As CBS News Moneywatch this week reported, to be successful in applying to the Dartmouth Tuck MBA program, candidates will need to show evidence of being a “nice” person.
Nice is part of a quartet of candidate evaluation criteria released by Tuck Adcom in early June—these being “Smart, Nice, Accomplished, Aware.”
How should you understand this, and what should youdo about it?
First, nice is a new-ish emphasis but not an entirely new criterion. Tuck and most other MBA programs have consistently put value on students who are collaborative, help others, and who interact thoughtfully and with good intentions.
In MBA Admissions Strategy, I conclude my list of the 25 different attributes and characteristics which Adcoms evaluate MBA applicants by, with this one:
(25) Likeability: This means someone whom people enjoy having around. All else being equal, people always choose people they like as colleagues and co-workers. If you are the otherwise perfect candidate, but you are arrogant, or emotionally unavailable, or an egotist, or antisocial, or ready to trample everyone else with a win-at-all-cost attitude, your application will stall. Business school is an intense 16-hours-a-day kind of place. Adcom prefers people who are genuine about who they are, and easy to live with and who will be easy for the other students, faculty, and recruiters to live with.”
This characteristic shares ground with others on my list, including awareness of self and others: being aware of how you come across; emotional intelligence or “EQ”; personal integrity and honesty; and being a collaborative team member.
On the Tuck Admissions site, nice means… “you cultivate a habit of kindness. You actively encourage, celebrate, and support others. But being nice does not mean you’re a pushover who always agrees and defers. Nice Tuck candidates exhibit emotional intelligence. You layer compassion onto courage, and challenge others tactfully and thoughtfully. You display both strength and vulnerability. You ask for help, and you help others. You’re positive and principled. You act with respect and integrity, even when it’s not convenient or easy. You show empathy for the diverse experiences of others, while also sharing your own. You recognize that your success and others’ success are interdependent, and generously invest in both. Being nice at Tuck means building trust through deep, genuine connections which endure for life.”
Tuck’s essay question that seeks evidence of your niceness is: “Tuck students are nice, and invest generously in one another’s success. Share an example of how you helped someone else succeed.” (500 words)
Like most MBA admissions essays, there’s a quick, flat way to hack it, which probably won’t work, vs. a thoughtful, mature way to respond that takes more time, extracts more from you, and is more likely to succeed.
The flat way is to respond here is to give an example of when you helped someone complete a project or achieve a goal.
A better response would be to find ways to prove you have in yourself the complex matrix of ‘nice’ that Tuck Adcom is talking about. What example(s) do you have where you helped someone AND it was an interdependent success; where you created trust, perhaps even lifelong trust; where you showed compassion; where you demonstrated good principles or created mutual respect; and so on.
If you can, go beyond their definition to make nice an even more nuanced value: how in your case it may include, for example, a sense of perspective, or timing, or soft-strength, or inclusivity, or more.