Current Fuqua Student Blogs

FROM From Bench to Board (Fuqua Current Student): Informational Interview Sample Questions

Informational interviews are the basic building blocks of career development. It allows you to quickly gain insights from people who have the jobs that you may (or may not) want. During the internship, it is essential to have as many informational interviews with people in the organization as possible. Not only can you learn the culture, but it also allows you to learn how career development happens and also gains you exposure in the company. Informational interviews are also something MBA students do on a routine basis during the program, to learn more about the various career opportunities. Continue reading »

FROM Reaching the Thirties: Winter is Coming to Duke

Undoubtedly, Durham is an amazing and beautiful place. Just this morning I took a picture at one of the paths that take you from the parking lot to school. You could see that winter is coming to Duke! Trees have a wide variety of colors including different shades of red, yellow, brown, pink, and green. And Duke … Continue reading →

FROM From Bench to Board (Fuqua Current Student): Advice to First Year MBAs: Get Functional Experience

One thing I did not know when recruiting for the MBA summer internship was the following: just how important prior experience in the function that you're recruiting for was. For example, I recruited for marketing and the one thing I didn't have was strong functional experience in marketing prior to the MBA. What I did do was leverage the opportunities in the first year of the MBA to help build that functional skill set in marketing. Continue reading »

FROM From Bench to Board (Fuqua Current Student): Advice to First Years: Take Lots of Risks to Expose Your Weaknesses

One reason for doing the MBA is to have the freedom to try things that you would be too risk-averse or time-limited to do working full time. It's like buying time - you can pay $50,000 a year for the freedom to learn and explore things about the world that would not be possible with a day job. It would be a waste to not fully utilize this opportunity to genuinely improve yourself during the two year degree. Continue reading »

FROM From Bench to Board (Fuqua Current Student): Is Getting An MBA Worth It?

Yes, that age-old question: is the $120,000 MBA worth it? Successful business people have both advocated and renounced the degree for reasons you've probably already read or heard about. Now that I'm almost done with my MBA, I figured it would be a good time to start thinking about this question. After all, any investor would want to know what return their getting on their investments. Education should be no different. Continue reading »

FROM From Bench to Board (Fuqua Current Student): Duke MBA Business Improv Course

A year ago when I was still a first year Fuqua MBA student, I saw "Business Improv" when registering for classes and had no idea how it may be useful, so I went back to preparing for my summer internship interviews. Fast forward to the end of the summer, and I was given feedback from my internship's final presentation that I needed to improve my speaking skills. Continue reading »

Hi everyone, now that the Class of 2017 application cycle is one round from being over, I know many of you are debating between offers or just want to learn more about the Fuqua MBA. I'm a current second year MBA student at Duke and maintain a blog that focuses primarily on my MBA experience.

I'd like to "crowdsource" topics for future blog posts from readers of this thread.

I've had readers request I write about some topics in the past, and find that they are more relevant to what readers want to read about. I'd like to open this up to everyone who is reading this thread. I'm graduating in a couple of months, so now is a good time to reflect on what you all want to learn about the experience. You can find my blog here to see what topics have been covered in the past.

Please shoot me a PM and I would be happy to find out what you're curious to learn about the Duke MBA.

FROM Reaching the Thirties: The Duke MBA, Best 2014 Business School

Is a happy day for the Duke MBA. Businessweek‘s full-time MBA ranking was released today, and Fuqua is #1!! Businessweek classifies schools using the following three criteria: how company recruiters rate MBA students in each school (45%), how graduating MBA students rate their own school (45%), and the research performed by the school’s faculty (10%). This is one of … Continue reading →

FROM Reaching the Thirties: Winter is Coming to Duke

Undoubtedly, Durham is an amazing and beautiful place. Just this morning I took a picture at one of the paths that take you from the parking lot to school. You could see that winter is coming to Duke! Trees have a wide variety of colors including different shades of red, yellow, brown, pink, and green. And Duke … Continue reading →

FROM From Bench to Board (Fuqua Current Student): Duke MBA Insights: The Best Time to Get the MBA (Reader Request)

I've been getting quite a few questions from readers on when the best time to do the MBA is. Usually the question is around how much work experience would be competitive as an applicant. Some prospective students are concerned that they do not have as much work experience as others. If you look around, the Duke MBA and similar MBA programs usually have a median work experience of 5 years in their incoming class. Here's I'd like to offer my perspective as someone who only had 3 years of work experience prior to starting the MBA at Duke Fuqua. Continue reading »

FROM Reaching the Thirties: And I’m Back!

I can’t believe how much time has passed since the last time I wrote a post! I have been really lazy, I have to admit it! In any case, I have been thinking about publishing several posts on my blog for quite a while, but I always found reasons not to: grab some drinks with classmates, … Continue reading →

FROM Reaching the Thirties: Duke back in Final Four!!

YESSSSS!!!! Yesterday Duke beat Gonzaga, 52-66, and qualified for the final four!!! (what we would call semifinals  in the rest of the world). For those who don’t know much about basketball, this is big guys. If you have been following my blog, you know that I am a Duke basketball fan. Back in Spain I … Continue reading →

FROM Reaching the Thirties: Duke 2015 NCAA Champions

WOW! Just wow! The final game of the NCAA championship played on Monday against Wisconsin was astonishing. At the end, Duke beat the Badgers 68-63 in a very tight game. I watched the final at school. Around 500 students and family members where at Geneen, Fuqua’s main auditorium, to cheer for Duke. This is what … Continue reading →

FROM From Bench to Board (Fuqua Current Student): Duke MBA 2nd Year Electives Are Amazing

This is a post I wrote a while back. Sorry that I haven't been good at updating my blog lately. I'm writing again so stay tuned for some new posts in the upcoming weeks! Here goes. I'm currently about half way through my second year of the Duke Fuqua MBA and have taken quite a few electives now. I've written about Fuqua electives toward the end of my first year at Duke and think it's a good time to give an update on my experience with the second year electives. And as the title states, they have been quite amazing. Continue reading »

FROM Reaching the Thirties: My Last Day of Class at Fuqua

This is it! My two years at The Fuqua School of Business are coming to an end. Today I had my last class of the MBA! Lately the word I hear the most is “last”. I know I’m using it often: my last case, my last class, our last team meeting, our last lunch together at … Continue reading →

FROM From Bench to Board (Fuqua Current Student): Recruiting at Duke MBA (Fuqua)

With my MBA journey at Duke Fuqua coming to an end, I thought it'd be a great time to wrap up and reflect upon my experiences in the past 2 years. In an effort to write things that my readers care the most about, a while back I reached out to GMATClub and sought out questions. I plan to answer one of these questions per post over the next couple of months. So stay tuned for more content that have been decided by you, the reader. Continue reading »

FROM Reaching the Thirties: This Is not the End… This Is the Beginning

On Saturday May 9 I officially graduated from The Fuqua School of Business. The journey is over! Just yesterday I was taking over the phone with one of my best friends, Nacho, and he was telling me how he remembered all my struggles when applying to the MBA. He went on making fun of me about how … Continue reading →