Dartmouth’s Tuck vs. Stanford Graduate School of Business

Admissions:

Stanford is the most selective business school in the world, accepting only 6.5% of those who apply for admission. Its average GMAT score, 726 for the Class of 2011, is also the highest. Dartmouth is not far behind, though it accepts nearly three times as many applicants on a percentage basis with an average GMAT score that is 14 points lower. That’s also why Stanford is more likely to take a chance with an exceptional candidate with a lower GMAT score. GSB’s lowest GMAT score for an enrolled student was 540 versus Dartmouth’s 580.

Admission Stats	Stanford	Dartmouth
Average GMAT	726	712
GMAT Range	540–800	580–790
Average GPA	3.66	3.53
Selectivity	6.5%	18.8%
Yield	79%	49%

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Enrollment:

Most people think Stanford is a small MBA program, given its peer group of elite schools such as Harvard, Wharton, Columbia, Chicago, and Northwestern. Yet, Dartmouth defines small. Its class size is a third smaller than Stanford. That makes it even more likely for heavier student-to-student and student-to-faculty interaction at Tuck than at Stanford. Nevertheless, both these schools offer intimate and close-knit community environments. Stanford’s study body offers slightly more diversity than Dartmouth’s, with a bit more women, international and minority students. The numbers below are for the Class of 2011.

Enrollment Stats	Stanford	Dartmouth
Total MBA Enrollment	766	510
Women	34%	33%
International	33%	30%
Minority	21%	18%

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Poets&Quants:

Stanford seems to open its doors for far more poets than Dartmouth. Students who did their undergraduate work in the humanities represent 47% of the Class of 2011 at Stanford, versus only 26% at Tuck. That’s a surprising difference given the general management focus of the Tuck program. On the other hand, Dartmouth is much more open to enrolling business and economics undergrads than Stanford. About 41% of Tuck’s Class of 2011 have business or econ backgrounds, versus just 17% at Stanford.

Undergrad Degrees	Stanford	Dartmouth
Humanities	47%	26%
Engineering/Math	36%	27%
Business/Economics	17%	41%

 

Jobs and Pay:

The severe recession of 2009 hit Dartmouth and Stanford hard as it did all the best business schools. Nearly a third of Dartmouth’s and Stanford’s Class of 2009 didn’t have jobs when they graduated. Grads from both schools fared much better three months after commencement, but these numbers are rare lows for the two best business schools in the world. 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. We suspect that if you included stock, Stanford grads would be far more than just $200,000 ahead of Tuckies due to the liberal use of options in Silicon Valley. But that’s just a guess because roughly half of Dartmouth’s alums end up running their own businesses 20 years after graduation.

Job & Pay Data	Stanford	Dartmouth
Starting salary & bonus	$132,769	$128,282
MBAs employed at commencement	69.1%	69.2%
MBAs employed 3 months after commencement	85.4%	82.8%
Estimated median pay & bonus over a full career	$3,327,145	$3,146,032