Since I came to Dartmouth in 2006, the Tuck School of Business has made itself much more available to the overeager Dartmouth undergraduates. Last year marked the beginning of a new initiative aimed at offering all students enrolled at the College some exposure to the business school through the creation of undergraduate business courses at Tuck. The course selection tripled in quantity this year and now offers not only a course on financial accounting, but also introductory courses in marketing and business administration and strategy.
But as any gate-crasher knows, one should not limit his or herself just to what's on the menu. Though I would encourage any student looking to discover just what all those successful 20 and 30-somethings do when they're not drinking cocktails at the Canoe Club, I would prescribe more aggressive tactics for tackling all that Tuck has to offer. Indeed, it takes a bit more persistence and creative disregard for the written rule to really get behind the scenes of our conspicuously mysterious school of business and their 240 fledgling entrepreneurs and I-bankers to be.
For starters, if you're interested in learning from a world class business professor in an academic setting quite foreign to that experienced at the College, there are more options than these recently created undergraduate courses. Some Tuck courses are open to undergraduate auditors. Though the commitment level certainly depends both on your interest and on the demands of the course, this can be a great way to sit as a fly on the wall while not having your busy schedule constrained by any serious responsibilities unless you choose to engage yourself more fully in the coursework, of course.
This past Fall a friend and I audited a course on entrepreneurship taught by Tuck veteran Gregg Fairbrothers '76. Though you don't get a grade for auditing, you might just pick up some valuable information and skills before you set sail out on the stormy post-Dartmouth world and that's why we all came here, at least in liberal arts college theory.
But auditing is only the beginning. Determined students have been known to maneuver their way into being enrolled in full-fledged Tuck courses, and they've excelled, too. Last term a close friend of mine also parlayed a public policy independent study into a seat in a Tuck course on the business of health care. And to the marvel of his much more experienced classmates, he received an exalting citation for his work on the final project and presentation.
However, crashing Tuck doesn't stop in the classroom. From quarterly Tuck Tails to their own Winter Carnival the weekend following ours, there's plenty of opportunity for mingling and mixed drinks. While undergraduates and particularly those not of age are usually restricted access to such events due to College alcohol policy, security is meek at best and anyone who really cares and they should care to try at least once just for the fun of it can enter in plain sight. The trick is finding out when and where these events are held, which can simply be done by asking. If anything can be said about these gigs, their budgets appear to exceed what we tend to scrap together at the undergraduate level.
Tuck Tails are a great example of one of the finer points of any good business school, networking. After all, that's what business school is really all about, right? And what better way to facilitate this than to take a creme-of-the-crop collection of successful MBA candidates from around the world and get them, well, drunk. And don't think that they take themselves any more seriously than we do; one student told me that their Winter Carnival was replete with tacky attire and competitive boat-races.
So, whether you're digging yourself deep into the discussion of a second year course on marketing, or you're throwing back martinis at a cocktail event on Tuck's dime, by all means just don't be shy when it comes to crashing Tuck. We all know that Dartmouth belongs to the undergraduates, after all, and there is no reason not to act with the same air of comfort and lawlessness when you make your way down Tuck Mall.
