Tuck campus visit starts at 8 am. We - a group of about 15 or so
prospective applicants - first met with the host of the Admissions
Office Lauren Ludwig and she gave us our name tags and $6 coupons which
we later user to buy lunch in Tuck cafeteria.
After that, first year students
came and took us to their classes. I sat at two classes that morning.
The first class was called Decision Making (if I remember correctly) but
most students called it Excel modeling. It was an interesting class and
the professor was very good. The class was basically
economical-statistical problem (two of them actually) and students
worked on each problem for 10-20 minutes and then professor went over
those problems, showed the class his model and described the solution.
One of the problems was along the lines of "Suzy saves $3,000 each year
for 30 years and her interest for each year is a normal distribution
with 12% mean and 2% Standard Deviation. What's the probability that
Suzy will have 1 million dollars for her retirement?", and the professor
did a very good (and passionate) job of describing the solutions to the
class. The
second class that I attended was accounting. The class was about
deferred taxes and it was quite technical class. The professor put
financial statements on the overhead projectors and the class went over
the numbers and "worked through" them and saw how each number is derived
from other numbers in balance sheet and income statement.
After that class, we went back to
the Admissions Office and talked with Kristine Laca about Tuck. Here are
some of the things that she said in her short (~15 minutes) but very
informative talk:
1. Tuck is a unique environment and
you can't be anonymous there. It's a small community and a small town
and when you go to a grocery shopping, it is very likely that you will
run into a classmate or a professor. You should be comfortable and
actually like that environment to be successful in Tuck.
2. Tuck's placement numbers are
quite good and Kristine said that the numbers of this year will probably
be better than those of last year. 90+ % of the students that graduated
this year have jobs and the rest are either looking for a very specific
job or aren't looking very hard for a job. One of the second year
students (who later gave us a Tuck tour) said "If you want a job, you
will get a job".
3. Tuck has many pilot programs one
of which is for developing the leadership skills of the students. Each
student is assigned a "coach" and they get feedback from other students
about their strengths and weaknesses as leaders and then they work with
their coaches to strengthen their strengths and eliminate their
weaknesses. 4.
When asked about Tuck's weakness, Kristine said that she would've loved
if the temperature was 20 degrees higher during the winter, but she
added that its one of the things that makes Tuck the school it is. I
think she meant that cold weather actually promotes the strong bond and
the community spirit that Tuck is known for.
After that meeting ended, a current
second year student gave us a very nice tour of Tuck's campus. Tuck, as
you might see from its booklet, has a very beautiful campus. It also has
a "career library" which has a staff of 3 where you can walk in and ask
"I want to learn how to get into company X" and the people who work
there will help you find contact people in X, information about it, its
competitors, etc. By the way, during the campus tour, I saw many
beautiful faces of kids (of students) and they are integral part of Tuck
campus. Although I should add that kids were really "professional" i.e.
they weren't crying or running around or throwing things on each other.
After the
tour, we went to cafeteria and had lunch. Unfortunately, there weren't
many students there (it was Friday and we might have been late) so we -
applicants - sat ourselves in groups of 5-6 and shared our experiences.
Some of the applicants had already interviewed and they said that their
interviews were with 2nd year students and the questions were pretty
straightforward i.e. "Your career, why MBA, why Tuck, leadership,
teamwork". My
campus visit ended around 2 pm. Almost all of the applicants actually
interviewed on campus as part of their visit, but since I live in Boston
(and thus can drive to Hanover almost anytime) I had decided not to
interview to have truly enjoyable experience instead of worrying about
how my interview might go. Plus, I would have an excuse (an interview)
to visit Tuck's great community once again.
Bottom Line: Tuck is a
different business school. My impression is that Tuck is a
students-spouses-kids-administration-professors bschool-social life
integrated 24-7 everyone-knows-everyone environment. I really liked it
and I would fit well there. But its not for everyone. So if you can make
a campus visit, definitely do it.
Good luck!
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