Dartmouth’s Tuck School vs. Harvard Business School

Admissions: Both HBS and Tuck are highly selective schools. Harvard sends offer letters to just 12.2% of its applicants, while Dartmouth accepts 18.8%. Harvard’s average GMAT score for the Class of 2011 is 719 versus an average of 712 for Dartmouth.

Admission Stats Dartmouth Harvard
Average GMAT 712 719
GMAT Range 580–790 490–800
Average GPA 3.53 3.67
Selectivity 18.8% 12.2%
Yield NA 89%

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Enrollment: Dartmouth’s class size is less than half that of Harvard, resulting in a more intimate and close-knit community environment. The numbers for women, international and minority students are for the Class of 2011.

Enrollment Stats Dartmouth Harvard
Total MBA Enrollment 510 1,837
Women 33% 36%
International 30% 36%
Minority 18% 22%

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Poets&Quants: Though you might expect a lot more poets at Tuck, you’d be surprised to discover that students at Dartmouth with undergraduate degrees in the humanities are few: 26% versus Harvard’s 40% or Stanford’s 47%.  On the other hand, Tuck is much more open to enrolling business undergrads than Harvard. About 41% of Dartmouth’s Class of 2011 have business or economics undergraduate degrees, making them the biggest single chunk of the class, while only 26% have such degrees at Harvard.

Undergrad Degrees Dartmouth Harvard
Humanities 26% 40%
Engineering/Math 27% 33%
Business/Economics 41% 26%

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Jobs and Pay: Even these two elite business schools were impacted by the severe recession of 2009. Nearly a third of Dartmouth’s Class of 2009 didn’t have jobs when they graduated and nearly a quarter of Harvard MBAs were in the same boat. Grads from both schools fared much better three months after commencement, but these numbers are rare lows for the two of the best business schools in the world. Starting pay for Tuckies is third best, after only Stanford and Harvard. The estimates of median pay over a full career come from a study by PayScale done for BusinessWeek and do not include stock options or equity stakes by entrepreneurs. Harvard grads were first in this study, while Dartmouth grads came in fifth, behind HBS, Wharton, Columbia, and Stanford. The flow of grads into higher-paying finance careers at Wharton and Columbia help those schools on this measurement.

Job & Pay Data Dartmouth Harvard
Starting salary & bonus $128,282 $131,219
MBAs employed at commencement 69.2% 76.8%
MBAs employed 3 months after commencement 82.8% 87.3%
Estimated median pay & bonus over a full career $3,146,032 $3,867,903

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