At Fuqua, we wholeheartedly believe our community grows stronger as our diversity increases. Thus, we intentionally seek to build a diverse student population—one that’s truly representative across experiences, backgrounds, cultures, beliefs, nationalities, citizenships, and various demographics. Our goal is to broaden collective perspective and facilitate more innovative thought and discussion in your program.

International students are a vital part of our Fuqua community. Having a Daytime MBA population where 35-40 percent are non-U.S. citizens, we understand some of the challenges and obstacles international students sometimes face as they acclimate to a new school, a new environment, and a new culture.  Here are some resources to help smooth your transition—tools for everything from helping you navigate the visa process to assisting with your adjustment to life in a new country.

Get Help Financing Your Degree

We have several options for international students looking for help financing their MBA. All Fuqua students are eligible for merit-based scholarships, a number of which are designated for students from Asia, Europe, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and other regions.

We also offer loan programs for international students, including programs that do not require a U.S. cosigner. Check out this detailed guide to financial aid and a list of FAQs.

Find On-Campus Support

Have questions about the student visa application process? Duke Visa Services has a dedicated team who can help you ensure you don’t miss any steps when applying for your student visa.

Once you’re here, Duke’s International House has a variety of support services available to you, including help applying for a driver’s license and social security number, finding housing, and connecting with a network of international graduate students for advice and support.

You’ll also find opportunities to connect with other international students at Fuqua and share your culture through clubs like the Asian Business Club, the European Business Club, and the Latin American Student Association.

Connect to Other International Families

If you’re bringing your spouse, partner, or family to Durham, you’re not alone. We have a robust support network with Fuqua Partners and Fuqua Families, giving your family opportunities to participate in activities and form connections.

Duke’s International House also offers an orientation geared toward international spouses and partners, a children’s playgroup, English conversation practice, and more.

If you have children who’ll be attending school, Durham Public Schools offer English as a Second Language (ESL) support and other academic support services. If your spouse or partner also wants English learning support, Durham Technical Community College offers a number of free and affordable ESL classes, and several organizations in Durham host English conversation classes.

Enjoy Cultural Activities Across the Triangle

Durham and its neighboring cities Raleigh and Chapel Hill make up “The Triangle,” a bustling metro area. The Triangle attracts many expat communities thanks to international corporations based in Research Triangle Park and a strong network of universities in the region. You can connect with other international professionals through organizations like the Japan America Society and the North Carolina Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

The Triangle is also home to many cultural festivals and events throughout the year, including the NC International Festival, Cary Diwali Celebration, and the Bimbé Cultural Arts Festival.

Gain Support for Your Next Career Move

Our Career Management Center (CMC) advisors coach you through finding the right position after graduation. Advisors work closely with international clubs at Fuqua, guiding you to identify opportunities, develop relationships with organizations, and land an offer. 

To what extent will you have access to employment in the U.S. in the current environment? We can help you understand current challenges, identify employment opportunities that have historically been available to international graduates, develop strategies tailored to your interests, and guide you through visa sponsorship for working in the U.S. after graduation.  A successful career search requires a lot of work, but our process is thorough, methodical, and tailored to your ambitions.

Overall you’ll find a welcoming and supportive community here at Fuqua while also building the skills you need to become a global leader in your industry. We look forward to seeing you soon!

The post How Fuqua Welcomes and Supports Our International Students appeared first on Duke Daytime MBA Student Blog.

I would not have pictured myself in an MBA program 10 years ago.

As an undergraduate chemistry major, I chose to develop my understanding of the world through the lens of science, aspiring to apply that science to the betterment of human life. This naturally led me to explore a career in medicine, which I ultimately pursued, but not before an experience with Teach For America permanently transformed the tint of my science-colored lens.

As I witnessed and tried to combat the effect of socioeconomics in education, I realized that the health care industry is similarly held hostage by multiple systemic factors. With my own family having limited resources during my upbringing and bemoaning the cost of care in the States, I became passionate about tackling systems-level challenges and knew that I needed to make them a career priority.

A Desire to Go Beyond Medical School

In the first year of medical school, I quickly realized that the traditional medical curriculum would unlikely develop me into the sophisticated and skilled systems leader that I aspired to become. Wanting to become better equipped at handling the challenges most meaningful to me, I considered multiple ‘add-on’ master’s degree programs: business administration (MBA), public health (MPH), public policy (MPP), and health administration (MHA).

After seeking mentorship from alumni of the respective programs, I decided to pursue the MBA for my desires to implement rather than generate research, to make higher-volume changes over shorter time courses, and to have the opportunity to transcend industry boundaries. I applied to Fuqua, was accepted, and my four-year MD program thus evolved into a five-year MD/MBA joint degree.

The MBA Experience

My experience at Fuqua was phenomenal. I gained ‘hard skills’ previously foreign to me through classes in accounting, finance, strategy, and operations. I sharpened my ‘soft skills’ in leadership, public speaking, and thinking on my feet through numerous avenues, including a hilarious managerial improvisation elective, a semester-long public speaking core experience, and as president of the Health Provider Association, working to bring the Duke medical and business schools closer together. The health care classes at Fuqua, such as Health Care Markets and the HSM Bootcamp, were incredibly enriching, even for an MD student who had been living in the clinical realm day-to-day. As the cherry on top, I also gained access to an extraordinary network of both peers and alumni, which has opened my eyes to the boundless opportunities available to an MD that are far beyond the confines of any hospital.

The skills I developed at Fuqua prepared me for a summer internship at HCA. They also empowered me to navigate health system politics and undertake a major accounting (TDABC) research project in 2016 and 2017, the findings of which were published in The Journal of the American Medical Association in February 2018. As someone who has decided to try to bridge the long-divided worlds of business and medicine, I saw this publication as a small victory: it’s not every day that MBA-type work is published in a major medical journal. To me, this is an encouraging sign that health care leaders are seeing the inescapable interdependence of the two fields in navigating the health care cost crisis.

What’s Next?

I graduate from medical school in May 2018 and will thereafter be attending the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics program with my Fuqua colleague Marc Toledo to study business ethics through the lens of World War II and the Holocaust. In June, I will begin training at a three-year emergency medicine residency. The specialty choice is another story, but you can be sure that my administrative interests played a key role! I see a future in corporate health system administration, health care startups, venture capital, or some amalgam of these. I also miss my past life as a teacher and may like to hold an academic affiliation so that I can teach students on the side.

The post Why I Pursued an MD/MBA Joint Degree appeared first on Duke Daytime MBA Student Blog.

I’m incredibly proud of the resources that Duke University has invested in the innovation and entrepreneurship space. Prospective MBA students who want a comprehensive overview of all the amazing offerings focused on entrepreneurship at Duke and in Durham should check out this interactive map. It lists all the resources that Duke provides to innovators: key academic certificates, funding opportunities, startup incubators, experiential learning programs, makerspaces, hackathons, exchange programs, selective living arrangements for entrepreneurs, mentorship programs (and much more!) that Duke has to offer.

The best part is that whether you’re a budding entrepreneur with a business idea that you want to nurture, an engineer interested in finding space to build and invent, an expert who wants to collaborate with teams from multi-disciplinary backgrounds to create and launch industry-specific products, or a new engager who is interested in learning more about innovation and entrepreneurship by taking an introductory course, Duke has something for you! I included a list below of some key resources that experts, entrepreneurs, engineers, and new engagers might be interested in so that folks can hit the ground running on day one.

Many innovators and entrepreneurs have an interest in recruiting for a role in the tech industry. When I was a prospective student, Duke was at the top of my list, because I knew that tech recruiters sought out Duke students for coveted roles in Silicon Valley, and that year over year, Duke’s recruiting statistics have shown that graduates place incredibly well in the tech space. What I did not realize was just how many different resources Duke offers to students interested in learning more about innovation and entrepreneurship. Duke offers students an unparalleled opportunity to develop their ability to think in disruptive and innovative ways, providing students with the key skills that employers value and prioritize.

Interested in working in a makerspace? Well, we have three to choose from. Want to start a company? No problem, the Duke Angel Network and the Duke Startup Challenge provide access to alumni venture capitalists, mentorship, and potential seed funding opportunities, plus access to a whole host of other resources for commercializing your venture. Interested in living in a dorm with other student entrepreneurs? Great, the Cube offers a selective living dormitory for entrepreneurs. Interested in joining a club related to commercial or social entrepreneurship? There’s bound to be a club for you! Want to learn more about biodesign, inventing medical devices, or how to apply coding skills to drive environmental sustainability efforts? There are 50-plus courses related to entrepreneurship and innovation, and there are no less than five academic certificates that will allow you to develop a focused course of study, and a new Duke-wide graduate-level certificate in innovation and entrepreneurship is in the works.

And lastly, I’ll throw out a plug for the program I’m involved with. I’m a current Stanford University Innovation Fellow, and if you’re interested in improving the current programs offered around innovation and entrepreneurship at Duke, you might want to apply to the fellows program and join the amazing team of scholars, staff, professors, mentors, and investors who work tirelessly to make sure that Duke consistently produces best-in-class innovators and entrepreneurs. I hope you take the time to explore the resources below. From the Duke Incubation Fund to Fuqua’s Program for Entrepreneurs (also known as P4E), Duke has made a commitment to prepare the next generation of innovators on every level.

New engagers who want to take an introductory course about entrepreneurship

• Social Entrepreneurship Courses
• Innovation & Entrepreneurship Courses

Engineers who want to build and invent

• Innovation Co-Lab
• The Foundry
• Rubenstein Arts Center Makerspace
• Design for America Duke Studio

Entrepreneurs with a business idea to nurture

• Entrepreneurship Clubs
• DukeGEN
• Duke Angel Network
• Duke Incubation Fund
• Duke Startup Ventures Legal Clinic
• Duke Startup Challenge
• Duke Changeworks/Global Social Innovation Challenge
• DuHatch Startup Incubator
• New Ventures Course
• Program for Entrepreneurs
• The Center for Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship
• Design to Impact Social Innovation Incubator at Duke

Experts who want to collaborate with teams to make industry-specific products

• Medical Device Strategy Course
• Designing Innovations for Global Health Course
• Hacking for Conservation & Development Course
• Biodesign Course

The post A Guide to Entrepreneurship at Duke appeared first on Duke Daytime MBA Student Blog.

Duke University as a whole is one of the reasons why I chose Fuqua for my MBA program. As an international student, I was curious to explore the greater Duke community beyond Fuqua to see what the university experience in America looks like. And now after one year has passed, I’m still amazed by the many opportunities to get involved with on Duke’s campus.

Learning Experiences

Duke’s Innovation Co-Lab

I’m a design thinking enthusiast who is also interested in the tech field. So when I found out about the Co-Lab, I was thrilled by the various courses it provides. Not only design thinking workshops, but also a Roots Program which focuses on understanding how to make use of a variety of tools and technologies, such as Python, iOS, and many more. It’s very useful for someone like me who is interested in tech but has no prior experience. I even signed up for a 3D modeling class!

Courses in Other Schools

When I meet prospective students, most of them ask this question: Am I eligible to take a class at another Duke graduate school? And the answer is Yes. Since I focused on getting a foundation of business knowledge during my first year, I didn’t have a chance to take a class outside of Fuqua. However, many second-year MBA students take courses in the Pratt School of Engineering. There are also some law school and public policy school students that take courses at Fuqua as well.

Sports and Wellness

Campout and Basketball Games

Duke is famous for men’s basketball. And even though I’m not a huge sports fan, Campout and cheering on the team at Cameron Indoor Stadium are some of my favorite business school memories. I recommend that all Fuqua students participate in Campout, which is how you get the student tickets for the men’s basketball games. Whether you are a basketball fan or not, camping out in the parking lot for three days with friends is a very fun and unique experience—especially for me since I hadn’t spent much time in or around universities in the U.S.

During the season, we beat our rivals at The University of North Carolina, and all gathered after the game in front of the West Union to enjoy the bonfires. Massive celebrations after major sports victories like this can be typical to the American undergrad experience, and it was fun to mingle with other Duke students all in the name of a big win!

 

Duke > UNC #gthc #fuquamms Repost: @ferduartee

A post shared by Duke Fuqua | MMS Students (@fuquamms) on Mar 4, 2018 at 8:19am PST

 
Gyms and Group Workout Activities

For Fuqua Students, a gym membership is included in your student fees—which means you should maximize your membership! One of my favorites is the outdoor swimming pool near Ninth Street. It’s a small, cozy pool perfect for swimming, playing water basketball, and lying out in the sun. Also, I love group workouts at Wilson and Brodie Gyms. My physical activity level is so poor, but still, those group activities are easy to follow and so much fun! It also helps me try new exercises I’ve never done before such as Pilates, barre, or Zumba. My second-year goal is to participate in more outdoor activities, such as rock climbing!

Exploring and Fun

Duke Art Centers and Duke Performances

Duke has several art venues including the Nasher Museum of Art, Rubenstein Arts Center, Page and Baldwin Auditoriums, and several more. I attended the grand opening of the Rubenstein Arts Center in the spring and know that it will be one of my favorite places at Duke going forward. I frequently check out concerts by Duke Performances as well. It’s such a great benefit that I can listen to terrific classical, jazz, and vocal music in a pretty auditorium, just five minutes away from my home, and all for the $10 student ticket rate.  

Duke Chapel

Duke Chapel is one of the most famous buildings in the region, not to mention Duke, and many people visit the chapel and take pictures. Well, as a Duke student, you can enjoy more than just a photo in front of it. The chapel often opens up its top terrace to students. The view up there is breathtaking, with the classic gothic-style buildings and plentiful trees all around. My recommendation is to go there in the fall when the colorful leaves make the view all the more attractive! Also, you can participate as a choir member in the chapel, either during regular services or on special occasions. Fortunately, I had a chance to sing in the choir during a Christmas Concert, even though I am not a regular member. Singing Christmas songs for hours at the heart of the chapel was an amazing experience! In addition, Duke Chapel also holds many events and concerts, making life at Duke even more interesting.

These are only the highlights of my experience on campus. There are tons of other opportunities if you look around. I’m so excited to have another year in business school and to explore the greater Duke Community beyond Fuqua!

The post Exploring the Duke Community Beyond Fuqua appeared first on Duke Daytime MBA Student Blog.

There is a motto at Duke University and the Fuqua School of Business—work hard, play hard. Sure, our students spend a lot of time working on case studies, but they also spend a lot of time outside of the classroom at Cameron Indoor Stadium, the home of Duke Basketball.

The Duke Blue Devils Men’s Basketball Team has won five NCAA National Championships and made 11 championship game appearances. Coach Mike Krzyzewski has served as the head coach since 1980, and this year became the all-time winningest coach in college basketball history—currently having 1,124 wins.

There are a lot of parallels between Duke basketball and Fuqua. So how is basketball helping to shape our students’ experience? Here are just a few examples:

Duke and Fuqua #1

2015 is when the men’s team won its fifth national title. Coincidentally, that same academic year Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Fuqua as the number one business school in the U.S.

The “Fist” Team Analogy

Coach K is known for his “fist” analogy when it comes to talking about teamwork. There are five teammates who play on a basketball court, just like you have five fingers on each hand. Rather than going at something with one finger, when those five players, or fingers, come together to form one fist, it combines all of their talents to become stronger as a group. That same team mentality is true at Fuqua, where we believe in moving teams forward toward a common goal.

The Basketball Community

Duke basketball fans, also known as the Cameron Crazies, will travel near and far to watch the Blue Devils. Fuqua is known for bringing students and alumni together, and Duke Basketball is no different. How often is it that you get to watch a Final Four basketball game with Apple CEO Tim Cook (MBA ’88)?

Learning Opportunities

Fuqua students don’t just attend games and support teams, they learn about the sports industry. At Fuqua, it is not uncommon for Fuqua Client Consulting Practicum clients to include professional and college sports teams. We even have our Media, Entertainment, and Sports Club, which among other activities, has partnered with Duke Men’s Basketball for the Duke MBB Stats team. All you need to have is a love for Duke Basketball—no data analytics experience required.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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#MES members got a #BTS tour of #Cameron today, led by Zach White, Senior Iron Dukes Director of Development, Duke 2010

A post shared by Duke MBA MES Club (@fuqua_mesclub) on Nov 19, 2018 at 6:40pm PST

The Fuqua Currency

You have heard of cryptocurrencies, but at Fuqua, there is something way more valuable—signed Coach K basketballs. If you are lucky enough to score one of these at an auction or raffle, consider yourself lucky!

The Tradition of Campout

Why pay $2,000 or more for a ticket to the Duke versus UNC game in Cameron when you can earn free season tickets! Each year, Fuqua students participate in the annual Campout tradition, where they camp out for 36 hours to enter the lottery to win season tickets.

Coach K at Fuqua

The Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics (COLE) is an academic center at Fuqua, focused on talent and knowledge development in the ethical leadership context. Coach K might be busy with basketball, but he is a COLE executive-in-residence and will hold lectures for MBA students and host invitation-only summits on management challenges.

College Rivalries

The Duke-UNC rivalry is one of the best in college sports. Since 1920, Duke and UNC have met twice each year to prove which school has the better basketball team. While UNC has won six NCAA Championships, Duke fans feel pretty strongly that we might get our sixth title this year (fingers crossed and knock on wood)!

And if all these examples prove how much we love basketball, take a look below at what the atmosphere is like on campus when there is a game. Let’s go Duke!

“A single shade of blue…” pic.twitter.com/7vHpKWxquC

— Duke Basketball (@DukeMBB) February 20, 2019

The post How Duke Basketball Helps Shape the Student Experience appeared first on Duke Daytime MBA Student Blog.

If you have an entrepreneurial itch, business school is a great time to scratch it. During my second year, I talked to several prospective students about my first-year experience in the entrepreneurial ecosystem surrounding Fuqua. I figured it was time to put some of those thoughts down on paper.

I’ll start with a disclaimer: There are many ways to explore entrepreneurship while in business school. There is one thing that everyone on this journey has in common—at some point, they make the decision to try it and just get started.

Getting Started

With a background in health care information technology and a passion for shaping a better health care system, I was coming to Fuqua to develop my strategy toolbox and explore health care innovation with the Health Sector Management (HSM) program. In the spring of 2017, before my program began later that fall, I started to interact with Howie Rhee after expressing interest in the Program for Entrepreneurs (P4E), an experiential learning course at Fuqua designed to help students forge companies.

I didn’t have an idea of my own, but I knew that I wanted to experience work in an early-stage startup. I told Howie my goal, and he challenged me to have 100 conversations by the end of the summer. I talked to many people in 2017, including other students with great entrepreneurial ideas, alumni and executives at startups, consultants, incubators, professors, leaders at the Duke and nearby UNC health systems, venture capitalists, chief digital health officers, and even the ‘Ninja Doc’ (yeah, from the TV show “American Ninja Warrior”). I also took a trip out to the Bay Area that October, participating in the Career Management Center’s “Week-In-Cities” events on some days and setting my own agenda to meet with startups on others. Fuqua helped me get started, but I very quickly learned how to initiate these conversations myself.

The outcome of this challenge was threefold. First, the more stories I heard, the more insights I gathered about the industry and my own personal goals. Second, I started to understand the universe of entrepreneurship—a spectrum ranging from a group trying to solve a problem to “intrapreneurship,” a form of well-funded entrepreneurship that takes place within some large companies. Third, I forged a plan on how I was going to explore that spectrum in my first year of business school.

Experiencing the Early-Stage Startup

P4E, underneath the umbrella of Duke Innovation and Entrepreneurship, is one of the many experiential learning opportunities Fuqua offers for students interested in startups. After vetting numerous ideas and learning opportunities in the Duke and Research Triangle Park communities, I partnered with another Fuqua HSM’er, Nicole, to enroll in the program for the year.

Nicole and I connected with an inventor team pitching their 3D ultrasound technology to Duke Health executives through the Duke Institute for Health Innovation (DIHI), one of the health system’s innovation arms. The inventor team was spread across the health system, Pratt School of Engineering, and Stanford University’s biodesign and computer science departments. After a successful pitch, they were happy to have us help with the business plan throughout the year.

P4E is a great experience for students motivated to put in the time. Each week, we attended a workshop, often conducted by guest speakers from venture capital firms, Duke Office of Licensing and Ventures, design firms, and startups. Nicole and I sourced a team of MBA students that contributed to the plan throughout the year, many of whom attended the course with us. However, much of the learning took place outside of the classroom. Nicole and I found ourselves helping OmniSono (the eventual name of our startup) on legal and tech transfer questions, evaluation of market opportunities, recruitment of advisors, and pitches for investors throughout the year. We went from a patented technology to a company.

Building an Entrepreneurial Skillset

Fuqua has many courses directly related to entrepreneurship. In the spring of 2018, I took Professor Manuel Adelino’s Entrepreneurial Finance course. Every week we were doing valuations, studying term sheets, and discussing cases with a financial lens. Two classes had guest lectures from the Duke Angel Network and a local biotech entrepreneur. Every class was immediately applicable to my work with OmniSono and has shaped how I think about deals in general.

I also took Decision Models, a class that helped me develop a quantitative approach to uncertainty and risk. While the class wasn’t focused on entrepreneurship or medical devices, I found myself modeling courses of action through FDA trials and other strategic decisions that I would later call upon in my work with OmniSono and in my finance class.

Finally, I also had the opportunity to represent Fuqua in the 2018 class of Flare Capital Scholars. Flare Capital Partners takes an annual class of industry and academic scholars and invites them into the firm’s network, offering the opportunity to attend pitch days, annual meetings, and other interactions with portfolio companies. As part of this program, I had the opportunity to learn how venture capital firms and strategic investors think from the inside, to observe pitches from entrepreneurs, and to develop an even stronger network of industry leaders and experts with a similar passion for innovation.

Investigating Intrapreneurship

During my summer internship, I had the opportunity to work on the corporate strategy team at DaVita, one of the largest health care delivery systems in the U.S. I knew that I wanted to be closer to patient care, having been on the vendor side of the industry in my career to date. I also knew that DaVita was the type of company that thought about health care very differently.

My work over the summer included analysis on macro trends in the industry, in hopes of finding future business opportunities, as well as going deep into some specific opportunities the company was exploring. I found my toolkit and experiences at Fuqua incredibly useful. Through my team, I also found myself exposed to new technologies, care models, partnerships, ventures, and public policy.

My summer with DaVita was a great way to understand how a large company views innovation as part of its strategy, to learn additional business skills, and to gain perspective on what ideas have greatest potential to scale within the industry.

My Second Year

By the start of fall 2018, I had developed a really strong framework for what I wanted out of my next opportunity and was very selective in how I approached the process my second year. I did another Week-in-Cities of my own out to Denver and Boston to explore the ecosystem in those cities and met with several startups. I received a few large company offers for some that were really innovating in health care, evaluated many different interesting options, and in December, decided to go to one of the locomotives changing the industry.

I spent the rest of my second-year experience doubling down on strategic and quantitative skills, partnering with students and faculty to go deep into interesting topics in health care, and reflecting on my leadership style. I never stopped having conversations with interesting people, and I never will. Some call this networking—I call it exploring, asking questions, and seeking mentors.

Then in the weeks leading up to graduation, I got an unexpected and amazing opportunity as a result of one of these conversations. After a lot of thought and consideration, I called an audible at graduation and took an exciting job with a Series B startup with an office down the road from Durham in Raleigh. Here I am a month in, and I can say the journey was worth every step.

If any of this story piqued your interest, I welcome you to reach out. As someone that has been part of the Duke community since 2004, I’ve seen a major focus from the university to further develop its entrepreneurial ecosystem over the last decade. I believe that investment has paid off. If you are motivated and curious, Fuqua is a great place to get started on an entrepreneurial journey of your own.

The post My Entrepreneurial Journey During Business School appeared first on Duke Daytime MBA Student Blog.

Every year, Fuqua takes in about 85 incoming exchange students from all over the world. As a Fuqua student, the diversity they bring to our school is another great thing about the experience here. I very much enjoyed talking with them about their former experiences, lectures at their home school, and career paths.

Among those topics, there is one question I always ask first: Why did you choose to come to Fuqua? And at the end of term farewell party, I also ask: Did you find what you were looking for?

Although exchange students stay at Fuqua only for a relatively short time, I think their experience can be a good example of what people can expect when they first come to Fuqua. Most of these exchange students came to Fuqua for academic reasons, and left with the memory of Team Fuqua, along with their learnings in and outside of class. Here are some comments from exchange students I met.

Guillermo Joo Novoa

SDA Bocconi School of Management

I chose Fuqua for three reasons: academics, various activities beyond those academics, and location.

Fuqua has a solid academic reputation, and when I came here, I was impressed by the level of participation and engagement Fuqua students have in every class. Lectures are guided by the faculty, but students interact and participate a lot in class, making it more about a discussion than just a regular lecture.

Also, Fuqua offered many activities besides classes, especially great sports and training facilities that are part of the larger Duke campus. It definitely helped my training for the New York City marathon, which I successfully finished last fall! Not only fitness facilities, but Duke and Fuqua also have state of the art campus facilities that cannot be outdone by any school in Europe or South America that I’ve seen. The campus is gorgeous, and there was always something going on to keep us busy, which made all of the exchange students very impressed.

It was also great to live in a small city, Durham, after living in a big one. I was able to enjoy the college experience and focus on what Duke has to offer.

I can’t say enough about the people at Fuqua. Everyone from faculty, staff, and students were accommodating and collaborative. Every time I had a question about the school, events, lectures, and other activities, I found someone willing to help me. Students were welcoming, and by working with them on teams, I felt I was part of their class.

In a nutshell, my Fuqua experience was outstanding and amazing. The courses and many other activities made the best of my time at Fuqua. It was the last term of my MBA, and I am pleased that I did it at Fuqua.

Bette Chen

University of Otago

The keyword of my Fuqua experience is “fabulous.” I was amazed by the quality of guest speakers in class and the alumni network that Fuqua has. I made so many memories through Fuqua Friday, design thinking workshops, Blue Devil basketball games, and many other events.

The most valuable thing I got through my time at Fuqua is the people I have met and connected with. I went there looking forward to meeting super smart and like-minded people, as Fuqua is one of the top business schools in the world. The people are brilliant, well-rounded, and well-presented. It was a great experience to be surrounded by stimulating minds. I was super impressed by the ‘student-run’ culture at Fuqua as well. Student leadership groups such as club cabinets, event committees, and others spend a great deal of time and effort to maximize not only their own but also other students’ experience.

My interest in blockchain technology also led me to Fuqua. The school has a blockchain class, Innovation and Cryptoventures, by professor Campbell Harvey, and Duke University has a blockchain lab. Although I couldn’t take the course since it was not offered while I was there, I still met many students who were interested in the subject. I had an opportunity to help a couple students set up a new blockchain club at Fuqua, which was an extraordinary memory for me.

Germaine Soo

National University of Singapore

The U.S. was my destination of choice as it has been at the forefront of thought-leadership in business management. I chose Fuqua because its strong strategy and health care focuses are relevant to my pharmacy background and the career path I aspire to pursue.

Looking back at my experience at Fuqua, it was truly enriching. That includes academics, travel, and friendships, as I spent the fall semester with 50 exchange students from 15 countries. We bonded over watching American football (go Blue Devils!), Fuqua Fridays, house parties, and weekend trips to New York City, Washington, D.C., and the Great Smoky Mountains. I also hung out with several Daytime MBA students and experienced the Team Fuqua spirit first-hand.

Another bonus—the cost of living in Durham is not as high as in larger cities, and I like that I can easily access other U.S. cities via the Raleigh-Durham International Airport which is only 20 minutes from campus.

I also want to highlight my learning from peers, professors, and industry leaders in the classroom and beyond. I enjoyed hearing from different perspectives during the interactive classroom discussions and about work experience shared by top-notch professors with corporate backgrounds. I took several Health Sector Management electives, including one taught by Professor David Ridley. It was interesting to hear about his experience proposing a priority review voucher system that was passed by U.S. Congress as a law to encourage the development of drugs for neglected diseases. Having been at the front seat where the action was, his insights on pricing, reimbursement, and access to medicines were valuable. I also enjoyed the pearls of wisdom and life experience shared by distinguished keynote speakers, their perspectives on real-life challenges, and problem-solving approaches.

I am grateful for the experience, and I will always cherish the friendships made and memories forged during my fall exchange at Fuqua.

The post What Do Incoming Exchange Students Think About Fuqua? appeared first on Duke Daytime MBA Student Blog.

Eight miles separate Duke from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). The Battle for Tobacco Road, as it’s known, is one of the greatest rivalries in college sports or, as I and many others would argue, in all of sports. The centerpiece of the rivalry is men’s basketball, a sport in which both schools have excelled through the years.

But what makes the rivalry so great? Let me hit you with a few stats.

The two teams have been playing each other for a century—the first game was January 24, 1920. According to the NCAA, UNC ranks No. 3 on the all-time wins list while Duke sits at No. 4. The schools have combined to win more than half of all the Atlantic Coast Conference Championships and 50 regular season titles.  Oh, and since the 1949-50 season in head-to-head matchups, Duke as scored 13,559 points and UNC 13,581. That’s a 22-point differential over 70 years and 179 games. That stat alone should tell you how great a game it is to watch.

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit my own story in all of this. Growing up in North Carolina, “choosing your blue” was a part of the deal. In my case, Duke wasn’t chosen so much as it was inherited. My dad graduated from Duke undergrad in 1981 (the first season at Duke for Coach Mike Krzyzewski, as he very often points out). The brainwashing began at birth—at 6 months old, I sat in my bouncer as Duke took home the 1992 National Championship. I’m pretty sure the Duke trivia education started as soon as I was capable of speaking. And by the time I was 5, I had completely rejected wearing “Carolina Blue.” To this day, I do not own anything in that particularly awful shade and will not buy anything that resembles it.

Coming to Duke for business school was the culmination of a life-long dream to be an official Cameron Crazie, as we call our basketball fans. I camped out for season tickets last fall, and you can bet I’ll be in the stands when the two teams play at Cameron Indoor Stadium on March 7 (the first meet-up is February 8 at UNC).

While the rivalry hits its peak each year with the two regular season basketball games, it extends across all sports, and, in the case of Fuqua, a very special event in the spring. Each year, Fuqua takes on UNC’s business school, Kenan-Flagler, in the Blue Cup, an athletic competition with more than twenty events including soccer, basketball, kickball, running, and community service, to name a few. Needless to say, I’ve already begun training.

If it isn’t already clear, there won’t be a day that I root for UNC. That being said, two of my best friends are Carolina fans. And that’s what makes the rivalry great. Duke and UNC fans are neighbors, classmates, friends, co-workers, and sometimes spouses. We hate each other a few days each year, but we respect each other and know that being a part of a rivalry like this one is unlike anything else in sports. So, Carolina, I hope you lose, but also thanks for the fun.

For more on the rivalry, check out this article, and I also highly recommend HBO Sport’s “Battle for Tobacco Road.”

The post The Duke-UNC Rivalry Explained appeared first on Duke Daytime MBA Student Blog.

As an alumnus, the question I get asked most by prospective MBA students is whether attending Duke, in medium-sized Durham, North Carolina, will put them at a disadvantage compared to attending school in New York, Boston, or the San Francisco Bay area. It’s not hard to see why prospective students are concerned—these schools tout their locations and romanticize the idea of studying in one of America’s largest cities. But after comparing my experience with those who graduated from schools in those places and others, I’ve found the opposite is true: going to a school in a smaller city is far more beneficial.

Here’s why. When a student enrolls in a full-time MBA program, they are paying for four things: a quality education, recruiting opportunities, meaningful relationships with classmates, and a strong alumni network. When comparing how big-city schools stack up with others, it becomes clear that schools like Duke have an edge.

Coursework

Let’s start with what you learn in the classroom. Although every business school tries to differentiate its curriculum, the differences can be negligible. No matter the school, every first-year student takes intro courses in accounting, finance, economics, statistics, marketing, strategy, and operations. Moreover, these courses often use the same case studies. Mention the infamous cranberry case from your operations class or the chicken contact lenses case from marketing to graduates from any school and you’ll elicit either an exasperated groan or nostalgic grin depending on their memory of it.

Elective offerings vary but not always by a wide margin. Mainstay courses such as Corporate Finance, Negotiations, and Marketing Strategy are found at every school. Other electives may not be as widespread initially, but schools will quickly replicate popular courses from other schools to stay competitive.

Recruiting

Education aside, the biggest concern prospective MBA students have when it comes to location is the impact it will have on recruiting. To assess whether this fear is founded, I encourage you to take a look at the recruiting data.

Do you think you need to be in Manhattan to get a job in investment banking? In a particular year I looked at, one school in the city sent 3% of its graduates to work at Goldman Sachs. But that’s lower than the 5.7% a school in the countryside a few hundred miles away sent there. Is your goal consulting? A Boston-based school sent 26 graduates to McKinsey the same year Fuqua sent 36. Is the tech industry your next move? Not surprisingly, 33% of graduates from one Silicon Valley school took tech jobs, but in the same year a school in the South 1,500 miles away matched that number. The big takeaway is that companies will find the best talent no matter where it is. If they can hire good people, they’ll make the trek.

Your Classmates

Building meaningful relationships with classmates is one of the most important categories but can be the least valued, at least initially. Often, it is much later that students realize their classmates are the most willing group of people in their network to help them advance in their careers in both the short and long term. Based on many conversations with peers who went to big-city schools, the ties that bind classmates together there seem to be weaker than those at schools in smaller cities.

While there are likely many reasons for this—many major metropolitan schools tend to have larger student populations, for example—I also believe it is a function of location. Generally, students at those schools meet most of their friends during the first few weeks of school and then hang out together for the remaining two years. For entertainment, they turn to the city, frequenting off-campus bars, restaurants, and other venues and are less likely to organize and attend school events. In some cases, students who end up attending school in the same large city they’ve lived and worked in opt to hang out with existing groups of friends instead of with classmates.

At schools like Fuqua, almost everyone is new to town and arrives on campus ready to start anew. Since students have less competition from off-campus entertainment options, they attend more school-sponsored events and organize their own activities. At Fuqua, student-run clubs plan mountain climbing expeditions, white water rafting trips, leadership training overseen by the U.S. military at nearby Fort Bragg, weekly dinners, and the iconic Fuqua Friday tradition. These activities provide students with more opportunities to meet people outside of the classroom, where it is easier to build relationships and reinforce the ties that bind classes together.

Alumni Network

And these student ties lay the foundation for a strong alumni network, for which schools like Duke are known. As a former university development director, one of the first things I learned is how to identify the alumni most likely to give back—in dollars, in volunteering, and helping current students get jobs. The key was to identify alumni that have a deep emotional connection with the school. Because schools in smaller cities have more opportunities to facilitate emotional connections between students and the school itself (as discussed earlier), alumni at these schools tend to punch above their weight. And we see this in the data. In survey after survey, even though they can be fewer in number, students at schools like Duke rank their alumni networks just as highly as students at big-city schools rank theirs.

Additional Considerations

Beyond the four categories of education, recruiting, classmate relationships, and alumni networks, students attending schools in smaller cities come out ahead in other ways. For example, the cost of living can be significantly lower. Attending business school and living in Manhattan for two years would have set me back $193,000 in 2014, when I graduated. While at Fuqua, I rented a bedroom in a house near campus for $312.50 a month while paying tuition that was about $20,000 less over two years. That translated into a smaller student loan and huge savings in interest since I am able to pay off more of my principal each month.

And finally, there is the intangible benefit of cultural exposure. Many MBA students will likely live, work, and attend school in the same handful of large cities. Most will never take a job in Durham, or the other smaller cities occupied by top business schools.

Truth be told, I probably never would have lived in the American South had it not been for Fuqua. And that would have deprived me of the many rich experiences that have shaped me. This includes the more whimsical such as my love for bluegrass music and discerning taste for barbecue and the more serious such as witnessing the impact the opioid crisis is having on Southern and Midwestern towns. All of these experiences have helped me grow into the person I am today, added depth to how I see the world, and made my MBA education more meaningful. Living in North Carolina was arguably the most important factor in shaping my two years of business school but the hardest to quantify. Nevertheless, experiencing life in a place that is different from where you are from or where you are likely to live post-MBA should be a part of every prospective student’s list of criteria when selecting a school because of the value it can bring to the two years of study.

So, to wrap up, here’s my advice: if you are considering business school or any form of higher education, think about what you want out of your educational experience and re-evaluate your options. If you find your list lacks schools in smaller cities, add a few, visit campus, and talk to students at those programs. You may be surprised how going to a school like Duke can change your life in more ways than you thought possible.

The post Here’s Why Location Gives Schools Like Duke an Edge appeared first on Duke Daytime MBA Student Blog.