Duke (Fuqua) 2013 - Calling All Applicants

It went pretty well, I hope! I believe all of the interviews were conducted by 2nd-years.
Mine was conducted by an international student and the interview flow was fairly conversational, though he did follow a fairly structured list of questions. (Whether this is attributed to English not being his 1st language or his interview style, I'm not sure).
All in all, I did my best to express my enthusiasm and mirror his energy; lots of smiles and a few laughs but difficult for me to tell whether I impressed him or not. He was both very friendly and very professional... I didn't feel as if we were hitting it off over a coffee nor did I feel as if it was all business.
The questions were fairly straightforward, nothing out of left field. I didn't get tripped up or stumble on any of the questions so I was pleased at that (this being my 1st interview and all) but did I knock the questions out of the park with my answers? Maybe not.

The interview lasted about 1 hour in a pretty small room w/ no windows (the door had a glass window though). The last 10-15 minutes were open for my own questions.

Best of luck to those who have their interview ahead!!

I'll probably write a post about the experience in my blog when I get the chance, but I have just been super, super busy.

Duke probably gave a great platform to display the "themes" we selected through 25 random things. My question is for other apps. With the decrease in word limits and with 2/4 essays very straight forward or career goals (general trend across schools) how should one approach the remainig 2 essays. Should I diversify the themes across the 2 or resonate the same thing in both. I would personally like to diversify as much as possible (sticking to 3-4 themes, anyways that is the max one can do in two essays). anyone else who would like to suggest how best I should handle this? (Im coming from all the "brand" "themes" stuff I've read and heard people talk about all the time)

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What do you mean "other 2". There are only 2 essays. The third essay is optional and Duke is fairly clear that it is only supposed to be about extenuating circumstances. Don't make the mistake of writing about something in essay 3 that does not belong there.

The 25 random things are "random"... Of course you want to emphasize doing things together with people and team type stuff (helping others and willingness to work together to get things done)..but end of the day it is supposed to be random and about you.

The second one is about why you want to go to Duke...It's the age-old -- Why Duke? Why MBA? Why now? -- integrated into one nice 2 page essay...but it is supposed to be written in a more down-to-earth fashion because you are telling your friends and family about why you want to go to Duke. Basically, its about how much you know about the program and your rationale for why it fits in with your professional aspirations. The main purpose of the essay is to gauge your passion for Duke (and your rationale for an MBA) and determine whether you will be a good "fit" at Fuqua. Of course everyone will drop names of courses and professors and clubs etc. But every top school has all that. Almost everyone will say "collaborative team environment" -- but it's how you connect all these things with your own goals. It's a difficult essay because you don't want to sound unoriginal and say the same thing 3000 other people are going to say; that's the challenge.

Good luck! Sounds like you had a solid interview. And yeah, they all have a list of questions they need to ask. Like I said before, whether they admit it or not, 2Y kids are just as (if not more) nervous conducting the interviews.

I think -- strategically it helps when someone with an entirely different background / life experience interviews you. They will be naturally more curious about you and your life experiences (and trying to understand that) rather than trying to judge you (as they do not have that "context").

It might be counter intuitive and some on this forum might disagree with me...but I think it's far more tougher when someone with a similar background / life experience interviews you. They will be far more adept at questioning your choices, motivation, etc.

Done with interview at Duke on campus few days back. The interview and the overall experience at Fuqua was amazing, I was in Durham for 5 days and with two days of official activities I also used the remaining 3 days to go around the campus having informal conversations with current 1st and 2nd year students and I can very clearly say Fuqua has an amazing culture and awesome students and great faculty without any doubt. My interview was the standard 30 min interview and it was very relaxed but structured and clear. all the best to those waiting to interview.

Absolutely.

But my question was for other applications. I had this dilemma for most of the other schools where I need to write 4 essays (2 are pretty straight-forward career goals essays and the "other two" are the ones where I can insert themes. This trend is consistent across all the schools I'm targeting. So my question was should I diversify the themes across these two essays or resonate the same thing in both the essays)

Probably I asked the question on the wrong forum. My bad.

By the way, I'm through with my Duke app. and I hope I wasn't unoriginal!

I concur. There is always a chance you may end up on the other side of interviewer's biases (developed from a similar experience as yours).
For that matter even I would be much more comfortable explaining about my experiences when I know no one is trying to judge me.

I am working on the "25 Random Things" essay and I have some questions. Please feel free to chime in!

The latter part of the question prompt - so learning these "25 Random Things" helps us get to know someone's personality, background, special talents, and more.

In this spirit, the Admissions Committee also wants to get to know you - beyond the professional and academic achievements listed in your resume and transcript. You can share with us important life experiences, your likes/dislikes, hobbies, achievements, fun facts, or anything that helps us understand what makes you who you are. Share with us your list of "25 Random Things" about YOU.

So based on the "25 Random Things" the Fuqua adcom wants to know the applicant's personality and who we are really. They want us to go beyond our Resume, which is meant for our accomplishments.

Questions that I have -

1. Does this mean that we cant talk about work at all? Few incidents in work life do impact you as a person such as ethical issues, frustrations ,etc. Can't we talk about them? Definitely they are not stated as achievement in the Resume.
2. Can we talk about community contribution? Fuqua application has separate place to feed that information.
3. Generally resume has a section where we talk about about interest and extra-curricular. Can we elaborate on some of them?

The way I see it, a resume would read like your list of greatest hits, but the 25 random things is a chance for you to tell them why/how you got those because of xyz qualities or things you did.

1. I think you can absolutely talk about work as long as it reveals something about you that they wouldn't come to know about otherwise through the essays. I'd stay away from talking about frustration, unless it reveals something positive about you.

2. Ditto for community service and special interests. Your resume might read: Volunteered in ABC organization, teaching Rwandan orphans..so don't put this kind of statement in the essay. Expand on it, tell them an incident that happened in Rwanda where you rose to the challenge or you got bitten by a snake and self administered first aid or something.

My $0.02 cents Does anyone else have any better ideas?

That was a prudent reply Prudence.

I can write all day long about my fav food, music, etc but how will it show my personality? FountainHead is my favorite book but it does not help my application because 30 Million people say the same thing. But when I say that I stopped xxx from doing an unethical act, I portray my self in a different light.

Well yeah, just saying that the Fountainhead is your favorite book by itself doesn't say much IMHO

I found this article from Admissionado quite useful for my essays:

https://admissionado.com/mba/resources/m ... qualities/

This might be out of left field...but I wouldn't really mention fountainhead as my favorite book if I were applying to a school that is all about collaboration and collective team spirit.

On the other hand -- you could get away with something like -- Rorak's courtroom speech inspired you to always remain true to yourself no matter what....and when you faced XYZ ethical dilemma -- you knew what you had to do.

I think it's important to provide a lot of vivid details and imagery...go back to your creative writing class in college for inspiration. Write with passion -- it will show. If you just mention superficial things, then I don't think it will help you too much.

Funny is good too if you can pull it off.

But there is also a strategic element to this essay (in my humble opinion). As much as they say -- tell me about yourself -- you have to think about what qualities you want to emphasize to the ad com. I would say -- make sure you hit on big themes like -- compassion, humility, team work, etc. Those are all elements they will be looking for. So you can work those themes into your stories...in other words you want to tell them you are a compassionate person without actually using the word compassion.

I'm targeting Fuqua Round 2. Visited campus in 2010 on a business trip and was really impressed with the students' enthusiasm.

I think you've pretty much explained it.

There is no problem in citing things from work or anywhere else. Just make sure you give them an interesting incident/story/emotion or something which is not a mere fact listed somewhere on your application. (Rwandan orphans example)

I had a lot of time. So here is what I did.

Wrote everything I could think of in a few days. I had some 45 points when I began to write. Put them in an excel. Weeded the irrelevant. Clubbed a few.
Was left with 20 or so.

Divided them into 2 fields: 1.) School/UG/Work and 2.) Achievements/Passion/Community/Random.
Created a pivot and tried to have a fair mix of everything. There were a couple of areas where I was lacking. Say for eg. I had no passion in school or no community experience in UG. I tried to highlight that point in the rest of my 5 points.

Try to diversify your points (and keep in mind the themes that you want to project). And be careful of not projecting yourself in a negative light. (I had to cut down at least 3 "interesting" points). Use humor only if you're sure you can pull it off.

Cheers!

For the rest of you non-pivot table folks, I'm just having fun with the 25 things essay and am hoping my personality shines through. I think if I over-engineer this with categories, themes, etc my voice will get lost in the process. Just my two cents on how I'm approaching this one...there's obviously no right or wrong way here.

Good luck everyone. A few more weeks for R1..

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I think I've had the most fun with the Fuqua essays this year. Seriously, writing the same old tell me why, tell me how, tell me how you achieved, tell me how you sucked, tell me your weaknesses.. gets boring!

I am scheduling my interview with Duke now. It seems there is a meeting with committee option as well.

I don't have many questions but just want to go and introduce myself. Is that a good idea? What is the meeting with admission committee intended for.

thanks.