**Interview with Assistant Dean of Admissions, Duke University Fuqua School of Business**
Matt, Assistant Dean of Admissions, Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, is managing admission operations for eight different master's programs, including two Executive MBA programs, three One-Year residential programs, and three Online specialized programs.** **
Prior to joining Duke, Matt was the Director of Admissions and Financial Aid at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs for five years, then joined Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in 2011, where he served as Director of Admissions for nine years.
Matt is an experienced admissions professional specializing in admissions, financial aid, and enrollment management. In ChaseDream's exclusive interview, Matt shares the educational philosophy of the Fuqua School of Business, what makes the Fuqua program unique, the qualities that MBA applicants need to possess, and common application questions.
**Fuqua School of Business: Uniqueness You Need to Know [Show Summary]**
1. **What do you think is the unique appeal of Duke?**
I would say that when we talk about Team Fuqua, it's not just for students, it's also for staff and faculty. It's a very team-based culture. I would say that I've worked a lot of places, but the spirit of teamwork is the strongest I've ever seen it at Fuqua. So the leadership, when they talk about the team based concept, it's not just we're going to put students into teams, we want faculty and staff also to work on team based projects and to be collaborative and cooperative. I would say that Duke is a very collaborative environment. People want to help one another and we're always looking for opportunities to be on cross-functional teams that are going to help the school achieve. Our mission is such that this is a very welcoming and collaborative place.
2. **Team Fuqua**
Team is pretty simple, you are going to be judged, your performance is going to be not just your own, but that of the group. If the three of us were on a team, we would not receive separate grades, we would get one grade, all of us would get the same grade. And so, for the team, it's a willingness to work with other people knowing that things are not always going to be perfect. So some patience is involved.
Not every team or not every project that a team works on, someone will have strength. And so there'll be people on the team who are weak in some areas and others that are strong. And you'll flip those roles depending on the projects you're working on. Sometimes you'll be the one with subject matter, knowledge or skill, and sometimes you won't. And that's basically how the world works.
When you're doing projects at work, you do some independent work. I do independent work all the time, but ultimately, I'm judged on the performance of my team and accomplishing our goals. And so, when we were interviewing an applicant, when we're looking at the characteristics that are reflected in the letter of recommendation, someone is talking about an applicant. Are they able to work with others? Do they have the ability to adapt to different circumstances and be flexible? All of the things that are required to be part of a team, you have to be able to adapt and change and adjust, not necessarily be stubborn, because stubbornness is not always the way forward when you're trying to accomplish something beyond just yourself.
3. **What are Fuqua's leadership principles?**
I would say the biggest one is decency. We are a dean for many, many years, talked about what do you call DQ or decency quotient is basically doing well, but also doing right for others, not being greedy or selfish, but being generous and being empathetic, understanding other people. So it's possible to be smart. It's possible to get along well with others, but an additional part of it is being a decent person. And so we believe that leadership with decency is going to help you achieve better outcomes for everyone involved.
You as a leader will be more successful because you're empowering those underneath you to do their work and to be supported in a way that is productive rather than destructive. There is destructive leadership where you tear people down or you don't recognize their value or reward them accordingly. And so, the decency quotient is something you'll read about on our website a little bit and also in student blogs, and alumni will talk about it. So I would say the decency, being a decent leader is something that is very critical to our philosophy.
[/md]作者: liuchangle 时间: 2024-10-29 15:26
[md] 本帖最后由 liuchangle 于 2024-10-29 15:34 编辑
**Career Development and Networking at Duke**
5. **Could you share the reach of Duke's alumni network in China and globally, and how it can be utilized to support one's career development?**
For any student, a lot of it has to do with networking. A very common expression is it's not what you know, it's who you know. And if you talk to our students and alumni, you'll hear a lot of stories about people finding out about job opportunities and doors opening because of networking, talking to other people. We have a career management center that focuses on strategic career skill development staff members that are dedicated to teaching students how to think long term about their career path. Everything from developing your resume to interview skills, to talking about networking, thinking about the kinds of companies and organizations that you are interested in doing research on them. Ultimately, it's the individual responsibility of the student to put in the work, to open the doors, to get the job, to get the internship. But we provide a very strong foundation and support system. Our faculty also play a large role in helping students think about the direction they want to go, and faculty have a lot of knowledge of what previous students have done and where they're working and what kind of opportunities might be a good match for them.
5. **Networking Events**
I would say we have happy hours. When we are almost anywhere we go, we either as staff, we will engage with our alumni and have a social outing. And then we also have regional alumni advisory boards that will plan alumni events around the world. And MBA students are very social. They like, they like to drink and hang out and talk and work. And so almost everywhere we go, when we travel as staff members, we will meet with alumni. And then it's very common for our alumni to get together on their own.
And Duke University is actually celebrating 100 years this year. And so the nice thing is Fuqua is a wonderful school, but we also have an engineering school, a school of the environment, a medical school, a law school, a policy school, a divinity school. There are alumni of many different Duke schools in different cities. And sometimes they will get together not just as part of their individual school, but also as a part of the broader university I'm actually in.
6. **Do you have any highly recommended clubs that are very popular with students on campus?**
There are two general types of clubs: professional clubs that focus on like consulting and banking, and then there's your purely social kinds of clubs. And I think the kinds of clubs that are attractive to international students focus on getting to know North Carolina and America and American culture. So things like hiking, going to the beach, going kayaking or something that relates to what is available in the state of North Carolina or even more broadly in the United States, going to different regions in the United States.
And one of the unique things about our daytime program is we're on a term, or we have six-week terms. And between each term, there's a break. And quarters and semesters are very traditional in the United States. And there's fewer breaks. We basically have more breaks that are built into our curriculum, which gives students the flexibility to travel, to do professional site visits, to get outside of our area, whether it be in the us or international. And the international students are very interested in exploring different cultures and also different regions within the United States. So clubs that focus on getting you experience, experiences that are cultural, are quite popular.
Sometimes I will go to different talks, or I'll participate in a club activity because it's part of a visiting student event, like students or applicants will come to visit and a club activity will be happening, and they'll invite students to go. We have Fuqua Friday, almost every single Friday, which I'll go to some. That's not a club, it's more of a community gathering.
[/md]作者: liuchangle 时间: 2024-10-29 15:27
[md]**Job Market**
[md]7. **Are you seeing any emerging employment areas or industries and how do these trends impact the Fuqua MBA program and career support services?**
I would say that the startup culture is very desirable. A lot of our applicants say that they don't necessarily want to do the traditional path, which is working for a large bank, a large consulting firm, a large company. They are interested in starting their own company or working for a company that's going to be the next big company. And that trend of kind of innovation and entrepreneurship is something that we're seeing now.
There's lots and lots of students who want to work for BCG or Alibaba or Citicorp or whoever it is. But I would say that even those students are interested in entrepreneurial thinking because a lot of organizations are only going to be able to keep up with what's going on in the world through an entrepreneurial mindset. Most large organizations have within them kind of an innovation group that is thinking about how they can develop new goods and services and products, ways to generate more income and business. And so not a traditional way of thinking all the time. It's a way of thinking differently. And a lot of our applicants are expressing interest in how to develop the skills to think entrepreneurial.
And we do have a concentration in innovation and entrepreneurship, we also have a center that focuses on innovation and entrepreneurship. So they have a pitch competition where you can pitch your business idea and you can actually win funding. They have guest speakers who come in and talk. They have different seminar programs that are available, certificate. And the nice thing about the center is it's a Duke University Center. So we see students from all over the university coming to our campus because the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center is located at Fuqua, so people from the medical school, the engineering school, the school, the environment, the undergraduate will come to Fuqua to engage in programming, which allows our students to network, which is kind of the key to everything that I was talking about, meeting new people, having conversations, developing relationships that are going to open doors down the line.
AI is relatively new. We are looking at it and will plan to start any AI related courses in the future. Duke University received a \$30 million. Donation from the Duke Endowment for Innovation, sorry for AI initiatives across the university in Fuqua, we've had classes on machine learning and artificial, the integration of artificial intelligence type models in business for some time now. But we are continuing to explore new opportunities to develop case studies and courses that focus on it because it is becoming a very important part of our business world. The faculty who teaches in our data analytics and machine learning type courses, I have been looking at AI modeling even before AI has become as big as it is today using data analytics and the use of business analysis, data analytics, visualization, and whatnot has been a specialty at Fuqua for some time.
8. **How do you view the Chinese MBA admissions market, do you have any plans in the next 2-3 years?**
Well, international business is driving the world right now along with politics. The pace of business is changing very rapidly, and we feel like the skills that we are teaching in the MBA programs will help citizens of China, help integrate China further into the global economy. And so it, we don't really view China much differently than any other country, except for the fact that China plays such a large role in what is going on in the world. And so the scale of what is going on in China is much larger than in almost any other country. But the kinds of skills that we are going to teach, we feel are going to help Chinese businesses get along with businesses around the world. And hopefully through business, we can make a more harmonious world. Sometimes business is the way to strengthen relationships between countries.
[/md]作者: liuchangle 时间: 2024-10-29 15:30
[md] 本帖最后由 liuchangle 于 2024-10-29 15:32 编辑
**Duke Fuqua MBA Application**
10. **Do you have any suggestions on international or Chinese applicants?**
More than anything, any applicant, whether they're Chinese or American or Canadian or English, we want to see applicants who are genuine to themselves, true to themselves in their application. So it's not preparing an application that an applicant thinks we want to read. It's presenting themselves as who they are. I would say that it's sometimes common for Chinese applicants to prove that they are as perfect as they could possibly be, when actually vulnerability can be a good thing. Sometimes it's seen as a weakness if you are vulnerable. But for us, vulnerability is actually a strength.
We want to know what it is about you that you want to improve. If you were perfect, you wouldn't need an MBA program. So when I'm reading an admission, I'm interested in what gaps people have, what areas of you could say weakness. I like to say a gap, a gap between where you want to go and where you are now and how we can help fill that. Everyone is an applicant who could become a valuable member of our community, whether they're from China or from a different part of the world.
10. **Could you talk about the criteria of scholarship?**
We treat all applicants the same in terms of trying to figure out who are the top applicants. And the top applicants get scholarships because they're merit based, not need based. Basically, your admissions ranking, ultimately, we read the file, and we rank every applicant, we give them a score internally. So we have to figure out a way, if we have 100 applicants, we have to rank who's the best applicant. And then we go down the line. So we have to give them the score.
11. **How do you consider applicants’ undergraduate GPA?**
Because we are not admitting researchers, we we're not a Phd program, a Phd program. The most important thing is NOT your grades and your test score for an MBA program. Your test scores and your GPA are signal to us that you can do the work in the program, but they're not the most important thing.
The most important thing for us is, do we feel like someone is going to be a valuable member of our community? Can they do the work? Is a question that we do need to answer, can you succeed in class and test scores and GPA are going to help send a signal? But sometimes I get more excited about applicants who have lower Gpas or test scores because of their professional work history, because of how quickly they've advanced in their company, because of how much time they've spent working in their community or mentoring or volunteering. So it's not just academic capability. It's also your capability of being a good member of our community, bringing attention to the school.
So if someone's GPA is lower, is there a reason for it? And sometimes there may not be, and it may be a red flag for the committee that someone has a very low GPA and there were no other circumstances they talk about. But oftentimes there is a reason why someone may not have been able at an extremely high level academically, either a positive reason like being an athlete or a negative reason, a health or family situation.
12. **How do you compare and evaluate the new GMAT scores with the old ones?**
Tests are always going to change every 10 or 12 years, they're going to change and when they do, there's a year or two of adjustment, where GMAC will give us a concordance table telling it's okay, these are the old scores, these are the new scores, and this is how they relate to one another. We now have a year of experience with it and each year we become more familiar with the new scoring system. It becomes a standard, but for, I would say, for probably a three-year period, we're pretty much relying on the concordance table to GMAC gives us.
[/md]作者: liuchangle 时间: 2024-10-29 15:30
[md]13. **What are the differences between Fuqua Daytime MBA and GEMBA programs? What would you highlight for Duke EMBA?**
The big difference is before me at a full time MBA, you are a full time student, all you're doing is studying you get an internship, you join student clubs, you basically a 100% of your time is dedicated to your development where in an executive program, you are working and going to school at the same time. And so you have to make your boss happy and you have to make your teachers happy at the same time. So you're balancing, you do not have the opportunity to do an internship in an executive MBA program because you're working while you're going to school. So it's just the curriculum is going to be very similar. The core classes, the faculty that teach in our Executive MBA program, or the same faculty that teach in our MBA program. But it really depends on the format that someone is looking at.
Most executive MBA programs have a minimum amount of work experience that they require. For us, it's five years. So we do have some people in our program who you would look at them and you would think that they belong more in a daytime full time program. But their rationale is typically they're already advancing in their career. They don't want to put their career on hold. They want to continue to work, continue to earn money and go to school at the same time. And so the Executive MBA program is going to be very similar in terms of course, content and learning, but it's just going to be very different in terms of the format.
We do have residencies on our campus and around the world. So if someone is doing our global Executive MBA program from China, they will come to Duke's campus three times and they will go to four international cities over a two year period. And so we will issue a student a visa, but it is a short term visa to be in the United States for the residency. It's not a permanent visa to live in the United States, it's a temporary student visa. And so they would be able to enter the United States for the residency and maybe a little longer, but then they would have to leave and go back to their country. They cannot live in the United States. And do the executive, the Global Executive MBA program at the same time. They would have to live in their home country, or another country could not be the United States.
EMBA program also offers scholarships, but not at the same level as daytime scholarships, which are typically much more generous in terms of the amount of funding that's given. A daytime student could receive a full tuition scholarship. We have no full tuition scholarships for the executive program. Typically, the scholarships range from about \$10,000 to \$30,000 for an executive program, and that's over a two-year period. Whereas our most generous daytime fellowship will basically be full tuition for a small percentage of students. But we do not offer full tuition fellowships for executive.
[/md]作者: liuchangle 时间: 2024-10-29 15:39
[md]#### 杜克大学福卡商学院招生助理院长 **Matt Clemons**
Matt Clemons **现任杜克大学富卡商学院助理副院长，负责八个不同硕士项目的招生工作，已在杜克工作三年。在加入杜克之前，Matt** 曾在哥伦比亚大学国际与公共事务学院担任招生与财务援助总监五年，随后于2011年加入哈佛大学肯尼迪政府管理学院，担任招生主任长达九年。
Matt **是一位经验丰富的招生专家，专注于招生、财务援助和招生管理。在专访和分享会中，Matt** 分享了富卡商学院的教育理念、项目特色、在申请人中寻找的特质、以及常见的申请问题。