DUKE or Darden?

gogo12345

Darden这学校在中国太没名气啦，花了那么多钱，也该买个人家知道的。。。

asimov1

From an academic perspective Darden is a lot more rigorous. They are not only 100% case based, but also follow a trimester schedule. This means you will spend a lot of time reading and doing homework. My Darden friends tell me they read 15 cases/week, while Fuqua we only do 5-8 cases/week. Some people like that some people don’t.

Fuqua on the other hand focuses on interactive team learning. We still use case as a teaching tool, but that is only a portion of the learning. The idea at Fuqua is learn leadership through practice. And Fuqua gives you plenty of opportunity to lead. For example, all of the clubs are student run. So you learn how to influence peers to get the job done. I think most Chinese are very strong academically, and a bit weaker on the soft skills. Fuqua will be a good place to practice those soft skills so that you can lead an organization later down the line. When you are at the elite MBA level, everyone is very smart, what will distinguish you from the crowd is your ability to lead. I think for those employers, who are interested in leadership and collaborative team member, they come to Fuqua for that.

Also, as you noted, Duke has a much stronger brand than UVa. Partly because Duke has a very strong undergraduate institution, while UVa is just a good state school, similar to UT-Austin.

shuxuehai

darden的课程听说真的是很累很累。。。

爱神

dfdsf

gogo12345

这就奇怪了，Darden读得那么累，学费又贵，地方又偏，在美国以外又没有名气，不知道性价比好在哪里？

OxSead

说Fuqua远超于Darden或Darden远超于Fuqua都是太超过了

两者都是peer schools。这么互相批评下去没有任何意义，再说楼主已经有自己的决定了，就此沉了吧。

asimov1

The fact that Fuqua is a relative new school (not Duke) yet still very highly regarded, speaks volumes for the students and alumni it turns out. I think in general, in cross-admit situations without scholarship consideration, people choose Fuqua over Darden. As far as employment in concerned, it is my impression that Fuqua share less core employers with Darden than it does with Kellogg. I think the part of the reason is again culture. Kellogg and Fuqua have very collaborative culture, thus turn out similar students. I’m not saying that Darden is a bad school, just saying that it has a very different culture than Fuqua. Another point is culture difference, Fuqua students wear t-shirt to class, while Darden students wear polo and collar shirts to class. In my opinion, Darden has a Southern elitist attitude that is not accepting of international students, while Fuqua has a very diverse class that embraces all cultural backgrounds. I think this is one of the biggest reasons that set Fuqua above Darden, especially for international students

I don’t completely agree with your assessment of the situation. UVa and UT, along with Michigan and Berkeley are all consider “Public Ivy” (see Wikipedia definition). All of them are elite level public institution with long heritage and tradition. Each has a distinct flavor. To judge a school purely on ranking is very deceptive at best. UT has a much larger undergraduate base and a state mandated auto-admission process for top 8% of the in-state high school students. The things combined lower its over ranking. However, its ranking is much higher in specific fields, such as engineering and business. UT does not have a liberal arts lean like UVa.

On the other hand, Duke has always been considered an “Ivy Plus.” Not that official title matters, since it consistently rank higher than the lower Ivies like Brown, Cornell, or Dartmouth (for undergraduate). Duke undergraduate is much more prestigious than UVa.

Vevey

今天才从DUKE的info session回来，对DUKE有了些新理解，等Darden Info 完了再一起比较比较

Vevey

不过，Duke一直在强调他们全球化的趋势，expanding在他们看来是一种优势。但我还是有这样的疑问，expanding是否真的是优势呢，特别是他们以后还要在世界各地建校区。stanford 在info session上就很明确的说明他们不扩招，我个人理解是为了保障项目的高质量和校友的高质量。物依稀为贵嘛，如果以后Duke的MBA一把抓了，那价值会否打折扣呢。

OxSead

照lz的说法，Stanford一定大于Harvard? 连Yale和Cornell的MBA都比Wharton, Columbia更珍贵？
一体两面，要看你怎么衡量。多人表示校友网络更大，少人校友网络也有限。所以怎样都有利弊，不能单元地这么看问题。