The Master or Management Studies program is a one-year, pre-experience business program that will lead to a Duke degree. The program design calls for students to split time between Duke’s main North Carolina campus and the DKU campus in China. Duke and its partners are in the process of securing necessary permissions from the Chinese government. 

“We are pleased that our program design has been approved by the Board of Trustees and are looking forward to continuing to collaborate with our partners in China regarding our plans,” Fuqua Dean Bill Boulding said in a statemet. “In order for business education to remain relevant, we must look through the lenses of different cultures and geographies,” he added, noting that the approval of the program is an important step toward a Duke presence in China.

Long-term plans call for DKU to serve both as an educational center and an operational base for research and scholarship throughout the country, the school said.

More details about the program, including format and timing, will be announced once arrangements are finalized with China. For more information on this story, click here.

“Fuqua established the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation for students interested in pursuing careers in entrepreneurial or private equity endeavors. The Center works to incorporate the practices and ideas associated with entrepreneurship into Fuqua’s curriculum.

“The teaching style of the school’s entrepreneurship electives varies, with both lecture-based and experiential offerings. The more traditional, lecture-based classes include Entrepreneurial Strategy, and Venture Capital & Private Equity, while the experiential options include the New Ventures Clinic and the Mentored Study in Entrepreneurship.

“Fuqua also offers opportunities to become involved in entrepreneurial activities outside of the classroom. The Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Club (EVCC) includes both students and alumni as members and is one of the largest student organizations on campus. Through organized events and meetings, the clubs facilitate interactions between members and practicing entrepreneurs. Students involved in the club gain exposure and insight to the challenges, concerns and concepts associated with entrepreneurship and private equity.

“Students can also learn about entrepreneurship through active participation in the Duke Start-Up Challenge. The annual competition, which spans the majority of the academic year, asks participants to plan and launch their own businesses from the ground up. The first step of the challenge, the Elevator Pitch Competition, takes place in November, followed by an Executive Summary Competition in February, a Business Plan Competition and Investor Pitch Presentation in March, and a final round in April, in which teams compete for a grand prize of $25,000. Throughout the process, experienced professionals provide students with feedback and advice about almost every aspect of beginning a new venture.”

To read more about Fuqua’s special programs, be sure to check out the Clear Admit School Guide to Fuqua. All Clear Admit School Guides are available for immediate purchase and download on the Clear Admit shop.

You could win a Clear Admit Guide!  Based on today’s post, we’ll be running a trivia contest on Twitter.  Be sure to follow us and play for your chance to win!

Through combined admissions, schools can look for applicants whose profiles may not be strong enough to secure a spot in the full-time MBA program but who might be well suited for the part-time or executive MBA programs. For example, students with low GMAT scores but valuable work experience could be admitted to the EMBA cohort at certain programs instead of the full-time MBA program, admissions officials told the FT.

Schools that embrace combined admissions are able to merge the admissions functions of different programs within the school, realizing cost savings and better meeting their recruiting targets by being able to market the traditional full-time MBA as well as the part-time and executive programs to applicants to ensure that each student finds a fit with one program.

At CBS, for example, Vice Dean Amir Ziv helped centralize admissions two years ago. Before then “the full-time MBA and EMBA were separate divisions and instead of co-operating they were almost competing [for students],” Ziv told the FT.

At IE, meanwhile, the new system helps direct highly qualified students who may not gain admission to the full-time MBA program to consider alternate programs instead. Strong candidates who are turned down for IE’s flagship international MBA program now undergo a more formal counseling process about which other programs could be a fit, Lisa Bevil, director of full-time admissions, told the FT. Ten percent of students who applied to one program now study in another as a result of the new system, she said.

The University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business combined admissions two years ago, and since then 130 students have applied to the part-time program instead of the EMBA after receiving advice from admissions counselors about better fit, Ross Director of Admissions Soojin Koh told the FT. “They would have all applied to the EMBA and probably would have not been admitted, because they had mis-evaluated their experience,” Koh said. 

Combined admissions is also helping schools cut costs. “We didn’t have shared accountability for the enrolment results . . . there was no formal process for cross selling and there was no co-ordinated marketing plan,” Liz Riley Hargrove, associate dean for admission at Duke, told the FT about the school’s previous system. Now, “we save a significant amount of money just by co-ordinating the [recruiting] schedule,” she added. 

To learn more about some schools’ move toward combined admissions, click here.

Sheryl Dirks, association dean for career management at Fuqua, attributed the rising employment figures to collaboration across Fuqua between the CMC, student clubs, regional offices, alumni engagement teams and the MBA Association. “But far more than Fuqua’s efforts as an organization, these terrific results reflect the hard work by the students themselves,” she continued. “While we have an obligation to put in place the right resources, it is ultimately students’ efforts that dictate these numbers and this class excelled in that regard.”

From the class of 2011, 48 employers hired four or more Duke MBAs across a range of industries: financial services (12 companies), consulting (eight), health care (eight), technology (eight), consumer products (five), diversified products and services (four), retail (two) and entertainment (one). But not only are more students securing jobs, they are also snagging higher salaries. According to the CMC’s figures, the mean 2011 full-time annual salary is $107,833 (up six percent) with mean signing bonuses at $25,946 (up 18%). The incidence of signing bonuses also rose, from 71 percent for the 2010 class to 78 percent for the 2011 class.

The increase in offers to Fuqua students has been greatest within the consulting industry. Of the class of 2011, 30 percent accepted positions within consulting, a 10 percent jump from the prior year. As a result, several consulting companies rank among the top 10 Fuqua employers, including Deloitte, McKinsey, the Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company and Accenture.

“The current economic conditions are clearly impacting this increase,” Dirks said in a statement. “At the same time, our community’s commitment to rethinking the business model for employment services played a role in the upward swing. We are delighted by the inroads we have made in consulting, while also maintaining strong performance in other industries.”   For more on the encouraging employment statistics coming out of Fuqua, click here.

Fuqua’s HSM program, the oldest and largest health management concentration among top U.S. business schools, enrolls 400 MBA students in its full-time and executive programs each year. Through this new partnership, HSM and Verizon Connected Healthcare Solutions, the company’s healthcare practice group, will combine technical resources and personnel to focus on projects that can harness advanced communications technology to improve healthcare services and offerings. Initial potential projects include mobile health applications and consumer health care education.

Verizon will provide computing infrastructure to perform analytical processing and modeling along with staffing and resources to implement technical development. Fuqua will provide students, research and project management experts and educational program development staff, along with intellectual property and other research required for initiatives sponsored by the new program. 

“This strategic agreement with Verizon offers great promise to serve as an agent of positive change in the U.S. healthcare delivery market,” Kevin Schulman, Fuqua’s HSM director, said in a statement. “By tapping into Verizon’s leading technology resources and applying Duke’s research expertise, both organizations will be able to closely collaborate to explore how we can collectively unleash the powerful potential of health information technology,” he continued.

For more information about this new multiyear agreement between Fuqua’s HSM program and Verizon, click here. To learn more about the HSM program at Fuqua, click here.

“Most classes at Fuqua meet twice a week, either on Mondays and Thursdays or on Tuesdays and Fridays. No classes are held on Wednesdays, a system designed to give students a mid-week break that can be used to schedule job interviews, attend campus events or catch up on assignments from earlier in the week.

“Because Fuqua’s terms are only half as long as those at most other business schools, most class sessions are two hours and fifteen minutes long – nearly twice the length of classes at many other business schools. According to student reports, while a sizable percentage of courses are lecture-based, the majority begin with an hour-long case discussion, break for 15 minutes and conclude with an hour of lecture summarizing the lessons students should draw from the case.

“Because case studies are so widely used at Fuqua, students must be prepared for interactive class sessions in which active class participation is expected. Fuqua students report that the level of class engagement is usually high, even in more traditional lecture courses, where students are encouraged to ask the professor clarifying questions or to offer relevant examples from their own professional experiences. Most courses at Fuqua also include team projects that are usually completed in groups of five or six students.”

To read more about Fuqua’s MBA curriculum and coursework, be sure to check out the Clear Admit School Guide to Fuqua. All Clear Admit School Guides are available for immediate purchase and download on the Clear Admit shop.

You could win a Clear Admit Guide!  Based on today’s post, we’ll be running a trivia contest on Twitter.  Be sure to follow us and play for your chance to win!

Some of the top schools are already on the road, so we recommend looking into the travel schedules for programs of interest and planning accordingly. Keeping in mind that these schedules are updated and amended throughout the fall, here are some of the top programs’ itineraries for the months ahead:

Berkeley / Haas: https://ssl.haas.berkeley.edu/Admissions/Events/index.cfm

Chicago Booth: http://www.chicagobooth.edu/fulltime/admissions/events/

Columbia: http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/events

Duke / Fuqua: https://www.fuquaworld.duke.edu/www/public/infosess_all_view.jsp

HBS: http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/events.html

Northwestern / Kellogg: http://bit.ly/Zrg7b

Michigan / Ross: http://www.bus.umich.edu/Admissions/Mba/forumsreceptions/RossReceptions.htm

MIT / Sloan: http://mitsloan.mit.edu/academic/events.php

Stanford GSB: http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/mba/outreach/info_sessions.html

NYU / Stern: http://w4.stern.nyu.edu/admissions/cgibin/sched_events.cgi

Dartmouth / Tuck: http://www.tuck.dartmouth.edu/admissions/events.html

UCLA / Anderson: http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/x27229.xml

UNC / Kenan Flagler: http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/Programs/MBA/infoSessions/index.cfm

UVA / Darden: https://apply.darden.virginia.edu/admissions/events/EventsSchedule.tap?sp=103

U Penn / Wharton: http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/mba/admissions/admission-events.cfm

Yale SOM: http://mba.yale.edu/MBA/admissions/events.shtml

IESE: http://www.iese.edu/aplicaciones/emba/events/events_emba.asp?lang=en

IMD: http://www.imd.ch/programs/mba/infosessions/index.cfm

INSEAD: http://www.insead.edu/mba/offevents/index.cfm?fuseaction=offcampus

LBS: http://www.london.edu/programmes/infoevents/do?progSelect=MBA&locationSelect=

According to the Economist report, this news overrides a recent announcement that Sheppard had been appointed to a second five-year term as Fuqua dean. William Boulding, Fuqua’s deputy dean, will serve as interim dean for a two-year term beginning August 1st, according to the FT. Fuqua will begin an international search for a new dean during Boulding’s second year.

Sheppard will continue teaching in Fuqua’s Global Executive MBA program while working on fundraising and business development for Duke Kunshan University, the FT reports. He will also serve as chairman of Duke CE, a corporate education venture he created and led for seven years before his appointment as Fuqua dean in 2007.

For the complete Financial Times article, click here. For the Economist report, click here.

All of the 2011-2012 editions feature the most current information from the programs, including the latest admissions guidelines, class demographics and placement statistics, and offer insight into year-over-year trends. This year, our guides include more student quotes, new content about school-specific special programs, exclusive Q&As with admissions directors and career services directors, and Clear Admit’s analysis of essay topics.

Applauded by admissions officers and applicants alike, the Clear Admit School Guides are informative and detailed profiles of leading business schools that combine the views of faculty, students, alumni and the popular press. Our guides are available for immediate download in PDF format to help you meet your tight time constraints.

The Clear Admit School Guides will help you to:

2011-2012 versions of the remaining School Guide titles and new titles for international MBA programs are slated for release later this summer, so stay tuned for more details!

To purchase the updated and improved Clear Admit School Guides, visit the Clear Admit Shop.

Although there is no specified word limit, Duke does require that all essays be no more than two pages in length, written with 1.5 line spacing and a minimum 10 point font size. Let’s take a closer look at each essay:

Essay 1: Describe your vision for your career and your inspiration for pursuing this career path. This is a variation of the standard career goals essay. Because Duke is asking about applicants’ career vision, however, this particular question lends itself to a long-term, big picture outlook in addition to the typical description of one’s immediate post-MBA career goals. Responding to the second part of this prompt provides candidates with the perfect opportunity to outline their career histories. Applicants should also consider including information about any academic or extracurricular experiences that have motivated them to pursue their intended careers. With two pages to respond to this prompt, applicants should have ample space to describe both their career visions as well as the factors and experiences that inspired their plans.

It’s important to note that this career vision question does not ask applicants how Fuqua would factor into achieving their professional goals. Therefore, all discussion of applicants’ academic and professional interest in Duke should be reserved for the response to the third prompt.

Essay 2: How will your background, values, and non-work activities enhance the experience of other Duke MBA students and add value to Fuqua’s diverse culture? This question reflects Duke’s interest in identifying students who are in a position to contribute meaningfully to the diversity of the school’s community. The prompt is fairly broad, covering just about every possible dimension of one’s candidacy, experience and perspective; subsequently, it issues a general invitation for the applicant to imagine how his or her unique characteristics might map onto involvement in ‘Team Fuqua.’  This response is a great place to showcase specific knowledge of the student culture at Duke – even linking aspects of your background to contributions to discussions in specific courses or participation in conferences and campus events – as well as to introduce information that will help you stand out from the applicant pool.

Essay 3: Why Duke? (If you are interested in a specific concentration, joint degree, clubs or activities, please discuss how you would contribute to these in this essay.) Asking applicants . . . → Continue Reading]]> Fuqua’s essay topics for the 2011-2012 admissions season remain identical to last year’s, retaining a strong interest in applicants’ interest in and potential contribution to the Duke MBA program and broader community.  Moreover, the preamble/introduction that has prefaced the program’s essays for the past several years suggests that the program is seeking students who are both natural leaders and collaborators, able to work with diverse teams of people, and who hope to make a lasting impact through their post-MBA career pursuits. Further, Duke values students who can express themselves in a personable manner through their essays, so applicants should also strive to infuse their writing with personality and passion.

Although there is no specified word limit, Duke does require that all essays be no more than two pages in length, written with 1.5 line spacing and a minimum 10 point font size. Let’s take a closer look at each essay:

Essay 1: Describe your vision for your career and your inspiration for pursuing this career path.
This is a variation of the standard career goals essay. Because Duke is asking about applicants’ career vision, however, this particular question lends itself to a long-term, big picture outlook in addition to the typical description of one’s immediate post-MBA career goals. Responding to the second part of this prompt provides candidates with the perfect opportunity to outline their career histories. Applicants should also consider including information about any academic or extracurricular experiences that have motivated them to pursue their intended careers. With two pages to respond to this prompt, applicants should have ample space to describe both their career visions as well as the factors and experiences that inspired their plans.

It’s important to note that this career vision question does not ask applicants how Fuqua would factor into achieving their professional goals. Therefore, all discussion of applicants’ academic and professional interest in Duke should be reserved for the response to the third prompt.

Essay 2: How will your background, values, and non-work activities enhance the experience of other Duke MBA students and add value to Fuqua’s diverse culture?
This question reflects Duke’s interest in identifying students who are in a position to contribute meaningfully to the diversity of the school’s community. The prompt is fairly broad, covering just about every possible dimension of one’s candidacy, experience and perspective; subsequently, it issues a general invitation for the applicant to imagine how his or her unique characteristics might map onto involvement in ‘Team Fuqua.’  This response is a great place to showcase specific knowledge of the student culture at Duke – even linking aspects of your background to contributions to discussions in specific courses or participation in conferences and campus events – as well as to introduce information that will help you stand out from the applicant pool.

Essay 3: Why Duke? (If you are interested in a specific concentration, joint degree, clubs or activities, please discuss how you would contribute to these in this essay.)
Asking applicants about their interest in the school to which they are applying is standard practice among MBA programs , and Duke’s parenthetical comments provide applicants with a clue as to the topics they should cover in responding to this essay. The important thing to note is that Fuqua asks how applicants would contribute to the school, so in addition to explaining what academic and extracurricular programs you want to become involved in, it’s important to show how this involvement would benefit the Duke community.

One thing to be aware of is that your answer to this question is not merely a reiteration of the points made in your second essay, as both prompts ask applicants to explain how they would contribute to the school. One way in which you can approach this challenge is by using Essay 2 to focus on who you are and how you are unique: with this as your foundation, you can then use specific examples of planned participation to explain what you would bring to Fuqua and how you hope to contribute to the class. Meanwhile, in responding to Essay 3, you might focus on what you hope to get out of Fuqua and why you want to be there. In explaining how you are a cultural fit with the program and how the school would help you achieve your career goals, you should support your argument with specific examples of how you would contribute to, as well as benefit from, specific courses, clubs, and events.

Conclusion
As you prepare to respond to these prompts, remember to do careful research on Duke’s program offerings and integrate your findings. Candidates should consult the program website, Fuqua students and alumni, and Clear Admit School Guide to Fuqua for an in-depth review of the program’s unique features, character, and curriculum. In addition, feel free to contact us for a free consultation, during which one of our Clear Admit Admissions Consultants will help you consider the elements of your profile and determine how to best spread them across these three essays.