Wanted to give a recap on my 2 1/2 visit to Durham for my interview.
North Carolina - Beautiful state (this was my first time visiting). So many trees, I felt like I was in the woods! Living in SoCal my whole life, I've never experienced the season change with the leaves turning and all of that good stuff. Such a beautiful time to be there. When I arrived on Sunday it was ~70 degrees and there were even students out on the grass in bathing suits! It did rain pretty good on Tuesday morning when I left, though.
Durham - Not quite what I was expecting. When I got off the freeway (or highway or whatever they call them in NC), I needed to drive about 2 miles on one of the main streets to where I was staying. I was surprised at the “run down” look of the city. There were a lot of buildings that were old and tired and I could not tell if they were just old, or the remnants of former businesses that were no longer operating. Again, not what I was expecting. I later did a city tour with my friend and got to experience some of the shopping, nightlife, etc. that Durham has to offer. Slightly improved my perception of the city of Durham, but clearly a stark contrast to Los Angeles or any of Southern California (OC, SD, etc.) for that matter. Traffic was non-existent, something I certainly appreciated, having had to drive almost an hour and a half to go 25 miles to attend the Darden reception in Beverly Hills this week.
Duke University – Amazing campus. Having gone to a state school in California, I'm not used to the funding that private universities have and how that translates into to quality and size of the facilities. Gothic style buildings were amazing - as I understand the founder of the school modeled the campus after Princeton. Enormous sprawled out campus (similar to UCLA in that particular regard). I got to check out Cameron Indoor, the student center, Football Stadium, the campout site, and the huge chapel, and of the umpteen gyms, among other things. The exterior of the buildings was a throwback to mid 1800’s and simply stunning. The inside however, including Fuqua (discussed in more detail below) was up-to-date, with the most modern, cutting edge technology and aesthetic appointments.
Fuqua Experience - The building is awesome. It’s huge! Everything is within the building: classrooms, team rooms, library, cafeteria, large guest speaker auditorium, etc.) The building is very functional and practical. I can totally understand how people say that they don’t leave the building at all until 7-8 pm. Classrooms are very modern with first-rate recording technology. No laptop policy, by the way (which I like!). The library is very cool. Lots of places to study. Very practical books (job search, resume, industry stuff, etc). The team rooms are very cool. They probably have 40-50 of these (maybe more, I dunno) and there is a monitor in the center of the building that lets you know if rooms are free or occupied so you don’t have to search all over the building to find an empty room. Each of the study rooms has a huge wide screen monitor (maybe 27” or 32”) so students can all see the same file/presentation without peering over somebody’s laptop. The students were pretty down to earth and friendly. Even amongst ethnic groups that can be traditionally very rigid (read: no sense of humor or ability to discuss anything outside of school/business), I thought that students were social, engaging, and had great senses of humor.
Business School Women – OK, this topic is usually talked about in jest on this board, but I feel committed to comment on this. Before I do so, I must preface this by saying that I live in Los Angeles and my standards of attractive (or hot, or fill in the blank with your preferred adjective) are VERY high. An “LA 10” is different from a "10" in an other city in this country (IHateTheGMAT and Terp06 will back me up on this) with maybe an exception or two (Miami comes to mind). So I will comment on the Fuqua women, based on my LA scale.
I hereby name the women of the Fuqua Business School as
The Fuqua Foxes. Again, keep in mind, the women won’t be able to compete with women in Brentwood, Santa Monica, and Westwood, but seriously, I’d say that there were “7’s” EVERYWHERE
(again, a "7" is a great score on LA standards)! In comparison of the six (top 15 schools) that I’ve been to, the Dukies by far stole the cake. So for those guys that consider this as a factor in their decision-making process for school selection, keep Duke in the running.
Interview (Overall) - my interview was with a 2Y student. For better or for worse, it was not very conversational, as others on this board have indicated with their experiences. It was definitely scripted and my interviewer essentially went from one question to the next. No follow up on any of my answers, which was surprising for 2 reasons - 1) He didn’t have a finance background and I’m sure a lot of what I discussed went over his head (despite my diligent effort to put things in layman terms) and 2) I have pretty interesting work experience and work for a company that has been in the news A LOT over the past 12+ months. So not to get any questions was disappointing (I even told him to please feel free to ask questions, and that I am not shy or embarrassed about the situation). Given his background, he may not have known about my company as it is...Finally, he didn’t know what the CFA was. Shame on Duke! I know the school “trains” its interviewers and to not cover some basic fundamentals with the interviewers is highly disappointing. The fact aside that the CFA designation is difficult to achieve, a lot of my volunteer work is mentoring CFA candidates, so his lack of understanding dampens the value and significance of my extracurriculars that I shared with him. When I spoke to some students later that asked me how my interview went and when I mentioned this fact, they were embarrassed that this happened and shocked that someone (even in a non-finance career path) would not know about this, especially somebody conducting interviews. Enough on that, though. Since so many people are asking about this, about 75% of people in the admissions lobby were wearing suits. I choose business casual and am glad that I did. Personally. I thought suits were way too stuffy for the environment, regardless of how good it may make me look
Just my take on the matter, though.
Interview QuestionsWalk me through your resume
ST/LT goals
Why MBA
Why now
Why Duke
Leadership Experience
Team Experience
Why should Duke accept me
40 minutes – done!
Class Visit – I sat in on a Strategy core class. I’m not going to go into specifics, because people’s experiences vary greatly when it comes to class visits. Overall, I thought it was pretty cool.
Private Equity Club Meeting - I attended the Private Equity student club meeting, which was awesome! The club is only two years old, but was able to pull a heavy hitter middle-market i-bank. An MD and a ’08 Fuqua grad showed up to give a very brief intro on the company and then went into discussing the role of private equity firms (their main clients), the current status of the industry, and a typical example of an LBO. The meeting was scheduled to go for an hour, but the MD was enjoying the presentation and the questions and it ended up lasting for over 90 minutes and he stuck around at least another 45 minutes to answer questions. From talking to the president of the private equity club, he said that the company would be hiring Fuqua students for internships (and possibly full-time positions based on the internships). Overall, I was highly impressed by the club’s ability to bring in this big-gun from a solid i-bank and the fact that the firm wants to (for lack of a better word) hire Fuqua students.
I-Bank Recruiting - Recruiting is alive and well at Duke. The big banks (or whoever is left) have all been coming to campus as well. Also, about 40+ students just did the week on Wall St trek and had successful results. There is an expectation, though that students will follow up with additional visits to NY (only $135 round trip from Raleigh and a quick flight, according to my friend) for “informational” interviews. The formal recruiting has not started, but these early interactions are essential to making the closed list when things kick into high gear in January. It’s hard to tell how many spots will be available at these banks, but all of the big names (and even the traditional 2nd/3rd tier, which has become the 1st/2nd tier, I suppose) are highly interested in recruiting Dukies. JPMorgan (Jamie Dimon has 2 kids at Duke undergrad right now, I believe and also recently came down to give a standing room only presentation at Fuqua) sent (what my friend referred to as “an army”) 30+ people to the information session alone. Same with Bank of America. Among others, Goldman Sachs was also on campus and did some off campus schmoozing when their presentation was over.
If you have further questions, I can try and answer them. I wanted to provide a brief overview of my thoughts on some of the highlights from my trip. Overall, I had a truly great experience and could definitely see myself there for two years.
Nov 20
03 Nov 2008, 17:32
