Duke / Fuqua MBA News
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Published: November 11, 2014
Demystifying the Mysterious World of Business School Rankings
It’s not every day that MBA rankings end up trending on Facebook, and yet yesterday that’s exactly what happened. When Bloomberg BusinessWeek released its biennial ranking of full-time MBA programs, the results shocked many and created quite a buzz. According to Bloomberg BW’s most recent calculations, Duke’s Fuqua School of Business has stolen the number one spot, knocking Harvard Business School out of the top five for the first time in history.
Just how did Bloomberg BW decide which programs rose to the top and which fell from grace? As it turns out, the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University just a few weeks ago released an infographic that provides a clear and concise overview showcasing the rankings methodologies employed by five major publications: Bloomberg BW, along with U.S. News & World Report, the Financial Times, the Economist and Forbes.
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Published: November 10, 2014
Duke’s Fuqua School of Business Tops Latest Bloomberg BusinessWeek Ranking
Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business shot to the top of Bloomberg Businessweek’s biennial ranking of full-time MBA programs, released today, up from No. 6 two years ago. In the process, the North Carolina school unseated the reigning University of Chicago Booth School of Business and pushed Harvard Business School (HBS) out of the top five for the first time in the history of the rankings.
The formula Bloomberg BW employs to arrive at its rankings is as follows: 45 percent of the score is based on how recruiters rate MBA hires from the school, another 45 percent is determined by how graduating MBAs judge their program and the remaining 10 percent is based on faculty productivity, as measured by a tally of research published in leading journals.
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Published: November 9, 2014
U.S. GMAT Percentile Scores Drop as Asia-Pacific Test Takers Dominate Quant Section
Increasing numbers of prospective business school applicants from Asia-Pacific countries such as India and China are taking the GMAT and outperforming U.S. students on the quantitative portion of the exam, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. As a result, though U.S. students’ raw scores have remained consistent over the past several years, their percentile ranking has slipped as more higher-scoring international applicants take the exam.
The lower percentile rankings can seem to suggest that U.S. student aptitude is declining, GMAC CEO Sangeet Chowfla told the Journal. Ten years ago, a raw score of 48 on the quantitative section (for which scores typically range between 0 and 51) would have yielded a ranking in the 86th percentile, whereas today the same raw score places a test-taker in just the 74th percentile.
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Published: October 22, 2014
U.S. News & World Report Ranks Business Schools by Graduates’ Indebtedness
Rankings of graduate management education programs abound, each with their own particular criteria for assessing which business schools ultimately come out on top. Separate from its overall business school rankings, U.S. News & World Report recently used data collected from schools to determine the top 10 programs from which MBA students graduate with the most debt.
The number one spot goes to Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, where full-time MBA students from the 2013 class who borrowed for business school had an average indebtedness of $108,186. Fuqua’s full-time MBA students had more debt than any of the other 86 ranked institutions, according to data submitted to U.S. News.
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Published: August 24, 2014
Ice Bucket Challenge Continues Its Ripple Through Top Business Schools
It started last week with one section challenging another at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, ultimately leading to a school-wide dousing and a challenge issued to rival schools UNC Kenan-Flagler School, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and UVA’s Darden School. And the ice-cold water just keeps flowing (as do the donations).
The challenge, of course, is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that began going viral in late July and has amassed an incredible $79.7 million in donations to date (as compared to just $2.5 million during the same time period last year [July 29th to August 25th]). The ALS Association reports that it has gained 1.7 million new donors along the way.
Those who are challenged are supposed to have ice water dumped over their heads and then challenge others to do the same—or to make a donation to fight ALS—within 24 hours. In taking up the mantle, business school classes have called upon their peers to both endure the icy shower AND donate.
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Published: August 19, 2014
Business School Students Accept ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, Pass It On
With the likes of Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and former President George W. Bush pouring buckets of ice over their heads in support of ALS awareness, surely top business schools are getting in on the action as well, right?
At Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, it began with one section (Section 4) challenging another (Section 5). That section upped the ante, challenging the entire rest of the class, as well as all of Fuqua’s MMS Cross Continent students. So on August 13th, Team Fuqua did the #ALSIceBucketChallenge as one.
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MBA Students from Leading Global Business Schools to Help Child Cancer Charity
A United Kingdom charity focused on helping children with cancer in developing countries will receive an infusion of expertise and energy this summer as more than 40 students from top business schools in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas develop plans to tackle business problems faced by the organization.
The students, working in teams as part of the Financial Times MBA Challenge, will assist the FT’s seasonal appeal partner, which this year is World Child Cancer (WCC). Seven teams of students – who hail from schools including Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, Oxford Saïd Business School, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, London Business School, ESADE and IE Business School, among others – will each be partnered with a mentor and required to submit a business plan in September on a set topic.
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Some Business Schools Adopt Tracking Software in a Bid to Increase Yield
A number of top-tier business schools have begun to use software to track prospective applicants’ interactions with their school in an effort to gauge how interested they are in attending, according to a recent article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek. The data points – which can include whether a student has emailed admissions staff, how many admissions events they’ve attended and whether they requested program information – are now included in candidate profiles alongside test scores and essay responses, Bloomberg BW adds.
Most schools report that student interest isn’t a main factor in admissions decisions, but the fact that increasing numbers of schools are using the tracking programs suggest that the data gathered counts for something.
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Fridays From the Frontline
Hello and welcome to Fridays From the Frontline, Clear Admit's weekly roundup of the ruminations of the b-school blogosphere. This week, several of our 2016 applicants weigh in with recommendations, from audio books to MBA programs, while current students take stock of the MBA experience, including the challenges and rewards of transitioning from the military to pursuing an MBA.
MBATheNonProfitWay has made a resolution to switch her audio-book listening habit away from fiction to various business related books. The first selection, "The McKinsey Mind" did not fare so well in review. JourneyOfaGMATer took some time to share insights on the definition of 'problem', while Sarah'sMBAJourney hasn't given up on the idea of pursuing the MBA, and is now looking at a Cranfield MBA, although she does have some concerns and is open to other options as well.
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Published: April 16, 2014
Deans of Leading Business Schools Descend on the White House
The deans of more than a dozen leading business schools took leave from their campuses yesterday to head to the White House, where they met with senior advisors preparing for the White House Summit on Working Families. The White House is seeking input from a range of stakeholders to identify best practices to develop workplaces that better meet the needs of women and working families.
“We did not think this goal could be achieved without thinking of the business leaders of tomorrow, and that is why today, we met with a group of deans from our nation’s leading business schools to discuss best practices for business schools that can better prepare their students for the increasing importance of women in the labor force and the prevalence of employees with families where all parents work,” read a post on the White House Blog.
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Published: April 15, 2014
Stanford Tops Forbes Rankings of Most Satisfied MBA Graduates
When it comes to the satisfaction of its MBA alumni, Stanford Graduate School of Business bests all other business schools, according to Forbes most recent biennial ranking. Forbes evaluated responses from 4,600 graduates from the Class of 2008 to arrive at its top 10 list, polling them on salary and ROI, satisfaction with their education and the preparation it gave them and how happy they are in their current job.
Stanford ranked in the top five among schools across all three categories in the 2013 Forbes survey. Its grads reported higher salaries than any others, with median total compensation of $221,000 five years out of school. Stanford grads also gave the school top scores when asked about their education and how prepared they felt relative to graduates from other MBA programs. As far as job satisfaction, Stanford ranked fourth. But when Forbes averaged the satisfaction scores across all three categories for the 50 U.S. schools with the most responses to the survey, Stanford came out on top overall.
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Fridays From the Frontline
Hello and welcome to Fridays From the Frontline, Clear Admit's weekly ramble through the ruminations of the b-school blogosphere. This week, our stalwart applicants are continuing to filter their impressions of the application process, while contemplating what comes next. Current students are likewise contemplating how their lives have changed since starting business school, whether this year or last, and are looking forward to welcoming the class of 2016.
MBAReapplicant continued his streak of good news with admits from both Tepper and Darden. With a successful end to the reapplication process, MBAReapplicant can finally chose between several exciting options for next year. Timbob, another class of '16 successful applicant to Harvard Business School, took a brief moment away from preparing from his upcoming wedding to share a post-decision publication timeline of events. Much of it involved giddy celebration, and skillful procrastination. Another across-the-pond blogger, Sara'sMBAJourney, continued to share impressions of her trip to the States, including her enjoyable visit to Duke, as well as the terrible state of American roads and the terrible drivers on them. Domontron continued his series on elements of an MBA application by addressing ways to research target schools. He highlights students blogs as an excellent way to get a more direct and unfiltered sense of the school's community and opportunities. Your Fridays From the Frontline editor could not agree more!
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Published: March 19, 2014
MBA Tuition Increases Planned at Many Top Business Schools
Numerous top business schools have approved tuition hikes averaging around 4 percent for the class of 2016, increases that come on top of a 37 percent rise in the degree’s cost over the past six years, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports.
The increases, which range from 2.7 percent at Harvard Business School to 4.9 percent at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, bring the average cost for a year of tuition and fees to roughly $60,000 and the total cost of the degree to as much as $150,000, including living expenses and other add-ons. Six of Bloomberg BW’s 10 top-ranked MBA programs recently approved tuition increases, and the remaining top schools are set to make decisions closer to the fall, according to the report.
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Published: February 12, 2014
Harvard Business School, Fuqua School of Business Researchers Examine Modern Matchmaking
Researchers at Harvard Business School (HBS) and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business recently set out to examine what motivates people to act as matchmakers, discovering that they do it because it brings intrinsic happiness.
HBS Associate Professor Michael Norton and Lalin Anik, a postdoctoral fellow at Fuqua, will present the findings of four studies tomorrow at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology annual conference in Austin, Texas. As part of their studies, Norton and Anik used surveys, computer games and lab-based social interactions to show when and why making matches increases happiness.
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Published: January 2, 2014
Fuqua School of Business MBA Demystifies Week-in-Cities
Advice to prospective MBA students: Be prepared for lots of acronyms. This from Fuqua School of Business first-year MBA student Trevor McKinnon in a recent post to the school’s Daytime MBA Student Blog. “Apparently, MBA students are so busy that we don’t have time to speak in complete sentences and rely on acronyms and abbreviations to save us precious seconds in conversation,” he writes. One such acronym at Fuqua is WIC, which stands for Week-in-Cities.
WIC are mini trips organized by various student clubs to cities across the country during school breaks. Each Week-in-Cities trip is focused on a particular industry and includes scheduled visits for participating students at several companies and firms that might have internships or full-time job opportunities.
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Published: October 8, 2013
Stanford Graduate School of Business Returns to Number One Spot in Forbes 2013 MBA Rankings
Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) reclaimed the top spot in the Forbes 2013 biennial ranking of MBA programs, released today. The University of Chicago Booth School of Business took second, bumping Harvard Business School (HBS), which topped the list in 2011, to third place. The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School followed up the lead in fourth.
Forbes, which ranks full-time MBA programs every two years based on return on investment, found that at the top 25 programs in the United States, the degree still pays off, although it takes longer to do so. For the Class of 2008, the class surveyed for this year’s ranking, the average payback period was 3.7 years, as compared to 2.7 years a decade ago, Forbes reports.
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Published: October 6, 2013
Duke’s Fuqua School of Business Unveils New Energy Finance Concentration, Sustainability Courses
The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University last month announced its launch of a new concentration in energy finance, as well as two new courses focused on sustainability.
The new energy finance concentration, which comes as an addition to the school’s existing concentration in energy and environment, will allow MBA students to explore issues like project finance, markets and trading, corporate finance and risk management in greater depth, while also providing them with the fundamentals of global energy markets. With its launch, Fuqua has become the only MBA program in the BusinessWeek 10 top-ranked schools to offer such an energy finance focus.
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Published: September 23, 2013
Duke’s Fuqua School of Business Launches New One-Year Management Program in China, U.S.
The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University last week announced the launch of a new one-year master’s degree program in management, which will feature three terms of study on Duke’s North Carolina campus and two terms at the new Duke Kunshan University (DKU), near Shanghai.
Duke recently received final approval from China’s Ministry of Education to establish DKU, a joint venture between Duke, Wuhan University and the city of Kunshan. The new campus, which is scheduled to open in July 2014, will offer a master’s degree program in global health (through the Duke Global Health Institute) and a proposed degree in medical physics, as well as the new year-long master of management studies (MMS: DKU) degree. DKU will also serve as the Chinese base for Fuqua’s global executive MBA program, the Financial Times reports.
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Published: September 9, 2013
Shifts in Global Healthcare Increase Intersection between Medicine and the MBA
Entrepreneurship, innovation and cost cutting are increasingly important amid shifts in global healthcare systems, presenting important opportunities for business schools offering healthcare-focused MBA programs, the Financial Times reports.
“The healthcare system is about much more than just treating patients,” Steve Chick, head of INSEAD’s Healthcare Management Initiative, told the FT. “The coordination of care is critical and that’s where business schools can play a big role.”
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Published: September 2, 2013
Trivia Tuesday: Teaching Methods at Duke / Fuqua
Welcome to another edition of Trivia Tuesday, in which we examine individual program elements that differentiate the leading MBA programs from their peers. Today, we’re taking a look into the Clear Admit School Guide to Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business in order to share with you some insights about the program’s teaching methods. “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
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Published: August 26, 2013
Career Services Director Q&A: Sheryle Dirks of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business
~ A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE ~
This week we’re learning about career services at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. We had a great interview with Sheryle Dirks, associate dean of career management, who leads Fuqua’s Career Management Center (CMC).
Dirks has been at Fuqua since 1998 and in her current role as associate dean since 2005. She came to career services from the MBA admissions world, having worked in MBA admissions in the Chicago area. “I loved the intermingling between the corporate world and the education world” that career services offered, she says, so when she landed a job in career management at Fuqua she was thrilled.
Dirks manages the CMC’s 30 full-time staff members, as well as a small group of executive coaches and more than 90 part-time student career counselors. The CMC provides career services to all of the degree programs that go through the business school, which include the full-time MBA program as well as three executive-style programs in which students continue to work while in school and a one-year degree program for slightly younger students.
Read on to learn how the CMC was reorganized last year to better align with the school’s strategy and resources. Dirks also shares her perspective on how the recruiting process has become less linear and more fragmented in the wake of the economic crisis, why passion is one of the most crucial elements of the job search process and more.
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Published: August 19, 2013
Growing Number of Doctors Pursue Health-Focused MBA Degree at Fuqua School of Business
The number of doctors applying to the MBA Health Sector Management program at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business is on the rise, in part a reaction to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the school reports.
An average of 21 doctors has applied to the school’s fulltime healthcare-focused MBA program each year between 2010 and 2013, up from 13 per year, on average, in the six years before that. The number of doctors applying to the Executive MBA program has also increased, to an average of 25 per year between 2010 and 2013, compared to 17 per year between 2004 and 2009.
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Published: August 4, 2013
At Duke’s Fuqua School of Business Many Roads Lead to Consulting
Consulting firms make up six of the 10 top employers of graduates from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and almost a full third (32 percent) of the 2013 class accepted consulting jobs this past year, the school announced recently.
For three years in a row, Deloitte has hired more Duke MBAs than any other employer, hiring 26 graduates from the most recent class. Other consulting firms hiring multiple Duke MBAs include Bain and Company, McKinsey and Company, Boston Consulting Group, Accenture LLP and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, according to data gathered by Fuqua's Career Management Center (CMC.)
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U.S. News Ranks 10 Full-Time MBA Programs That Lead to Highest Student Debt
As part of its Short List series, U.S. News & World Report today took a closer look at the student debt load incurred by full-time MBA students graduating from top business school programs. According to data provided by schools as part of its annual ranking, U.S. News found that full-time MBA graduates in 2012 emerged with an average of $49,619 in debt. At the 10 schools where graduates incurred the most student debt, the average per student was $97,154.
Graduates of New York University’s Stern School of Business top the list in terms of average debt. There, the average graduate has a debt load of $105,782. Six figure debt is also the norm for graduates from the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, U.S. News reports.
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AIGAC Releases 2013 MBA Applicant Survey Results
The average applicant to business school spends between 90 and 140 hours on the MBA application process, according to findings from the 2013 Applicant Survey conducted by the Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants (AIGAC). Excluding GMAT prep, applicants report that they spend between 70 and 110 hours on the application itself.
AIGAC released the applicant survey results as part of its annual conference, which took place this week in Philadelphia. The association was founded in 2006 to promote high ethical standards and professional development among graduate admissions consultants. It conducts an online survey of MBA applicants each year to help its member graduate management admissions consultants and admissions committees at top business schools better understand prospective MBA students’ goals and needs.
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