Category Archives: Duke

Given the Fuqua School of Business’s tight-knit culture, growing global footprint, and strength in academic areas such as marketing, it’s no surprise that it attracts so mnay top-flight applicants every year. We are often surprised, however, by how many applicants apply to Duke without understanding the school and knowing whether or not it’s a good fit for them. We always urge these applicants to go back and do their homework a bit more before they start crafting their Duke applications.

Today we present five reasons why Fuqua may be a great place for you to spend two years as an MBA student:

You’ve got some work experience under your belt
Fuqua traditionally prefers that students in the Daytime MBA have about five years of work experience, though there is some flexibility on this requirement for stellar candidates.

You’re a less experienced candidate
The MMS degree is a great option for those coming straight from college, and the Cross-Continent MBA also sometimes accepts students with a little less work experience (though some years of work experience — and a current job — are definitely required).

You want to go into energy, including green energy
Whether you want to go into investment banking or become a sell-side commodities analyst, or you want to push innovations in alternative energy, or you care about sustainability in business, Duke is increasing its attentions in these critical areas and could be a great choice to launch or reposition your career.

You want to go into healthcare
There are few other programs with anything like the depth and breadth of healthcare management available at Duke. For those looking to accelerate their progression in an existing career or someone interested in transitioning over to hospital management, clinical outcomes, or the payer side, Duke’s Health Sector Management MBA and the other educational options are hard to beat.

You want a truly unique international MBA education
The Cross-Continent and the Global Executive tracks are both in a class of their own in terms of providing immersive opportunities with an exceptionally diverse cohort. If your career has already put you in the international arena, these are definitely worth investigating. Duke’s focus on global business is evident across all the school and makes the North Carolina campus more diverse than might be expected.

To stay on top on all of the latest news and analysis of Fuqua admissions, be sure to find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

Today we dig into the Fuqua School of Business’ application. There are very few changes this year, so our advice remains mostly unchanged:

Duke (Fuqua) Application Deadlines
Early Action: September 29, 2011
Round 1: November 1, 2011
Round 2: January 4, 2012
Round 3: March 8, 2012

These deadlines are virtually the same as last year’s. Note that, while most schools use the term “Early Action” to indicate that the decision is non-binding, Fuqua considers it to be binding. So, we only recommend applying in this round if you’re 100% certain that you want to attend Fuqua. If you’re waiting to hear back from some other schools before applying to Fuqua in Round 2, you’ll need to at least get the ball rolling on your Fuqua application before you know your fate at those other schools, since you won’t have a lot of time between mid-December and Duke’s January 4 deadline. Duke’s Round 3 deadline is the same as it was last year.

Duke (Fuqua) Application Essays

1. Describe your vision for your career and your inspiration for pursuing this career path.
   
   This question carries over unchanged from last year, as do all Fuqua’s other two essays. Overall, your approach to this question will be very similar to your approach to other “Why an MBA?” / career goals questions. While you should save the “Why Duke?” material for Question #3, be as specific as possible about how you see your career progressing over the next ten to twenty years. Do you want to dive right into industry and get your hands dirty? Learn as part of a larger operation and “grow up” as a leader, eventually taking the reins of a division within a large company? This is where you need to show that you’ve at least thought these things through, even if you know that you may change your mind one day. And by “specific” we don’t mean that you must spell out that you will spend exactly four years as a management consultant, then three years as a business development manager, etc. Rather, you must show that you can “tie it all together” and envision a realistic career path for yourself after graduating from Fuqua.
   
   Also, this is the time to discuss the career choices you’ve made up until now. Even though the essay asks for your “career vision,” don’t miss the “inspiration” part of the question — this is Fuqua’s way of trying to understand the you’ve made up until now. Your biggest potential mistake here is to give the impression of an applicant who’s applying to Fuqua simply because he’s bored or has stagnated in his current job. You always want to look like an applicant who is moving toward something great, not moving away from something bad.
2. How will your background, values, and non-work activities enhance the experience of other Duke MBA students and add value to Fuqua’s diverse culture?
   
   This essay gives you a good chance to specifically highlight any strengths or themes that you want to emphasize more in your application. Everything in your background applies: your work experience, your personal life, and your hobbies all make you unique. Some applicants see this and think, “Oh, it’s a ‘diversity’ question. I’m afraid I don’t bring much ‘diversity’ to the table,” but that’s simply not true. All applicants have some things in their backgrounds that make them interesting… Discuss them here! And, do it in a way that demonstrates that you “get” the values that Fuqua prizes — including teamwork, innovation, and a global perspective.
3. Why Duke? (If you are interested in a specific concentration, joint degree, clubs or activities, please discuss how you would contribute to these in this essay.)
   
   Duke, like some other top schools that tend to sit just outside the top ten in the MBA rankings, gets a lot of applications from candidates who also have applied to Harvard, Wharton, etc., and the school is quite savvy at recognizing when an applicant is truly excited about Duke. This is your opportunity to demonstrate that you have really researched the program, understand its core values (mentioned above), and really want to spend the rest of your life as a member of the Fuqua community.
   
   Some applicants will surely rattle of names of classes, professors, and on-campus clubs, to show that they’ve done their homework. For the most part, while this research is critical for you, “showing off” this kind of knowledge usually elicits a “big deal” from admissions officers. Go deeper, and force yourself to answer the question… Why Duke? Some pragmatic components to your response are totally fine — it has strong ties to the health care industry, which is what first drew you to the program, for instance. That’s a completely real, honest response. Then, starting there, move into how you can see yourself thriving in the Duke community. You prefer the school’s teamwork-oriented teaching style since it’s consistent with your undergraduate experience… Every student or alum you have met has raved about the program… That’s just an example, but it’s a more heartfelt, interesting, and effective response than simply rattling off names of clubs, because it’s about you.

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Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business gets its fair share if applicants every year. Given the school’s tight-knit community and knack for producing good grads, it’s not surprising that so many applicants think about applying to Fuqua. What does surprise us, though, is that so few of those applicants really know the school beyond its obvious strengths. We always urge these applicants to go back and do their homework a bit more before they start crafting their Fuqua applications.

Today we look at four things that we like about the Fuqua School of Business:

Collaborative Leadership
Duke is focused most of all on collaborative leadership. Other than Kellogg and perhaps UCLA Anderson, few business schools can cite that as the program’s most distinguishing feature to the degree that Fuqua can. This breaks down as collaboration as embodied in “Team Fuqua” and the emphasis on student involvement across the educational experience, and leadership such as all business schools emphasize, but none in quite the same way as Duke with their “Leaders of Consequence.”

Leaders of Consequence
Duke has a stated goal: to create so-called “Leaders of Consequence” a phrase that we believe was coined by Dean Blair Sheppard around 2008, when he assumed leadership, and which has since been refined to “global leaders of consequence”. This “leaders of consequence” concept is so important that it comes into play within the Fuqua application essays. While a concrete definition is lacking, suffice it to say that Duke feels a leader of consequence is adaptable, down to earth, and ethical. As Dean Sheppard put it, they want to produce graduates “who can drink champagne with the rich and famous and can drink chai with those who that’s all they can afford.” In terms of an application, like other top schools, Duke’s admissions teams are looking for people who have made a difference in their jobs and in their communities, and who seek an MBA from Fuqua in their quest to make a real impact on the world in the future. See our discussion of the current essay questions below for more on the “leader of consequence” concept and how it plays into admissions at Duke Fuqua.

Expanding Reach
Fuqua like to say it is “rethinking the boundaries of business school” and as already discussed, has systematically broadened its reach both geographically, being the only school that has a firm presence in major centers around the world, and demographically, by offering compelling options to students in various phases of their careers and from different populations.

Open Interview Process
Fuqua strongly encourages candidates to travel to Durham and visit campus, and while you’re there, interview with a student. This Open Interview option is available only in the earliest part of the admissions cycle each year, usually starting in mid-September and running through October. Scheduling opens in August for these limited slots. You need not have your application completed in advance of the Open Interview; it is characterized more as an “evaluation” than an interview.

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