April 2011 marked the 11th annual Tuck GIVES (Grants to Interns and Volunteers for the Environment and Society) auction, a student-led event that raises money to fund salaries for Tuck students who accept internships with nonprofits. The event includes both a silent auction and a live auction. According to Tuck’s admissions blog, students dress up for the event in their fanciest attire and watch two of their classmates lead the auction of donated items. These offerings can range from dinners with faculty (such as a Cajun-style group dinner cooked by Dean Paul Danos and a South African group dinner hosted by a professor) to vacations (including a vacation package at a luxury resort in Bermuda and a trip to a ski resort in Colorado) to student-hosted themed dinners, tickets to Red Sox games, tennis and fly-fishing lessons, babysitting services and a day-long workout session with Tuckies from the Armed Forces.

About the auctions, a member of the admissions staff told mbaMission, “Our goal is maximum participation of the Tuck community, which includes students, their partners, staff and faculty. I have donated two necklaces and bracelets that I made from African beads I purchased in Ghana, one of the deans auctions off an evening in his barn, which is actually a huge, wonderfully furnished place with a giant TV and bar, and other folks offer dinners, photography, painting and just all sorts of things.” The April 2010 Tuck GIVES auction raised more than $51,000.

For in-depth descriptions of social and community activities at Dartmouth Tuck and 15 other top MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

To learn more about Tuck, check out mbaMission’s exclusive interview with Dawna Clarke or our mbaMission Insider’s Guide to the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

For more information on Dartmouth-Tuck or 14 other leading MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

Tuck states on its site that Kevin Lane Keller (“Strategic Brand Management”) is known as one of the foremost experts on branding, and Keller has served as a brand consultant for some of the world’s most recognizable companies, including Coca-Cola, MTV and Procter & Gamble. A recent graduate told mbaMission, “It is cool to hear his experiences from different companies he’s worked in.” Another alumnus added, “He is very approachable and in touch with students. He likes to get feedback from students in terms of what they experienced during internships or jobs.” As for Keller’s teaching style, another alumnus explained, “He is more of a lecturer than a class participation professor.” And a second-year student we interviewed described him as “straight out of the West Coast—very laid-back. He’s known as a cool professor, and a brilliant one.”

For the final project (which accounts for 40% of a student’s final grade) in Keller’s “Strategic Brand Management” course, students form a “brand management team” with three to four of their classmates to conduct a brand audit, which involves analyzing a brand of the team’s choosing and preparing a subsequent report and presentation to be made to the class. One alumnus told mbaMission, “I really enjoyed the brand audit project because you get to pick a brand that interests you and then learn all about it. It was a lot of fun and also challenging.” Remarked a second year we interviewed, “That he is such a top guy in his field but still teaches one of the core classes is something that is very special about Tuck.”

For more information about the Tuck and 14 other top-ranked MBA schools, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

Each February, approximately 600 MBA students from more than a dozen business schools across the country gather in Hanover, New Hampshire, to take a break from classes and job hunting and join students at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College for Winter Carnival weekend. In 2011, 200 skiers from 14 business schools—including, for the first time, the Stanford GSB—took part in the fundraising event. Winter Carnival features ski and snowboard races, snow sculpting, a hot-dog-eating contest and other such events—all intended to promote socializing while also raising money for a selected nonprofit organization. The costumes teams choose for the skiing competitions tend to be a highlight of the event. Past costumes have included 1980s-vintage ski gear, Hawaiian-themed clothing, business suits and even Speedos!

One second-year student described the Winter Carnival to mbaMission as one of the more anticipated annual events at Tuck: “Its core is a ski race between Tuck and other schools; it’s very serious. There are also costume dress-up races. It is a big social event, to embrace the winter. On Friday, there is a big party at Occom Pond, with hot chocolate; it’s very family friendly. On Friday night, they hold a dance party. The ski races are on Saturday, followed by another party, which was new this year … a Big Lebowski Bowling Party—which was great. It’s a cool way for other schools to come and experience the winter wonderland that is Tuck.” A video about the 2011 Winter Carnival is available here

For in-depth descriptions of social and community activities at Tuck and 14 other top MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

Robert Howell (“Financial Statement Interpretation and Analysis”) has been teaching for more than 40 years and is quite accomplished in the field of accounting and financial management, having served as chief financial officer of two publicly traded consumer product companies earlier in his career. In addition to teaching the “Financial Statement Interpretation and Analysis” course, Howell is the faculty advisor to the Tuck Investment Club. A recent graduate told mbaMission, “Everyone takes his class.” For one of the course’s major projects, which occurs near the end of the term, students work in teams to analyze a company and present their recommendation on whether to buy, hold or sell its stock. “Professor Howell has a sense of humor, and he told students that ‘it’s better to be directionally right and not precisely wrong,’” shared another recent graduate.

A second year described Howell to mbaMission as “a character, and a really, really great professor. His classes are very entertaining, and he is strongly opinionated. He makes even diagnosing financial statements fun; he operates on the assumption that these don’t tell you much unless you can unwind them, so it’s a very valuable class. I sometimes see him in the Tuck gym; he’s a really down-to-earth, approachable guy.” Another second-year student likewise spoke highly of Howell, saying, “He is a fantastic professor. The consummate practitioner-scholar, Professor Howell has an unsurpassed ability to simplify and explain complex financial concepts. More importantly, Professor Howell teaches a coherent investment philosophy regarding how to make investment decisions. I believe that the framework he provides will prove useful long into my career in finance. … [He] peppers his class discussions with pertinent anecdotes and examples underlying investment principles borne from his deep real-world experience and through his work teaching executives investment concepts.”

For more information about the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and 14 other top-ranked MBA schools, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

1. Why is an MBA a critical next step toward your short- and long-term career goals? Why is Tuck the best MBA program for you? (If you are applying for a joint or dual degree, please explain how the additional degree will contribute to those goals.)

Because Personal Statements are similar from one application to the next, we have produced the mbaMission Personal Statement Guide, which helps applicants write this style of essay for any school. We offer this guide to candidates free of charge, via our online store. Please feel free to download your copy today.

For a thorough exploration of Tuck’s academic program/merits, defining characteristics, crucial statistics, social life, academic environment and more, please check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guide to the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

2. Discuss your most meaningful leadership experience. What did you learn about your own individual strengths and weaknesses through this experience?

As you consider your options for this essay, keep in mind that your “most meaningful” leadership experience may not—and need not—be the one in which you produced the greatest end results. Note that Tuck is asking here for meaning, not impact. So, the experience you choose to discuss can be one in which you challenged yourself and put forth your greatest effort, leaving your comfort zone and diversifying your skills, even if the results were negligible. What you learned from this experience is what is crucial—particularly with regard to your “strengths and weaknesses”—and thus you will need to show that you have given a significant amount of thought to the experience and uncovered some personal and revealing takeaways.

Note: One mistake that many candidates make when responding to this question is offering a profound story of success and then, at the very end, mentioning some trivial weakness. Your essay needs to clearly present and spell out your weaknesses (and strengths) within the context of the greater story you are sharing. Tuck is interested in learning about how these characteristics of yours played a part in the significant experience you are relaying; you cannot simply include some arbitrary reference to a weakness that is not validated by your actions.

3. Describe a circumstance in your life in which you faced adversity, failure, or setback. What actions did you take as a result and what did you learn from this experience?

In its application essays, Harvard Business School wants to hear about three setbacks you have faced. Michigan Ross wants to know about a time when you were frustrated or disappointed and also gives you the option of writing an essay about an obstacle you have encountered. UC-Berkeley Haas wants you to discuss a situation in which you were a student of your own failure. And in this case, Tuck wants to know about a time when you experienced adversity, failure or a setback. This trend seems to indicate thatbusiness school admissions committees want to know that today’s MBA students can roll with the punches and are problem solvers capable of learning from life’s challenges—not entitled or spoiled individuals just looking for a quick way to advance their careers.

A strong essay response to this question will start by describing how the stage was set for a success of some kind but then show how that success was derailed in a swift manner. Without asking for pity, you need to make the reader truly understand your intense feelings of disappointment—even feel somewhat crushed themselves by the story of your experience—and offer honest reflection on how you grew as a result, ideally by presenting clear evidence of change. Don’t be afraid to leave yourself exposed to criticism; in asking this question, the admissions committee is seeking an honest answer. They will not be interested in someone who blames others and can’t be honest about his/her own role in a negative situation.

4. Tuck seeks candidates of various backgrounds who can bring new perspectives to our community. How will your unique personal history, values, and/or life experiences contribute to the culture at Tuck?

Tuck’s essay question four is quite broad; within “personal history, values, and/or life experiences,” you have a great deal of range. So, you can develop one or two significant themes, drawing from your life experiences, and then relate them directly to certain components of the Tuck experience (clubs, research centers, courses, conferences, competitions, etc.). This essay offers you the opportunity not only to highlight your most exceptional attributes but also to convey just how well you know the school by clearly illustrating connections between these unique aspects of your profile and specific elements of the Tuck MBA program. By thus demonstrating a true understanding of your personal connection with the school and communicating how your strengths could benefit the entire Tuck community, you will complete the essay portion of your application on a very compelling note.

5. (Optional) Please provide any additional insight or information that you have not addressed elsewhere that may be helpful in reviewing your application (e.g., unusual choice of evaluators, weaknesses in academic performance, unexplained job gaps or changes, etc.). Complete this question only if you feel your candidacy is not fully represented by this application.

However tempted you might be, this is not the place to paste in a strong essay from another school or to offer a few anecdotes that you were unable to use in any of your other essays. Instead, this is your opportunity, if needed, to address any lingering questions that an admissions officer may have about your candidacy, such as a poor grade or overall GPA, a low GMAT score, a gap in your work experience, etc. In our mbaMission Optional Statement Guide, available through our online store, we offer detailed advice on when and how to take advantage of the optional essay (including multiple sample essays) to help you mitigate any problem areas in your profile.

6. (To be completed by all reapplicants) How have you strengthened your candidacy since you last applied? Please reflect on how you have grown personally and professionally.

Whether you have improved your academic record, received a promotion, begun a new and exciting project, increased your community involvement or taken on a personal challenge of sorts, the key to success with this essay is conveying a very deliberate path of achievement. Tuck wants to know that you have been actively striving to improve and that you have seized opportunities during the previous year to do so, because a Tuck MBA is vital to you. The responses to this essay question will vary greatly from one candidate to the next, because each person’s needs and experiences differ. We are more than happy to provide one-on-one assistance with this highly personal essay to ensure that your efforts over the past year are presented in the best light possible.

Tuck ’Tails are “happy hours” that occur every Thursday at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business Administration for the entire campus and are typically sponsored by a different student group each week. Faculty and students gather over beer, wine, and other refreshments. A recent graduate we interviewed noted, “The Tuck ’Tails are fun, and usually linked to different events and clubs. They are chill, but sometimes lead to bigger parties!” The events are generally held on campus in Stell Hall, but when the weather is nice, the festivities are sometimes moved to a tent outside or onto the new deck in the Living and Learning Complex.

For in-depth descriptions of social and community activities at Tuck and 13 other top MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.