What are the three best things an applicant can do before applying?
I would say one is to spend as much time getting to know the program before applying – so, visiting campus . . . getting to know the program and why you want to attend, talking to students and alumni. And understanding their own story. I would encourage an applicant to really think about the transformation that can happen in business school and how they want to transform their careers and their lives and what they want to do with their MBA. Our application process is very
specifically designed to get to know who you are as a person. There’s a
tendency for applicants to think they need to tell us what we want to hear. Focus on just being your authentic self. There’s no magic formula to finding the ideal group of students, but there are a core set of values that we share with our students, in terms of who we are as a business school and who they see themselves as, and how they want to live their lives and change their communities.
What are the worst mistakes an applicant can make?
The worst mistake an applicant can make is believing that they have to be someone other than who they are to be a great MBA candidate. Seventy-five per cent of the people who apply to our program could probably pass all the classes and academically succeed. But the reality is we’re taking a pool of highly qualified people and trying to
create a microcosm of the world for the business school environment. You
have to be who you are. If you do your research then you can authentically engage in a way that says, ‘Here’s who I am, and here’s why I want to attend your business school, and here’s what I can contribute.’ There’s so much pressure, if you really want to get an MBA, especially if you fall in love with a school – there’s so much tendency
to feel that you have to be someone other than who you are to differentiate yourself.
What matters most to you about an application?
We like to look at our application process as taking different aspects of your life and sort of creating this mosaic of who you are. We’re asking about the same things most other business schools are asking about (but) we’re taking it to the next level and asking candidates to tell us, ‘How do you want to make a difference in the world?’ We’re going to put you through a transformative experience that might not always feel comfortable, but at the end of the day it is supportive, and impactful, and authentic, and that’s really important to us.
What things would make you immediately reject an application?
Plagiarism.
Careless errors. One example of a careless error is when an applicant is working on their essays, they are applying to multiple schools and have written various essays and are cutting and pasting. You could cut and paste another business school’s name into the application’s essay. It’s a careless error. If you’re making careless errors like that it kind of reinforces that you don’t necessarily want to come to Duke. You can avoid that by writing the essays for the specific school. Try to avoid the careless errors. Don’t plagiarize. If you think about the level of competition and how important this is, you want to stand out in ways that help you, not hurt you. Sometimes we do get submissions that are a regurgitation of information that can be found somewhere else, like on our website. Or you can even get a manufactured version of what they think we want to hear. You don’t have to give my website back to me. Find the nuances that really make Duke special to you. We don’t immediately look at a test score or a GPA and say, ‘This person will not be admitted.’ Every application . . . goes through the committee process in the same way regardless of whether a piece may not measure up with the averages at Fuqua.
In this process there isn’t any one thing that we care about more than the others, because we care about them all. You look at an application in comparison to your pool and you say, ‘This person brings something that these other candidates don’t bring,’ and it might not be a perfect GMAT score, it might be their engagement in community service as well as their undergraduate record.
When did you “skinny down” your applications essays, and why?
It’s the third year of this. We used to have maybe three, no-longer-than-three-page essays, and what we found is that there was a great tendency to overly manufacture the responses to those questions. Applicants didn’t understand that what we really wanted was to get to know them. What we got was two or three pages of what they thought we wanted to hear. Last year we asked a really interesting question: ‘If you had to describe why you wanted to go to Duke, to your mom, your significant other, or your mentor, what would you tell them?’ Why is it that you want to be a part of our community? Culture is really something we try to protect. It is a community that we try to preserve and protect and sustain.
We’re also asking applicants for a numbered list of 25 random things about them. It’s awesome to read them. It helps you understand their story better, who they are, how they grew up, why they’ve made some of the decisions they’ve made in their lives. The people who do the best job with it are the people who are really representing their authentic self.
How often do you make mistakes in admitting people?
We never make mistakes – we create learning opportunities. If someone’s not necessarily represening themselves in the way we thought they did, then it feels like a mistake, but it’s actually a learning opportunity for all of the people involved. I like to think that we’re doing the best job with the information we have in hand, in an imperfect process.
Reading between the lines of Applicant X’s submitted materials, you can see they are very bright, hard-working, and experienced in business, but their essays don’t communicate their assets well. What do you do?
That’s when we look to the other criteria to help us make those decisions. We look at what recommenders say. If you don’t get people who know you well and can speak to your strengths and weaknesses, it doesn’t help you in the application process. A lot of times people think that the recommendation has to come from the CEO of a company, but if you’ve only ridden in the elevator with them two or three times, it’s not going to help you.
We also have the interview. The interview, the letters of recommendation, are sort of the part that you can’t necessarily manipulate or control. You certainly can control your essays and how you submit and when you submit, but those two pieces . . give us an additional perspective of who you are and what you’ll bring. We don’t expect that every application that comes through our system is going to be a beautifully written, grammatically correct representation, but we do hope that it represents them accurately and it illuminates their strengths. If it doesn’t represent who you are and sell to your strengths, there’s not a whole lot we can do. Have somebody else review them after you’re written them. Give them the essay without the question, and if after reading your essay, they can tell you what the question was, you know you’ve done at least a good job in answering the question, and then what you want to do is take a look at your experiences to see if you have illuminated yourself in a way that will help differentiate you in a really competitive applicant pool.
What do you and your admissions colleagues disagree over the most?
It’s a pretty stressful process to sit through the admissions committee, at least the way we do it, because we have so much conversation. We don’t really argue. We respect each other’s opinions, but sometimes there’s a need to make hard calls because we have more qualified applicants than we have seats in the class. My job is to shepherd that process so that we build the diversity that we want in the incoming class and bring the impactful students into the program, and that we find some diamonds in the rough who we know are going to make a difference in the world. My question is, ‘Will Fuqua be different, in a positive way, because this person has walked through the doors?’
What did an applicant do that made you want to shake them, metaphorically speaking?
This happened a couple of years ago. We did have an applicant hack into our online application system one year and then view his admissions decision earlier than was intended.
Had he been admitted?
He had not. But even if he had he wouldn’t have been after we discovered that. I can’t remember exactly how we found out about it. When you’ve been doing this for so long you get to the point where there’s nothing really that surprises you. That’s probably the worst thing I’ve seen a person do, other than the person who significantly plagiarizes their essays.
Sometimes it’s disappointing when we see really, really great applicants apply in our last round of applications. You want to admit them. But you have very limited space left in the class.
Sometimes it’s disappointing when you feel like someone’s breaking up with you because they didn’t choose to come to your school.
What’s the oddest thing you’ve ever received in an application package?
Oh, good lord. A GI Joe doll dressed up in a business suit with ... a little cellphone. This was back when we had paper applications. It was a waitlisted candidate who sent it in. We thought it was cute. It’s oftentimes interesting to see how creative people can be (but) we don’t encourage that. It’s a risky thing, right, because if you send something in and it’s not received well, it can hurt you. If you send me in a 21-page manifesto that you’ve written that really doesn’t tell me more than what you did in your application, it’s kind of tough to sit through and read all that. We encourage students to follow the rules.
What book should every Fuqua applicant have read?
We have a suggested reading list for incoming students. My recommendations might be a little different. I say this only because it’s more of a human interest, from a personal perspective on service and stewardship: Same Kind of Different As Me (by Ron Hall and Denver Moore). It’s a story about two men who become friends from very, very different backgrounds. It takes place at a point in time when black and white relationships didn’t exist, or weren’t common. It’s set in rural Louisiana in the 1930s. It’s a lesson in how someone who’s completely different from you can change your perspective in life . . . and how important it is to have a higher purpose in life that guides what you do.
When applicants contact your office, is there a line between what might be considered impressive persistence, and being annoying?
There is a line. My rule of thumb, and policy for our office, is, ‘Let’s not do for one candidate what we wouldn’t be willing to do for all of our applicants if they asked.’ If a waitlisted candidate, for instance, asked, ‘Can I come to campus and schedule a second interview?’ Obviously we wouldn’t be able to offer that to all the waitlisted applicants if they asked. We tell them no. We send waitlisted candidates an FAQ. We give them pretty good instructions on how to engage with us.
We try not to engage with applicants in a way that puts anyone in an unfair position. We do have policies that we’ve set up to reinforce that. Sometimes there are . . . overzealous applicants who feel that constant communication or emails or phone calls are going to improve their chances of being admitted, and that isn’t often the case if the frequency is high but the value-add is low. If you’re just calling to reinforce the same things that are in your application . . . it becomes annoying at that point.
What three things should an applicant do before an admissions interview?
Talk to current students. Be prepared to kind of walk through their experience and why they want to come to Duke, and do the research. Have a very good understanding of why you want to come to Duke and what you’ll bring to the program. Students and alumni help us with our admissions interviews. They’re going to want to know, ‘If I’m on your team and it’s two o’clock in the morning and things aren’t going well, are you the person who’s going to help us get though this? Are you going to be the person who represents our brand well?’ We expect that you’ll have a very strong idea of your strengths and weaknesses, and you’ll have a very strong rationale for why you want to come to Duke.
What non-verbal cues do members of the admissions team watch for when doing an applicant interview?
We want people who want to come to Duke. You can non-verbally communicate passion and enthusiasm for what you do and what you want from your life. Those are non-verbal cues that we pick up on often. We’re looking for students who have strong interpersonal skills, who have the ability to come and listen and demonstrate that they know what they want and are also passionate about something outside of their work, too.
Applicant X has a 680 GMAT score, a 3.8 GPA, but didn’t get in to Fuqua. Why not?
It goes back to the level of competition. Seventy-five per cent of the applicants who apply to Fuqua could academically succeed and do well in the program, but we’re taking a pool of highly qualified applicants and trying to carve out this diverse group of incoming students who also align with the values that we say are important. We would never look at only a 680 GMAT and a 3.8 GPA and make a decision. It would have to be in context with the timing of the application, with the pool of applications, and the other things that breathe life into the application. We’ve admitted students with 680s and 3.8 GPAs, and we’ve denied them, and the difference could be they’ve applied really late in the process, maybe they‘re not seasoned as professionally as we’d like. It could be maybe they’ve had more work experience than the typical student would have coming into the program and we didn’t necessarily see that that was a key differentiator for them.
If someone expresses interest in entrepreneurship, what do you look for that would suggest they have what it takes?
That’s a really tough question to answer. There’s been lots of research about the characteristics of entrepreneurs. There’s something a little bit different about entrepreneurs in the way they approach their work and their life. It goes back to that demonstration of passion for that thing you want to create and innovate. We’re looking for the story, and the background of your experiences, and the demonstration of all the things you’ve done up to this point, to reinforce the interest that you say you have in this particular entrepreneurial activity. We don’t necessarily try to determine, ‘Are they going to be good entrepreneurs?’ Typically with entrepreneurs there’s some key moment or experience that they’ve had or idea that they ran across that pushes them in the direction of entrepreneurship. | 
