Tuck November Round Deadline in 5 Days!

The Tuck School of Business was the first modern business school founded in the United States (in 1900). Named for one of the founders of the Republican Party, Tuck boasts one of the robust old-school career networks that make business schools famous. Tuckies routinely score great jobs as established firms like McKinsey and BCG through the loyal Tuck network, and the larger, more fanatical Dartmouth College network.

Given its small class size and bucolic location, Tuck offers one of the most intimate MBA experience in the Top-10. Students are intensely social -- traveling around the world together on treks and and participate in intramural sports in record numbers (about 90% of the students play on one of the school's many Hockey teams -- it's a way of life!). To thrive in this environment, Tuckies pride themselves on their collaborative and social culture and are looking for applicants who can fit in and are equally fanatical about Tuck as they are.

Interview + Reflection Package

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Ivy Admissions Group has intensely deep roots at Dartmouth and can help you easily navigate the applicant-initiated interview. Our Ace the Interview service will provide you with a custom dossier of questions that you can expect based on your unique background, two complete student-style interviews with interactive debriefs, media coaching to come off as more likable, and even help with reflection feedback. It's everything you need to Ace the Interview!

I Received an MBA Interview Invite...Now What?

Round 1 interview offers are starting to trickle out in the next few weeks. If you're one of the lucky applicants to get an offer to interview, how can you optimize the interview scheduling process?

1. Be ready to jump on the time you want

The interview sign-up portal usually opens day or so after you receive your interview invite email. Mark the day and exact time on your calendar! Most sign-ups are first come first serve, and your fellow applicants are fierce competitors for the best slot. Have a list of your preferred dates and times written out in rank order, so if your first choice is taken, you can quickly jump on your second choice. 

2. Know your long-range schedule ahead of time

The interviews usually run for a few weeks, so you have many dates to choose from. For most people Friday is the best day to interview, since you'll miss the least amount of work. Consider arriving the night before your interview so that you get plenty of time to settle in and relax. Map out how long it will take to get to the interview location. If you're there early enough the day before, consider visiting the interview location ahead of time so you know your route. The last thing you want to do is dash from the train station to your interview, arriving frazzled and not in peak condition.

3. Avoid interviews right before lunch, or at the end of the day

A study featured in the NYTimes showed that, "experienced parole judges in Israel granted freedom about 65% of the time to the first prisoner who appeared before them on a given day. By the end of a morning session, the chance of release had dropped almost to zero. After the same judge returned from a lunch break, the first prisoner once again had about a 65% chance at freedom. And once again the odds declined steadily."

What does this mean for you? Schedule your interview for early morning or early afternoon, when the interviewers are at their freshest. Mental capacity for decision-making can deteriorate throughout the day, and you want the interviewers to be in peak condition when they talk with you.

4. Don't put anything on your schedule right before the interview

You want to be at your best and any anxiety you may have about missing a connection or arriving late will likely impede your sleep, give you jitters, and hurt your verbal fluency. Plus you'll likely be thinking about little else than your interview earlier in the day. Do yourself a favor -- keep your calendar free before the interview. You can backload your day with meetings once all the pressure is off.

5. Consider MBA activities happening the rest of the day

Many schools have activities scheduled throughout the day for interviewees. For example, at HBS there are multiple opportunities to sit in on classes and various formal sessions led by the AdCom. If you've never visited the campus before, it may be worth spending the morning attending class or talking to students, so if anything relevant comes up you can sound like you know more about the school during your interview. Personally, I had visited campus before my interview and had a good understanding of the school's culture, so I much preferred doing the interview first thing in the morning and enjoying the rest of my day. Do whatever is best for you.

When is the right round to apply to business school?

The conventional wisdom can be summed up as follows: apply when you’re ready but as early as you can. The common fear is that later in the cycle, particularly Round 3, it becomes “impossible” to get in. One admissions prognosticator I read said that she believes HBS admissions rates drop from 14% in Round 1 to 7% in Round 2 and below 3% in Round 3.

This is baloney. If you ask the admissions deans and dive into the data, you will find that while the number of applications fluctuates with each round and cycle, the acceptance rate remains reliably constant.

However, the key insight is that the applicant mix in each round is different.

Round 1

Round 1 is for all the traditional MBA candidates: consultants, investment bankers, private equity investors, etc. If you worked at McKinsey or Goldman, your time to apply is in Round 1. And why wouldn’t you? You’re on “the path.” You’ve known since the day you started at your firm that everyone expects you to go to business school one day, maybe even with the company’s sponsorship. That means that you took your GMAT early, had your recommenders at the ready, and kept your resume up to date. All you needed was the essay prompt and you were ready for Round 1.

What happens to a candidate in this bucket who instead decides to apply later in a later round? Well, at the start of each application season, the admissions director allocates the number of admissions spots for each kind of profile. Because the traditional candidate applies early, by later rounds, almost all the spots for them are filled. You might be just the consultant the admissions committee was always looking for, but unfortunately they already gave your spot away. To prevent this from happening, follow the herd and apply with your cohort.

Round 2

Are you literally any other type of candidate? Someone with a background in entrepreneurship, manufacturing, military, corporate finance, or healthcare? Then feel free to apply in whichever round you like. If you apply early, all the spots will be open to you, but you will be competing with the most prepared and impressive applicants. HBS usually places some Round 1 applicants under “further consideration” each year, bumping them into the Round 2 applicant pool. It can be nerve-wracking waiting for months while your application collects dust, so if you apply early you need to prepare yourself mentally for this possibility.

Round 3

As for Round 3 – it’s not just for super impressive Olympic athletes and ex-presidents. Spots in the class are in short supply, but then again the applicant pool is much smaller too. More volatile industries like start-ups give less runway for employees to make important decisions like returning to business school. Accommodating those candidates are the reason why MBA programs have later admissions rounds. It is perfectly fine for those individuals to apply with confidence in Round 3; they should just make sure they’re applying then because that is the right time, not because they were lazy.