Tuck MBA Essay: Tell us who you are. How have your values and experiences shaped your identity and character? How will your background contribute to the diverse Tuck culture and community? (300 words)
1. Family, Upbringing, and Values
Family – Risk Averse vs Risk-Taking
It is interesting to see how parents’ risk-taking or risk aversion affects a child’s attitude toward opportunities. Either the child becomes a replica of the parent, carefully sorting out all options, getting into a cocoon with small disappointment, and becoming paralyzed by the analysis of the opportunity. The second group goes gung-ho on the opportunity that presents and goes knee-deep into the sweet spot of risk – the line where you can lose everything. Some lose everything – gain the lesson and then move on.
The change in attitude towards risks comes from the catastrophic failure of the parent or one’s own failure.
For the rest – an equilibrium has been set on managing risk vs. reward.
Upbringing – Planned or By Circumstance
Your openness to new experiences is determined by the early exposure your parents give – some from rigorous planning and many from circumstances.
The circumstances could be from a parent’s job (military, business, international agency), marital status (divorce), or financial status (setbacks that pushed you to move).
Circumstances more than upbringing from rigorous planning have a larger influence on the applicant’s mindset unless the parent is from the military or minutely involved with the applicant’s learning path (educators – teachers/psychologists)
International Citizen – Moving Around
Moving around the world immediately set the applicant aside for admission to Tuck MBA. The perspective the applicant gained is unlikely to be matched by a competing applicant with better functional skills.
Any AI-driven tool can offer technical analysis, but it takes a candidate with a worldview and perspective to see where the world is heading from the data to make high-value decisions.
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Value
All our values are built from a combination of innate traits shaped by experiences – mostly setbacks and suffering (direct or observing).
A person applying to Tuck MBA once faced a Grizzly just 2 feet away while on a camping trip. The trauma of facing death at the Age of 7, didn’t just go away with pleasant memories from subsequent summers. He found a way to manage risk and planned extensively never to face such dangers.
Values: Openness, Conscientiousness (Organized)
His innate trait was openness to experience but that one near-death experience tempered the value with Conscientiousness.
Start with your upbringing, family, and unique childhood experiences to demonstrate where the values began. This is the most effective way to capture a part of your profile that will not be captured in any part of the application.
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2. Unique Path –Trigger Events and Unique Path
While working with clients, I noticed that everyone has a unique journey. It takes a few sessions to unearth the setback that becomes the driver for a venture, a harsh truth that becomes a motivation to set things right in society, or an interaction with the marginalized in society that becomes an impetus for working for a non-profit.
Trigger Event: Brainstorm and find the trigger events that gave you a unique life and career journey.
Trigger Event – The Good
These events need not be all driven by your values, traits, and attitude. Some of the trigger events are influenced by role models, peers, and exposure to unique personalities.
An applicant shared how as a teenager, a sailing trip with an uncle – a marine biologist, sparked a lifelong interest in Ocean life and conservatism.
Trigger Event – The Bad
Tales of discrimination or underestimating an applicant’s capability is often the trigger event to prove otherwise. One applicant shared how he was bullied for being overweight. As an eighth grader, he set a goal to lose a pound every 2 weeks, and by the end of the summer, he reached the best shape in his life. That bullying set the applicant on a path for fitness and sports.
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Trigger Event – The Ugly
Some of the trigger events have no redeeming qualities. I would discourage my clients from including personal details of trauma in Tuck MBA Essays. For Stanford MBA What Matters Essays – include the trauma but don’t make it the central theme of the essay.
You must truly reflect and see if the ugly trigger event has any redeeming quality. If it has not or doesn’t fit with the Who You Are essay, apart from shocking the Tuck MBA admissions team, avoid it.
3. How you will add value
Once you narrate the origin of your values, passion, and commitment, transition to the success you had in growing a non-profit, contributing meaningfully to a cause, or developing a unique skill set through a creative endeavor, map the experiences to Tuck MBA student clubs and initiatives.
If you are like me – analyzing the deserted group pages of top schools while researching for F1GMAT’s Essay Guides, you will notice that there is a genuine gap in leadership for student clubs. Partly because to orient for the internship opportunities, candidates must be focused on the branding and networking process instead of leading a student club. Add to the responsibilities, the pressures of the course work overwhelm the applicants.
Leadership traits and experiences of managing a group, team, or company are valuable for the Tuck MBA student Clubs. Fundraising, marketing, and organizing large events (with multiple stakeholders) is another cliched but valuable experience that applicants cite for the Tuck Who you are Essay.
Spend First Half on who you are and the next half on how you will contribute.
Mixing up the traits, values, and experiences with how you will offer value reads even better for the Tuck MBA Who You Are Essay. That is an approach I follow for F1GMAT’s Essay Editing Service.
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