to submit a PowerPoint presentation, the news outlet stated. Prospective students have less than four pages to answer an open-ended question. Ahlm added that by changing the essay format, the institution receives answers that are thoughtful, strategic and carry some weight. The university is not alone, as the Columbia Business School and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania have also updated their admissions requirements for the 21st century.

"There are many [applicants] who still think there is a formula to get into business school, who think there's a certain type of response the admission people want to see," Stephanie Fujii, executive director of full-time MBA admissions at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business, told The Wall Street Journal.