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Admission & Application Survey |
| Full-time MBA program |
Applied to Tuck (Dartmouth) through a common application used by the
Consortium for Graduate Study in Management. Did not interview on
campus because Tuck accepted the Consortium interview at the time, but
Admissions encourages on-campus interviews. Did not fill out the Tuck
essays (again, Tuck accepted Consortium-submitted essays), but the
essays now appear to be challenging for people to get through because
they are shorter.
KNOW WHY YOU WANT TO GET AN MBA
Biggest advice I can offer on getting in is to truly understand the
answers to the three basic questions:
1) Why an MBA?
2) Why Tuck? (nobody on campus calls it Dartmouth)
3) Why you?
KNOW WHAT DISTINGUISHES THE SCHOOL
In particular, Tuck is distinctive from most other top programs in a
couple of ways, and you should have a good understanding of them:
1) It's a rural school (look at the other Top 15 schools and all of
them are either in large cities or large college towns). That means
fewer social options than you're probably accustomed to, more outdoor
options than most, and a lot of hanging out with your classmates. New
Hampshire is COLD, too, so you need to be happy with the location for
two years.
2) It only offers a full-time MBA program in general management. That
means professors are more focused on teaching than in most schools, but
you can't focus on just finance or just marketing.
3) It's smaller than most (class size 240). That means a lot of
interaction with your classmates and a personal relation with both the
administration and the faculty. It also means fewer course options and
sometimes fewer on-campus recruiters than in bigger programs.
4) It emphasizes cooperation and teamwork. If you look at the WSJ
rankings, Tuck students are famous for their teamwork ability to the
point of being considered too mellow. If you're a loner, it might not
be a good fit.
GMAT AND WORK EXPERIENCE
Put the GMAT and work experience in perspective as the requirements
they are. Very few people get in to Tuck with less than 3 years of
work experience. While a large portion of applicants come from
consulting and banking backgrounds, the School actively encourages
diverse professional backgrounds. My advice, however, would be to talk
to as many Tuck alumni and students as you can if you don't come from a
traditional business background. My perspective is that there is a lot
of important information that you learn through talking to others
involved in the MBA process, information people from consulting and
banking get a lot of by just being in their industries.
The GMAT middle 80 percentile is something like 650-740. If you're
under a 650, you might be at a disadvantage but can still make a strong
case for your application based on your work experience,
extracurricular activities (don't underestimate the importance of
these), other skills, and desire to attend the school. There are
several people in my class who have GMATs below 650 and some even below
600. On the other hand, there are plenty of people with 700+ GMAT
scores who don't get accepted. Your application should be strong
across the board.
DIVERSITY OF BACKGROUNDS
Finally, Tuck has a harder time than most Top 10 schools attracting
applicants from minority and international backgrounds, as well as
students from regions outside the Northeast. Coming from those
backgrounds is a good thing from my perspective, as long as you keep in
mind that you have to make up for what is often a lack of regional
knowledge about the school by doing your research and talking to
students and alumni.
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Dartmouth University (Tuck) Admission & Application Surveys
