Six years into my career I had obtained some early professional success and was living a comfortable life. However, I found my network to be increasingly homogenous, and I was concerned that not having a formal business education background would limit my professional progression later in life. I wanted to seek out an opportunity to be exposed to people from completely different professional backgrounds and parts of the globe, and business school seemed like a great way to do that.

More than anything, the thing I wanted most out of my MBA experience was community. While all schools offer incredible professors, I wanted to maximize my opportunity to learn from my peers, all of whom had wildly different backgrounds from myself. While on the surface a rural environment in New Hampshire may not seem like an ideal business school environment, I quickly learned that not having to compete with urban distractions meant that everyone who came to Tuck was fully invested in their Tuck experience, which in turn creates a strong sense of community.

While Tuck’s campus is in New Hampshire, I was shocked to realize that experiential learning opportunities afforded to you at Tuck are truly endless, and not bound by Tuck’s immediate environment. I was able to take on countless experiential learning opportunities, from screening pitch decks for a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, to completing consulting projects for Patagonia, to visiting technology startups in China—there are countless resources at Tuck to make any experience you want a reality.

The learning environment at Tuck forces you to truly learn what it means to work as a team. Beginning with your first days on campus, Tuck matches you with a diverse study group, carefully crafting teams with geographic and professional diversity. Through countless projects, you are forced to learn your individual strengths and weaknesses, and how to work collectively to achieve a common goal. While this may seem basic in nature, most students arrive to business school having had a long history of professional success based on their own efforts. However, Tuck teaches you that organizational success requires true collaboration—and the school works hard to foster an environment to build skills necessary to achieve organizational success.

The Tuck alumni network is incredibly accessible in ways that I did not remotely anticipate. Entering Tuck, I assumed my only true interaction with alumni would be through email, occasionally reaching out to people who may be directly relevant to my career. While Tuck alumni are very accessible via email, it is far from the only interaction I have had with the alumni network. While at Tuck I was shocked at how accessible and available Tuck alumni are in all aspects of Tuck life.

I was a Visiting Executive fellow, helping to run a program that fosters direct engagement between students and visiting executives through intimate interactions. Many of the visiting executives who visit Tuck are alumni, and they go above and beyond in making themselves available to Tuck students. Separate from that, on almost every domestic and international trip that I took while at Tuck, we often reached out to Tuck alumni. It was shocking how enthusiastic they were to take essentially strangers out to dinner, with the only thing connecting us being our bond to Tuck. These are some of the experiences that I have had with the Tuck alumni network that truly emphasized how strong the Tuck bond is.

Tuck is a special place. I firmly believe that all business schools will provide students with a great academic experience. While Tuck’s academic experience is excellent, what makes Tuck so truly unique—its supportive community and collaborative culture—is something that can only be experienced in person.