Calling all Duke-Fuqua Applicants(2015 Intake) Class of 2017

So here goes my learning from Duke Info-session in Mumbai. I went as a gmatclub member more than a prospective student(since my focus is a one year MBA) so I guess I might have missed a few points.

All in all a very nice info-session. I believe the session goes in a very enriching direction if the school representative is an Alum(Jake from Fuqua 2011 batch).

Many of us reached before time so the Alum(Harshal) started engaging us with his stories and started taking questions. I should say there were very few funny questions, most of the people in info session were well researched. I had no idea about Fuqua but after 2 hours I took back quite a few things home.

Some information about the informal q&a session.

1. Being down south in the US, how people manage to network: Here Harshal spoke about Business cases, Internship events, networking opportunities through club visit. there are loads of companies coming to sniff out talent at Fuqua.

2. Career change is a very common thing post Fuqua, all the alums came from diverse industries and gave personal stories on how they changed their careers after Fuqua.

Official Presentation(Jake)

1. TEAM FUQUA : This was the them, Jake mentioned you might get sick of hearing this term on campus but also you will start living it. He showed picture of the 15 foot wall which everyone needs to climb at the start of the term(this is without any support or holders in the wall). A brilliant team building exercise.

2. 40 percent of the class is international, so there is lot of diversity. Harshal spoke about how diverse the study groups were during his time. And there were no two people from same country/same industry in the study group

3. Fuqua is very proud of its faculty, they have all the reason to be. Ranked number 1 in the world by bloomsberg

4. Think tanks: Research center, outside speaker. Companies coming on campus with real life problems and Fuqua students are exposed to those.

5. Jake mentioned his personal example of how he did an internship in Kenya and how team Fuqua was connected via social media during some unrest while he was there. The concept of Team Fuqua goes beyond classroom. He mentioned during school he got to experience Emerging Market, International Development and Consulting through his internship.

6. There were several discussions on Experiential learning, FCCP, GATE, Startup challenge(You can find more about these on their website)

7. Leadership seminar by renowned basketball coach Mike K.(Duke lives and breathes basketball so you cannot ignore it once you are at Fuqua)

8. All big companies come to Fuqua but time and again Jake was stressing thats not the only path and he quoted there are many people who are attracted by these companies but develop their own career path which does not involve the big blue chip companies.

9. Anuj(another alum) gave examples of how people from different country managed to land role in Branding, Retail Marketing( a general consensus was its tough to get into Brand Management within US if you are not from US but its not impossible)

10 Anuj also gave an example of Team Fuqua experience and how he was driven by 50-60 different people when he broke his collar bone and was not able to drive.

11. Every year 200-300 alums come to Fuqua for the alumni convention.

12. Average Age 29, Average Work ex 5.

13. For Indians there was a big discussion: Indian are second only to US student in terms of making up for the class size. Average 80 % GMAT range for Indian( Not official) 700-750, For the entire class(640-740).

14 Jake mentioned the importance of Optional essay to explain stuff, make it as concise as possible and deal with gaps in your profile. Don't treat optional essay as one of the achievement essays. State facts in optional essays. He said his personal preference while reading optional essays was Bullet points facts.

15. Discussion on two year vs 1 year(I controlled myself during this discussion )

16. Lot of question on diverse industries, Social Impact, Media : There is a guy in current batch who wants to get into Bollywood Management(That's something: Bollywood is Indian(Mumbai) film industry)


I left 10 mins before the session ended during the Q&A session. All in all a very good experience met a few GMATclub members too . Please chip in guys if i missed anything.(Took notes on phone)

Good stuff