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(4.7) |
My 2 years flew by at Fuqua. Prior to matriculation, at information session, school visit and literally at every occasion, I heard "Team Fuqua". And soon after matriculation, I found that nothing but the truth. I got to know most of 450 students in my class. My friendships and the network that I established would last lifetime.
Career Services do a good job. There are many companies that sponsor work visas come to Fuqua but it seems that most of them finish recruiting somewhat early. Once the recruiting peak passes, there are not that many opportunities. Fuqua encourages that student to find out what they want to do first rather than what opportunities are available. If you do not have particular interests in what type of jobs or functions after graduation, I encourage that those job seekers find out all the companies that sponsor visas early on so you would not miss out the opportunities.
Overall BSchool experience (5.0)
Schools contribution (4.0)
Classmates rating (5.0)
Student body, diversity
Alumni Network
Culture & Student Support
Consulting
Finance
Marketing
Management
Career opportunities provided by school
Specialization in a particular area (e.g. Finance, Consulting, Healthcare, etc)
Fuqua has exceeded my expectations in every sense. I'll give a glimpse into different facets of B-school life below:
Career: This is what most of the people come here for and Fuqua is great at giving students a solid launchpad. Not to mention, the Alumni network is pretty kickass, too. There are so few big name firms that don't come to campus that I can count them on one hand. In fact, most of the big firms have their campus reps at Fuqua throughout the recruiting season and there only job is to interact with people and get their queries sorted. As expected, the competition is tough for the best brands, but every student more or less has a good shot at his/her desirable firms. Not to undermine other areas, but Healthcare, Marketing, and Consulting have been the traditional strongholds and Tech is growing big time as well.
Personally, things have worked out really well for me and I'll be heading into one of my dream gigs next year. Pretty stoked about it.
Social: Team Fuqua gets thrown around a lot. And it's for real. People genuinely like to help each other and there's a strong desire to reach collective success.
Outside of classes, there is a 'party' every other day or so and there are tons of opportunities to mingle around with people. Basketball is huge and winning the championship last year was a huge deal! The crowd, in general, is very humble and fun to be with.
Leadership opportunities: There are tons of leadership opportunities in clubs, events, and formal programs that you may pursue. You may choose to be super involved with how things are run at school or take a back seat and enjoy the ride. It's really up to individuals on how they wants to shape their experience.
I believe it is important to also highlight where school might need some improvement:
1.) Career services - Our career services is absolutely great, but I think a couple of processes can be worked on. For instance, some schools offer bid points for most of the firms where as Fuqua does not. Having said that, these aspects have been talked about and are in the process of being either experimented or implemented.
2.) There's a lot of construction going on in the campus which kind of creates unnecessary hassles. Again, it is for the better of future classes, but it creates slight hindrance to our routines.
Suggestions to future applicants:
Duke specific: Show your personality. Fuqua attracts certain kind of personalities and it is essential you show that you belong here.
Generic: Get a good GMAT, spend time on essays, visit the school.
Once admitted, be deliberate on what you want to achieve out of this experience. Time flies and it is important that you control important variables.
Professors and classes are awesome. You would often find yourself in a position where you would struggle to choose 3 classes for a term out of the given lot. The term system has its pros and cons. On one hand, things move really fast and you have more opportunity to learn newer things, but on the other hand, it makes it slightly difficult to take classes at other Duke schools running on Semester system.
Anyhow, like most top business schools, Duke has some fantastic professors. For instance, Dan Ariely teaches behavioral economics at Fuqua and I'm a huge fan of his! Again, there are some duds too, but they are very few and far between.
Pro tip: Any school you go to, choose professors before classes.
There is so much written about placement process that I don't think I would be able to debunk all the myths. In summary, it is an overwhelming process (especially, for internationals), but there are tons of opportunities out there. Banking and Consulting are typically agnostic of candidates' background, but expect you to network well. Other industries typically require some sort of past experience or at least, transferable skills.
At Fuqua, there is plenty of help available from seniors, campus reps, and career management center. Be sure to seek advice at every step and learn from others' mistakes. In my experience, people who succeed are the ones who clearly know what they want to do, who are able to prioritize things in a chaotic environment b-school environment, and who then put in 100% towards their goal.
Overall BSchool experience (5.0)
Schools contribution (4.0)
Classmates rating (5.0)
Curriculum, Classes, Professors
Alumni Network
Brand/Ranking
Consulting
Finance
Marketing
Tech
Management
Facilities