The Associate Dean of Admissions at Duke University Fuqua School of Business Shari Hubert is excited – about the entrepreneurial offerings at Fuqua facilitating some real growth in their MBA students, about getting to know Fuqua applicants, and how deftly the Career Management Center supports the students’ diverse career interests, among other things. There is plenty more to be excited about at Fuqua, and Hubert is here to share her insights in this Admissions Director Q&A.
Hubert’s role is overseeing recruitment and admissions for the school’s portfolio of ten business degree programs. Prior to Fuqua, she was in charge of admissions for the Full-time and Evening MBA programs at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Hubert has extensive experience in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors, and entered higher education after working for the Peace Corps as director of recruitment within the Office of Volunteer Recruitment and Selection. Her work is mission-driven, and she is passionate about serving in leadership roles that have social impact. She is a current Board Member of the Harvard Business School African-American Alumni Association, and Empower Dance Foundation. She is also an Alumni Interviewer for the Dartmouth College Alumni Ambassador Program and an Advisory Council Member for the Forte Foundation. In her spare time, she loves fostering dogs and is an avid supporter of the Saving Grace Animal Shelter in Wake Forest, NC.
Read on to take a deep dive into MBA admissions at Fuqua and gain some insight into writing your essay, preparing for your interview, and testing tips.
Clear Admit: What is the one aspect of your program that you wish applicants knew more about?
Shari Hubert: While many aspects of our Daytime MBA program are worth highlighting, I have especially enjoyed witnessing the ways students can sharpen their entrepreneurial mindset. Fuqua houses Duke Innovation & Entrepreneurship (Duke I&E), a university-wide entrepreneurship hub that inspires and empowers students to act on their ideas with a proven approach to problem-solving. In hands-on courses, like the popular New Ventures series, students are pushed to develop new ways of exploring what’s possible and are given an outlet for testing their innovative ideas. Some have even secured funding, including a prize established in memory of Dean Yep, MBA ’12, which celebrates Dean’s passion for reducing geographic or social boundaries through entrepreneurship.
It is also exciting to see how students are creating their own paths for exploring their passions through experiential learning opportunities outside the classroom and an engaged community of student clubs. Fuqua offers many resources essential for becoming an impactful innovator, no matter what industry or job function they plan to pursue.
CA: Walk us through the life of an application in your office from an operational standpoint. What happens between the time an applicant clicks “submit” and the time the committee offers a final decision?
SH: Once we receive an application, our processing team will confirm that all required materials are complete and legible. If anything is missing, our team emails the applicant to let them know and offers time to submit the missing materials. I want to stress that we check every application that we receive and will confirm with each applicant that their application is complete.
Then, the entire packet of information is reviewed by our Admissions Committee. Collectively, we decide which applicants to invite to interview in that round. Applicants are then notified via email of their interview decision and have a couple of weeks to schedule an interview. After the admissions interview, our committee reviews the application again, considering all materials and interview notes. Together, we discuss and make a final decision on each application.
CA: How does your team approach the essay portion of the application specifically? What are you looking for as you read an essay? Are there common mistakes that applicants should try to avoid? What is one key thing they should keep in mind as they sit down to write?
SH: Our application includes two essays. The first is our iconic 25 Random Things essay, which we often hear is one of MBA applicants’ favorite essays. By the way, it’s our team’s favorite essay to read as well! One bit of advice is to use the real estate well in this essay—focus more on your personal accomplishments, family, hopes, fears, and desires than on your professional accomplishments, since we can gather most of that from your resume.
Our second essay question asks applicants how they expect to engage with our unique Team Fuqua community. With this question, we ask applicants to be focused and specific in their responses by limiting their answers to the three most meaningful ways they expect to be engaged as students. There are so many opportunities available to our students, and one of the first skills they must develop is the ability to prioritize what is most important to them.
We also have a couple of short answer questions, the first asks about career interests, both in the immediate term as well as the longer term. With this section, we’re hoping to gauge the applicant’s self-awareness and ability to connect past experiences with transferable skills and new passions. We can appreciate that plans may change and students may need to be flexible, so we want to understand the applicant’s expectations going into the program and how realistic they are.
The second short answer question is optional. This section allows applicants to share more regarding their upbringing, unique personal or professional situations, and family circumstances that provide context around their lived experience.
A common mistake that I’ve seen from applicants is unintentionally not explaining aspects of their application that do not speak to their strengths. I like to advise applicants not to assume that we in Admissions will be able to read between the lines and piece together the context of an area of their application that they may not feel is a strong indicator of their abilities. If there’s something in an applicant’s profile that they feel is not a strength, they should tell us what they’ve done to shore up that area. By being proactive, an applicant demonstrates self-awareness and humility along with a drive to improve.
CA: Could you tell us about your interview process? Approximately how many applicants do you interview? Who conducts the interview (students, admissions officers, alumni) and what is the nature of the interview (resume-based, application-based, behavioral)? Will your admissions interviews be in-person or virtual for the 2024-2025 admissions season?
SH: We are making a change to our interview process this year that we believe will ensure a consistent and equitable interview experience for all applicants. Rather than offering both self-initiated and invitation-only interviews as we have in the past, this year all interviews will be offered by invitation only. All applicants will now submit their application, and invitations to interview will be released on a rolling basis throughout each round. In this way, not only does every applicant have the same experience, but also each applicant will have more time to schedule and contact their interview. The dates by which all applicants will receive an interview decision can be found here.
Applicants may opt to interview virtually or in person on our campus in Durham. I encourage applicants to choose whichever interview format is most convenient for them. Interviews are resume-based and are conducted by either Admissions staff, alumni or select second-year students.
All candidates will interview before being admitted, but the interview decision is not a final decision on an application. A student who is not invited to interview initially may be invited to interview later in the process.
CA: What is your testing policy? Do you offer exam waivers? Why or why not?
SH: We want applicants to choose the test they feel most comfortable taking, so for Fuqua’s Daytime MBA program, we accept the GMAT, GRE, and Executive Assessment, including the new GMAT Focus exam. Our team is well-trained to evaluate the differences in the new GMAT scores from the original GMAT.
All of the test options have been shown to be relevant and helpful in our assessment of readiness for studying at Fuqua. While we do not offer exam waivers for our full-time Daytime MBA program, applicants for our programs geared toward working professionals, including the Weekend and Global Executive MBA programs and online specialized Master’s in Quantitative Management (Health Analytics, Business Analytics, and Accelerated Business Analytics) programs, may apply for a waiver.
CA: In the application data form, many schools ask for information about work experience, activities, hobbies, and much more. What advice would you give to applicants as they approach this component of the application process?
SH: We think carefully about the questions we ask in our applications, so my best advice for applicants is to answer each question thoughtfully and carefully. For example, we require applicants to submit a resume, but we also ask for them to separately fill out work information. The work experience section allows our Admissions Committee to clearly see career moves or promotions, but it is also an opportunity for applicants to share with us reasons for position or company changes.
We are looking to get a full picture of someone’s experience, challenges, and successes. While a section may appear to be redundant, I hope applicants will approach each section as an opportunity to show more of themselves.
CA: Tell us briefly about two popular courses at your institution.
SH: The first course I want to highlight is taken by students right as they begin their academic journey at Fuqua: Entrepreneurial Mindset in Action. It is taught by a marketing professor, Christine Moorman, and a finance professor, Manuel Adelino in the summer term. Since we added this course to the core curriculum in 2020, students have shared that they love its hands-on approach.
Professors Moorman and Adelino combine their functional knowledge of marketing, finance, and entrepreneurship into an approach that teaches students to think and behave like the owner of a company. While this approach prepares students who aspire to go deep and start their own ventures, an entrepreneurial mindset more broadly helps all students prepare for a lifetime of career success. As I mentioned above, it has been rewarding to see our students hone their ability to understand problems and innovate in a way that immediately adds value to any organization. Students rave about how the course connects to leadership in general and puts them in a collaborative team environment from the very beginning of the program.
Keeping with the theme of core classes, I also want to highlight our core Managerial Economics class. Many students have said it is the best class they have ever taken.
Managerial Economics is taught by professors Udayan Vaidya and Pino Lopomo. Students credit both faculty with taking incredibly complex topics and making them understandable, while also demonstrating the application of the ideas. This foundation helps set up students to be successful through the rest of the core curriculum and in their elective classes. Beyond that, Pino (who was just awarded the Excellence in Teaching Award by our recent graduates!) and Udayan are masters of their craft and are described as engaging, supportive, entertaining, and motivating.
CA: Is there anything else you’d like to highlight about your MBA program or admissions process?
SH: Yes, I would love to highlight our fiercely dedicated team at Fuqua’s Career Management Center (CMC). We have a large CMC team that is built to enable successful career searches across all industries. This aligns well with our diverse student body who seek a wide spectrum of post-MBA roles.
In addition to our MBA career coaches, we have an established team of career professionals focused on supporting students and alumni, developing employer relationships, and creating student/employer engagement opportunities. We also equip many of our second-year MBA students to be thoughtful mentors to first-year MBAs as they embark on the internship career search process.
Career search is integrated into the Daytime MBA program—it’s not an afterthought. Career searching is a skill that will be valuable for the rest of your life. Fuqua recognizes the career search as an integral part of the MBA experience which is why we intentionally provide career programming into every student’s academic schedule starting virtually before school starts and in the classroom in August.
Our CMC team provides additional resources for international students, recognizing the unique aspects of their search process. This all builds into our overall belief that all students deserve meaningful work. In fact, all Fuqua alumni receive lifetime career support that can be utilized throughout their careers.
