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Dartmouth Tuck has almost 9,000 living alumni, and while that figure may sound small compared with a larger school’s alumni base (e.g., Chicago Booth has more than 40,000 living alumni), Tuck is known for having one of the most active and closely knit alumni communities of all the top MBA programs. In fact, the school boasts the highest annual giving rate—more than 65%—of all U.S. MBA programs, well ahead of its peers. Through their continued involvement with the school as mentors, visiting executives, recruiting contacts and internship providers, Tuck alumni keep an open channel between the school and the business world and, some might say, give Tuck students an edge.

Applying to business school in 2011? 2012? By taking action now, you can dramatically improve your chances of gaining admission to a top MBA program in the coming years. Indeed, it’s never too soon (and certainly not too late) to take several crucial steps to shape your MBA candidacy. Join mbaMission Founder Jeremy Shinewald as he leads prospective applicants through a Long-Term Planning Seminar. Topics of discussion will include the following:

* Creating Your Ten-Month (and Beyond) Timeline
* Maximizing the Impact of Community Activities
* Accelerating Personal Goals
* Building an Alternative Transcript
* Taking and Retaking the GMAT
* Making the Most of Campus Visits
* Understanding the Differences Between MBA Programs
* More…

Date: Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Time: 8:30-10:00 p.m. EST
Location: Online
Price: Free!

To register for this event, please click here.

If you are stressed about applying to Tuck, you may want to take a moment to read our exclusive interview with Director of Admissions Dawna Clarke. Ms. Clarke is known for her openness, enthusiasm and generally encouraging/laid back approach to admissions. You should feel better after coming to understand that through the application process, the Tuck admissions committee is just trying to get to know you as an individual and assess your fit with their school—not looking for reasons to “ding” you.

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?

Duke must be satisfied with what its application essays tell the admissions committee about its candidates, because Fuqua has not made any changes to its essay questions this year. Pay special attention to essay two, which represents your most significant opportunity to reveal yourself as distinct, interesting and “valuable.” Candidates may want to read our interview with Fuqua Associate Dean for Admissions Liz Riley Hargrove for even more insight.

1. Describe your vision for your career and your inspiration for pursuing this career path.

In many ways, Fuqua’s essay questions one and three constitute the components of a classic Personal Statement. And, 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.

All of that written, you will notice that Fuqua does not explicitly ask about your short- and long-term career goals but instead asks about your “vision for your career.” Short- and long-term goals can be somewhat confining, but Fuqua instead offers you some flexibility and allows you to provide a broader and more reasoned compendium of your objectives and the path you hope to take to reach them. In some ways, this question is more challenging than a traditional “goal statement,” because you will need to be less practical and more profound in discussing your future.

2. How will your background, values, and non-work activities enhance the experience of other Duke MBA students and add value to Fuqua’s diverse culture?

This essay is broad and sweeping in nature, so it allows you to strategically showcase a mix of your greatest community and personal strengths. You should attempt to select a diversity of experiences and present them in such a way that you will be able to relate them back to your ability to contribute in a variety of areas—for example, in the classroom, study teams and the community at large. A successful essay will not only detail your personality/experiences, but also clearly illustrate how you will “enhance” Fuqua—meaning that it will demonstrate your intimate understanding of and connection to the Fuqua culture/experience.

3. Why Duke? (If you are interested in a specific concentration, joint degree, clubs or activities, please discuss how you would contribute to these in this essay.)

Please consult our analysis of essay one as it encompasses a response to essays one and three. For a thorough exploration of Duke’s academic program/merits, defining characteristics, crucial statistics, social life, academic environment and more, please check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guide to Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Longer and more complex sentences often require parallel construction. Simply put, parallel construction ensures that any given longer sentence has a standard rhythm or construction. With parallel construction, each pronoun corresponds with another pronoun, each verb corresponds with another verb, each adjective matches with a corresponding adjective and so on. Parallel construction can certainly be found in shorter sentences as well, and to great effect.

Consider the example of Hamlet’s words “To be or not to be,” which are some of the most famous in the English language. Shakespeare wrote this short sentence in perfect parallel form; “to be” is matched perfectly with its corresponding negative “not to be” and is separated only by the necessary word “or.” Another short example of parallel construction from history is “I came, I saw, I conquered.” With these words, Julius Caesar was speaking in perfect parallel construction—the grammatical form is a pronoun (the word “I”) followed by a verb in the past tense (“came,” “saw,” “conquered”).

If we were to change that second famous phrase just a touch, the amazing quality that it has would be lost, and the phrase would become unremarkable. For example, if Caesar had said, “I came, I saw, and I became the conqueror,” no one would be quoting him today (because the rhythm would be destroyed—it would now be verb, verb, phrase). Keep this rule in mind for everything that you write, especially for longer sentences.

Some final examples:

Bad: There are three key reasons for this success: understanding our client, trying harder than our competition and teamwork.
Good: There are three key reasons for this success: understanding our client, trying harder than our competition and working as a team. (In this example, gerunds [the words ending in “ing”] parallel each other, unlike in the previous, “bad” example.)

Bad: We are in the forestry business. We sell wood to hardware stores and paper to stationery stores.
Good: We are in the forestry business. We sell wood and paper.