In this wide-ranging interview on the admissions process at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, Luke Anthony Peña shares a little about his transition to Tuck from Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB). Peña came to Tuck just over a year ago, after working for several years in admissions at Stanford, where he also obtained his own MBA.
With Tuck’s application for the Class of 2021 live as of this morning, Peña’s interview comes at just the right time, providing valuable insight into the school, its culture, and its recently revamped admissions process. For one, he helps explain the applicant-initiated interview that sets Tuck apart from the majority of its peer schools—including exactly how applicants can take full advantage of it.
Of course, we couldn’t resist asking him a little about his transition from Palo Alto to Hanover. He allowed that the weather was indeed a big shift, but he was otherwise deliberate to avoid direct comparisons of the two schools, stressing that they are very different places.
Though a newcomer, Peña is clearly quite taken with Tuck, including its New Hampshire location. If you’re considering business schools in both large cities and more remote locations, have a listen to his pitch for small town Hanover.
Later in this episode, Peña begins to provide a comprehensive overview of recent changes in the school’s admissions process, including several shifts designed to make it more transparent and applicant friendly. One such change involved eliminating its former November round, which helped streamline the overall process and decrease applicants’ wait time for decisions.
Also part of an effort to simplify and streamline, Peña and his team decided to rethink the criteria they use to select Tuck’s incoming class. Beginning with the application that goes live this week, the school will now invite applicants to demonstrate the ways in which they are smart, nice, accomplished, and aware.
That’s it—simple and straightforward. Not only that, each application element maps directly to one or more of those four criteria, which Peña explains in detail in our conversation.
Peña was so generous with his time that we’ve decided to break the interview into two episodes. The second episode will air in this space in the coming weeks. Don’t miss that opportunity to hear him share valuable insights about the essays, the interview, and more. In the meantime, Part I of our interview with Peña is available here or iTunes.
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Like the episodes that preceded it, this episode was hosted by Editor-in-Chief Jeanette Brown and produced by Contributing Editor Jonathan Pfeffer. Clear Admit Co-Founder Graham Richmond also proved a capable sound engineer. Thanks to all of you who’ve been joining us! One more time: Ranking us in iTunes can help others find us, too, and subscribing means you’ll never miss a podcast.
