Meet Dartmouth Tuck’s MBA Class Of 2023

P&Q: What are two biggest differentiating features of your MBA program? How do each of these enrich the learning of your MBA students?

Hall: “The first differentiating feature that we offer students is an unparalleled immersive learning experience. At Tuck, thanks to our location, class size, and focus on the full-time MBA program, students can wholly engage in a tight-knit community and develop close connections with fellow students, faculty, alumni, staff, and Tuck community members. That full immersion in one’s studies, and the intimate access students have to faculty and resources all lend themselves to a richer quality of life and an educational experience unlike any other.

Paramount to that immersive learning experience, and the second feature of the Tuck MBA experience that I’d like to highlight, is our integrated curriculum. At Tuck, courses don’t exist in a vacuum. Our talented faculty members work with one another to highlight connections between courses, giving students both granular detail and the big picture. Examples of this integration abound: our Managing People course integrates with Management Communications in a case about presenting and defending a point of view; Marketing integrates with Managerial Economics on price elasticity, and with Managing People on how to work in teams, to name just a few. The result is a finely crafted web of courses that offers students a holistic business education that will give them the foundation they need to succeed in their post-MBA careers.”

P&Q: In recent years, there have been several areas that have gained increased prominence in business school programming, including STEM, analytics, artificial intelligence and digital disruption. How does your full-time MBA program integrate these concepts across its curriculum?

Hall: “STEM topics have gained traction in business schools and Tuck is no exception. A part of our curriculum includes a revamped Analytics course that now offers an introduction to the R statistical programming language and data visualization software Tableau; the use of statistics for predictive analytics; spreadsheet modeling and optimization; and topics such as probability, utility, and prospect theory, and machine learning through neural networks and cluster analysis. We also introduced a STEM-designated Management Science and Quantitative Methods Option for MBA students in recent years, and it has proven extremely popular. To qualify, students take at least 15 elective credits from a menu of qualifying courses during the two-year MBA program. There are dozens of courses from which students can choose, and we are always working with faculty members to develop new and interesting elective courses that appeal to students. Among these new courses is a fintech topics course that will be offered for the first time in early 2022.

Tuck is also home to the Center for Digital Strategies, one of the six centers at our school that offer pathways of learning and application to our MBA students. CDS offers a range of programming, from sessions that build foundational knowledge to chats with influential businesspeople from the tech industry—including Eric Ly, cofounder and former CTO of LinkedIn, who met with students last academic year. Engaging with the center gives Tuck students the opportunity to customize their MBA experience and more deeply explore the areas of technology and digital transformation that most interest them.”

P&Q: Dartmouth Tuck seeks students who are “smart, accomplished, aware, and encouraging.” How has that approach – coupled with strong alumni support, intimate size, and a focus on MBAs – created Tuck’s trademark family atmosphere?

Mitson: “By design, Tuck is a place where students can, and are encouraged, to try new and unfamiliar things. To ensure that freedom to explore, we need an immersive community that provides strength, encouragement, and counsel throughout a student’s time in Hanover. The criteria with which we evaluate applicants is just one tool that we use to help build that community.

We created our admissions criteria by first thinking about what made for a successful Tuck student in the past. We had thousands of wonderful examples thanks to our numerous successful Tuck alumni and what we discovered was that our alumni routinely demonstrate four qualities—they are smart, accomplished, aware, and encouraging. These common characteristics form the basis of our admissions criteria and help us determine if an applicant is a good fit for Tuck, but no two candidates are equally strong in all four categories. Everyone displays different strengths in different ways, and strength in one criterion can balance out potential weaknesses in others. Through our holistic evaluation process, which extends beyond just the admissions criteria, we can ensure that admitted students have everything they need to jump into the program, be successful, and prepare for personal and professional transformation that Tuck is known for.”

P&Q: What are two courses that you’ve introduced – either this semester or last year – that reflect your school’s responsiveness to market needs? What makes these courses so innovative?

Tomlin: “The first I’ll highlight is a brand-new course offered this fall from Professor Emily Blanchard: Cooperation and Competition in the 21st Century Global Economy. Focusing on the fast-changing economic and geopolitical landscape, this course could not be more reflective of the current business climate. Throughout the course, Professor Blanchard examines competitive economic policies and the institutions and agreements that foster global cooperation; the rise of global value chains and growing concerns over national security; the global innovation race and rising market power in the tech sector; and the challenges of sustainable and inclusive globalization, including the coming battles over carbon border taxes, all while keeping an eye on how the pandemic has greatly impacted every line of business. The new course includes weekly policy briefings and “hot-seat exchanges” to capture the engaging dynamic of a smaller seminar. One set of students will deliver impartial briefs on key policy issues while other students will be in the hot-seat and must advance a policy agenda that aligns with their values and beliefs.

The second is Entrepreneurial Finance with Professor Morten Sørensen. As we have seen with numerous IPOs in recent years, properly evaluating a startup is harder than ever before. Through this course, Professor Sørensen guides both future entrepreneurs and investors in how to understand financing in an entrepreneurial context. Through lectures, case studies, and compelling guest speakers, students examine how to determine an appropriate valuation of a startup, how much capital to raise, and when, how, and from whom to raise it; the economics of term sheets and capitalization tables; real option value of milestones; the economics of subsequent financing rounds, and more.”

5 REASONS TO CONSIDER A TUCK MBA

1) The People: “I was intentional in choosing a school that would make networking with my peers be the central focus. I liked that Tuck was not in a big city and that my classmates would be a self-selected group who had decided to put their “outside lives” on pause, prioritizing the chance to share a meaningful learning experience together.”
Shreya Dhital (’23)

2) The Mission: “Tuck is so special because no matter what field you ultimately want to move into after graduation, everyone is invested in bettering the world—this is even explicitly stated in Tuck’s mission statement: “Tuck develops wise, decisive leaders who better the world through business.” It is immediately evident in every conversation I have had with my fellow classmates that everyone wants to leave their industry better than when they entered it.”
Kate Bayeux (’23)

3) The Experience: “I wanted a small school, a place where I would get to know my classmates and professors and truly connect. Before enrolling, every Tuckie I spoke with would always reflect on how transformative their two years at Tuck were and how Hanover was a special place to make human connections and life decisions. That’s what I was looking for in my MBA experience.”
Francisca Carpentier (’23)

4) Hanover: “This is a pretty common answer at Tuck, but I am particularly looking forward to ski season. I am excited to take advantage of the nearby slopes with a big group of Tuckies. Everyone from lifelong skiers to those who have never seen snow is looking forward to it. That said, being up here in August has also been awesome to explore the hikes and river activities that are available in the warmer weather.”
Tory Waldstein (’23)

5) Activities: “I’m most excited about Tuck Community Consulting, a club that matches Tuck students with local nonprofit organizations, entrepreneurs, and small businesses to provide free consulting services. It’s exciting because I will get to leverage what I am learning in the classroom and my existing professional skillset to hopefully make a positive difference in an organization within the nearby community.”
Destinée Mentor-Richards (’23)

“Everything is exciting, but I don’t think TuckGO can be topped. The idea of traveling the world with a group of classmates and a professor to learn about the most relevant topics in our global economy is an experience I am sure no one could forget.”
Francisca Carpentier (’23)

TuckTalks: “[This is] an event each term where members of the Tuck community share the experiences, relationships, or passions that have shaped their perspective and given them purpose. It’s an intimate event which helps create new and meaningful connections in the community, bring often-unseen diversity to light, and foster an even stronger Tuck fabric.”
Jessica Ahn (’21)

ADVICE TO PROSPECTIVE TUCK APPLICANTS

“Start your application journey with your professional end goal in mind and be specific about what you are working toward. Is your end goal social entrepreneurship in Latin America? Running for elected office in the Midwest? Venture investing in agriculture? Whatever it may be, choose a school that has alumni and professors in that field or company. Choose a school that has a recent track record of helping others achieve similar outcomes.”
Destinée Mentor-Richards  (’23)

“Be prepared to answer, “What legacy would you like to leave at Tuck?” Tuck rightly takes pride in its effective alumni network and puts a strong emphasis on keeping up this legacy in the future.”
Geet Kalra (’23)

“I spent time really getting to know the current Tuck students and I spoke extensively with Tuck alumni! My in-depth conversations with students and alums came through during my interviews and in my essays. Call me old-fashioned, but I also wrote handwritten thank you notes to Tuck Admissions following events I attended in New York City!”
Madeleine Livingston (’21)

MBA Student	Hometown	Undergrad Alma Mater	Last Employer
Kate Bayeux	Basking Ridge, NJ	Villanova University	Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Francisca Carpentier	Santiago, Chile	Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile	SummaPartners
Ricardo Aaron Carrillo	Guadalajara, Mexico	ITESM—Tecnológico de Monterrey	Woods Bagot Architects
Shreya Dhital	Kathmandu, Nepal	Columbia University	ZS Associates
Geet Kalra	Jalandhar, India	Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani	Yunus Social Business
Destinée Mentor-Richards	Brooklyn, NY	Amherst College	Edward Jones Investments
Charles Mitchell	Plano, TX	Wheaton College	U.S. Army
Christopher Moates	Americus, GA	Yale University	Make-A-Wish Georgia
Leticia Pfeffer	Miami, FL	New York University	Global Citizen
Nick Vest	Fairfield, IL	Louisiana State University	Pilgrim Energy Partners
Jeffrey Williams Navarro	San Juan, Puerto Rico	George Washington University	YouTube
Tory Waldstein	Needham, MA	Harvard University	Clarify Health