Academic Experience

Are you ready to be challenged at every moment?

Every element in the academic experience at Tuck—from team-based project work and experiential and global learning opportunities to case-based courses, independent study, and small-scale Research-to-Practice Seminars—is designed develop curious, creative leaders.

Within the MBA program, Tuck defines three key curriculum goals and ten related curriculum objectives. 

Goal: Functional Expertise. Successful leaders need to understand an organization as a whole and its external environment. Primarily through the core curriculum, but supported by elements of the wider core experience, students will develop the functional depth, cross-functional fluency, strategic thinking, and management perspectives to thrive along whatever paths they choose to take in their career journey.

Objectives:

1. Students will successfully apply the tools of each field within the context of the course in which the tools are taught. 
2. Students will successfully apply the tools of each field within the context of other courses in the field. 
3. Students will successfully apply tools/concepts from other fields learned in other courses.

Goal: Personal Leadership Capabilities.  Successful leaders need to craft, communicate, and execute a vision for change with and through other people. Leveraging the content and active practice enabled by the core curriculum and the integrated co-curricular activities, students will understand and build the capabilities—for example, self-awareness and empathy—that are essential to leading change.

Objectives:

4. Students will demonstrate self-awareness by developing more accurate perceptions of their strengths and areas for improvement as leaders.
5. Students will demonstrate situational awareness by recognizing the leadership behaviors required to meet the demands of specific situations, organizations, and cultures.
6. Students will be skilled team members and demonstrate their ability to manage a team process and facilitate productive team output.
7. Students will demonstrate their ability to recognize ethical dilemmas and create and defend an ethical course of action.

Goal: Analytical Skills.  Successful leaders need to engage effectively with others in developing, defending, and refining a point of view. Through the core curriculum and the wider core experience, students will develop both a facility with data analytics and the ability to conceptually decompose complex problems to synthesize an evidence-based point of view and recommendation. 

Objectives:

8. Students will demonstrate their ability to formulate a clearly defined problem in a complex and ill-defined situation.
9. Students will demonstrate their ability to use appropriate data and information in conjunction with analytical methods to analyze complex problems.
10. Students will demonstrate their ability to formulate, defend, and refine appropriate recommendations for action based on their analysis of complex problems.

Tuck is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). Its most recent AACSB review occurred in April 2023.

Tuck’s MBA employment report, prepared and released annually, also captures learning outcomes. The latest employment report can be found here.