The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College is a world-renowned institution that has been educating leaders for more than a century. Founded in 1900, the school has been consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world. It is a private Ivy League college located in Hanover, New Hampshire.
If Dartmouth Tuck is your target business school then you really need to ace the essays to convince the MBA admissions committee of your candidacy. In this article, we have explained how to write the Dartmouth Tuck MBA essay for the 2023 intake.
Application Deadlines
| Application Round | Deadline | Decisions | Enroll by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Round 1 | September 26, 2022 | December 8, 2022 | February 13, 2023 |
| Round 2 | January 4, 2023 | March 16, 2023 | April 24, 2023 |
| Round 3 | March 27, 2023 | May 4, 2023 | May 26, 2023 |
What is Dartmouth Tuck looking for?
Dartmouth Tuck is looking for candidates with four characteristics:
- Smart
- Accomplished
- Aware
- Encouraging
According to the Dartmouth Admissions Committee – Classes at Tuck are designed to be diverse, but all students have four things in common that are used to decide who to let in. Students at Tuck are smart, accomplished, aware, and encouraging. No two candidates are the same in every way, and you can show different strengths in different ways.
These 4 characteristics also serve as the bedrock for a great MBA essay to impress the Tuck admissions committee. So, make sure that you incorporate stories that to some extent highlight these 4 characteristics.
Let’s discuss all the Tuck MBA essay prompts in detail in the next section.
Dartmouth Tuck MBA essays 2023
Essay Question #1: “Tuck students can articulate how the distinctive Tuck MBA will advance their aspirations. Why are you pursuing an MBA and why Tuck?”
Essay Question #2: “Tuck students recognize how their individuality adds to the fabric of Tuck. Tell us who you are.”
Essay Question #3: “Tuck students are encouraging, collaborative, and empathetic, even when it is not convenient or easy. Describe a meaningful experience in which you exemplified one or more of these attributes.”
Dartmouth Tuck MBA essay tips
As we mentioned earlier the presence of the 4 characteristics in your essay is vital for making a strong case for your candidacy for Tuck MBA. This is also resonated by Patricia Harrison who is the Co-Executive Director, Admissions and Financial Aid. She says, “as with every component of the application, each of the essays maps directly to our criteria: smart, accomplished, aware, and encouraging. Each essay prompt opens with a framing sentence that articulates the connection to the relevant criterion, followed by the essay question itself.”
She also talks about following a strict word limit of 300 words for each question. She adds, “You enter each essay into a text box field in the application, which means the 300-word count is a firm limit.”
Dartmouth Tuck MBA Essay 1
Tuck students can articulate how the distinctive Tuck MBA will advance their aspirations. Why are you pursuing an MBA and why Tuck? (300 words)
Before you begin reflecting and writing, consider what being aware, ambitious, and purposeful means at Tuck because this essay maps to Tuck’s “aware” requirement. Once you’ve done that, you should realize that there are two crucial factors to take into account – Your goals and what distincts Tuck MBA from other MBA programs.
Your goals are important, to start. Your short- and long-term goals, which are both daring in scope and rooted in reality. The distinctions you notice in the Tuck MBA are important, too. Spend the time and effort necessary to determine what aspects of an MBA, and particularly the Tuck MBA, correspond with your aspirations.
In this essay, you must focus on 3 aspects:
- Your Career Goals
- Why MBA
- Why Tuck
Be as specific and straightforward as you can when describing your professional ambitions; choose a position and a target industry, and then describe your motivation for choosing this position and how it relates to your prior experience. After you’ve written your response, if there is still room, you might want to emphasize the influence you want your work to have.
Then, think about the skills you require from an MBA; this can help you determine what you require from Tuck and how Tuck’s MBA program will assist you in achieving the progress you desire.
Discuss your prior work experience in order to establish the skills you already have; this helps to define the gap in your skill set that a Tuck MBA would address.
This is relevant to how the MBA would help you reach your goals. The skills and knowledge you wish to acquire from a Tuck MBA should be established throughout this section of your conversation, which should also incorporate information about the program.
Making clear connections between the abilities you hope to acquire – whether in the classroom, through participation in student organizations, or through other means – and your future goals will demonstrate to the admissions committee that you have done your homework on the program and have a thorough understanding of how a Tuck MBA will equip you for success.
Finally, considering Tuck’sremote location, you might want to mention in this part why you think receiving an MBA away from the hustle and bustle of a big city is significant to you.
Do you want to impress the Dartmouth Tuck Adcom?
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Schedule a free call with us today to learn more about our services and how we can help you achieve your goals.
Dartmouth Tuck MBA Essay 2
Tuck students recognize how their individuality adds to the fabric of Tuck. Tell us who you are. (300 words)
According to Patricia Harrison, this second essay corresponds to our “aware” criterion just like the first one did. Consider the relationship between community and individualism as you approach it. Some of you have questioned whether your response should demonstrate how well you “fit in” with Tuck or whether it should instead emphasize how unique and distinctive you are. They do not conflict with one another. We want you to confidently bring your entire, distinctive personal self to Tuck, including your areas of strength. We also hope you recognize that this remarkable community is woven together by the diverse individuals who live there and that contributing to it requires ongoing engagement.
So, to do well on this essay, you must research and be honest.
First, do your due diligence. If you don’t know much about the Tuck community, it will be hard to write a good essay about why you think you belong there. What kind of clubs and projects does Tuck have? Why do you want to do these things? How do you hope to learn and grow by doing them? Which parts of Tuck’s culture do you relate to, and how do you plan to use them while you’re in Hanover? Last but not least, how can you help the Tuck community?
Try to go further than the Tuck website if you can. You can get a good idea of what it means to be a Tuckie by going to campus, talking to alumni and current students, and attending online information sessions.
This is a broad question, so you can choose things from both your personal and professional lives. Just make sure you pick your most powerful stories and show how they relate to the Tuck MBA in a meaningful way.
Lastly, make sure the tone is right. Tuck wants to hear your story, so pretend you’re sitting across from a current student, a friend, or even a family member and telling them why you’re so passionate about the school. This makes the letter seem more genuine and personal, which will help you win over the Tuck admissions committee.
Do you want to impress the Dartmouth Tuck Adcom?
At Admit Expert, we have helped hundreds of students get into top MBA programs around the world. We would be happy to help you too.
Schedule a free call with us today to learn more about our services and how we can help you achieve your goals.
Dartmouth Tuck MBA Essay 3
Tuck students are encouraging, collaborative, and empathetic, even when it is not convenient or easy. Describe a meaningful experience in which you exemplified one or more of these attributes. (300 words)
This essay corresponds to Tuck’s “encouraging” criterion.
According to Patricia Harrison, this question is intentionally broad to allow you to demonstrate evidence of this criterion in a variety of ways. Some of you may want to emphasize how you invested in others and helped them succeed. Others may choose to focus on empathy and your engagement with someone else’s diverse experiences or perspectives. While others may share an example of when you had to thoughtfully challenge others. Whatever approach you take, we are interested in learning about how you interact with and support others.
With this in mind, you might want to think about relationships with managers or mentors that turned out well. You might even have a story to tell about working with peers.
No matter what kind of relationship is at the heart of the story, it will be important to talk about what each person did, how they interacted with each other, and what happened as a result. What did you have to deal with? What did you say to them? How did you help people? What did you learn from doing it?
You might have taken time out of your day to help a new intern, who then got a full-time job at your company. Or, a team member might have had trouble keeping track of time, so you stayed late to help them meet a deadline.
Once you’ve gone into these details, end by saying how this experience could apply to your time at Tuck.
Optional Essay
Please provide any additional insight or information that you have not addressed elsewhere (e.g., atypical choice of evaluators, factors affecting academic performance, unexplained job gaps, or changes). Complete this question only if you feel your candidacy is not fully represented by this application. (300 words)
The admissions committee is very clear about what kinds of topics are “allowed” for this Tuck MBA essay and says that it should be used to talk about any weaknesses in your application. It’s possible that there are other parts of your background that would be appropriate and not covered elsewhere in your application, like an upcoming promotion or a part of your identity that isn’t covered in the program’s data forms. However, the wording of this prompt suggests that it should be used sparingly (i.e. that applicants should make an effort to fully represent their candidacies within the required elements of the application).
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