Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business

8. Dartmouth College

Tuck School of Business

100 Tuck Hall

Hanover, New Hampshire 03755

Admissions: 603-646-3162

Email: tuck.admissions@tuck.dartmouth.edu

Website: http://www.tuck.dartmouth.edu/

Apply Online: http://www.tuck.dartmouth.edu/admissions/apply/

Admission Deadlines for Class of 2016:

Early Action: 10/9/13

November Round: 11/6/13

January Round: 1/3/14

April Round: 4/2/14

If MBA education were like ice cream, Tuck would be one of a handful of premium brands. This is a super rich and delicious concoction of an MBA education, a picture perfect business school solely dedicated to providing students with the ultimate MBA experience. There are no business undergraduates sharing the halls, nor part-time MBAs in evening classes, nor Executive MBAs who come in on Friday nights. The school’s executive education offerings are limited. All this allows Tuck to focus virtually all of its resources and energy on one thing: a full-time MBA program. In a day and age when most business schools are juggling all kinds of programs that siphon off the best faculty from the full-time MBAs, Tuck stays true to its mission of guaranteeing every student a truly transformative and intimate MBA experience. This is a rare and beautiful thing if you want the premium version of the degree.

The school does this in a spectacular New England setting, isolated in Hanover, N.H., away from the distractions of a busy city. At Tuck, most students have the option of living in lavishly appointed dorms right on the school’s own first class business school campus. The school’s world-class teachers are known for their excellence and are in a class with Harvard Business School and the University of Virginia’s Darden School. Attending a Tuck class is to witness a master teacher in action, soliciting differing opinions in rapid fire style, moving every student along a challenging but entertaining journey to some final destination where the big idea or thought waits to be unfolded. Harvard, Tuck and Darden have at least two other attributes in common: 1) MBA students at these three schools are taught largely and almost exclusively by the case method, and 2) The first-year curriculum is a lockstep program where cohorts of the same students move through the courses together. Harvard’s cohorts are 50% larger than those at Tuck and Darden so there is less pressure to fight for air time during the vigorous discussions in class where participation accounts for half your grade. The bonds students form in their sections often endure a life time.

Tuck, like Darden, has a highly collaborative and caring culture where MBA candidates genuinely support and encourage each other. Backstabbing at Tuck is unheard of. In fact, some corporate recruiters say the students here are just too damn nice. That’s an accusation that also befalls Darden. And unlike many of the big MBA factories, Tuck offers the quintessential intimate experience: small cohorts and class sizes. By the time a student graduates from Tuck, he or she knows every single classmate who’s wearing a cap and gown at commencement.