Few notes from my visit to Fuqua on 04-Oct:
I was on a road trip visiting Darden and Fuqua last week. It is one thing to go through the website, blogs, videos etc but what you can learn from visiting is so much greater. I signed up for career center presentation, student curriculum panel, partners info session, tour w/ lunch and student panel to answer any general questions.
I was surprised that there were so many people visiting/interviewing that day. There must be around 25 people. I think only two or three of us were there just for visiting. I didn’t sign up for interview.
First thing I noticed was that everything is student run. I saw just one adcom person sitting at a table talking to SY interviewers. Other than that everything else is student run. Lounge area was set up such that people can sit in groups of 5-6. Each group has one FY/SY chatting/answering questions from the group. If any group doesn’t have any Fuquan, they are actually engaging the visitors to chat. I like that they are coming out to help rather than waiting for us to go to them. Everything is well organized (by students of course). 2-3 interviews are on-going in the adjacent rooms while everybody else is chatting in lounge area.
Interviews: SYs are interviewing candidates. I did not see any admissions person interviewing. It seemed like they find a matching background SY (professional, country of origin etc.) to interview the candidates. All interviewed people said that the interview was very nice and comfortable. No pressure at all. All the questions were expected – why mba, why now, why Fuqua.
The place is not very big but I like that fact. Everything is under one roof – classes, auditoriums, fox center is on first floor, library, team rooms, faculty officers were on second floor and admissions, fin aid, career center were on third floor.
CMC presentation involved talking about the latest employment info (class of 2014) – deloitte tops the list with 31 hires, followed by amazon, microsoft with 10 each. I don’t remember the rest of the numbers. 94% got jobs within 3 months after graduation.
Curriculum panel involved 2 SYs and 1 FY. I was surprised to learn that about 25% of the class major in HSM. To me, that’s a good thing. Post-graduation, you will have a large network in healthcare industry. Class starts way ahead of every other school in early August. Global institute work takes place for one month followed by two terms in fall and two terms in spring. Each term is 6 weeks long. You have to be prepared to manage the fast paced learning.
My wife was very much impressed by quality of people she met. She asked more questions than I did and networked with more people than me.
She got few email ids of the partners and started communicating with them already. So I think partners association convinced her already.
Shoot if you guys have any questions.