Admissions Director Q&A: Liz Riley Hargrove Duke’s Fuqua Business

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As part of our continuing series of discussions with admissions directors at top business schools around the world, we are pleased to offer this recent interview with Liz Riley Hargrove, Associate Dean of Admissions at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. Hargrove has spent almost her entire professional career at Duke. After starting in undergraduate admissions at North Carolina State University, she joined the staff at Duke in 1993 and has been there ever since.


In the interview that follows, Hargrove shares her excitement about Fuqua’s plans for global expansion, describes the school’s philosophy of collaborative leadership and provides an important tip for applicants to help ensure that you’ve adequately answered your essay questions. So read on!


Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change or event happening at Fuqua this coming year?


Liz Riley Hargrove: Fuqua has just announced a plan to expand our campus to become the first globally embedded business school in five countries simultaneously. We will have a physical presence in India, Russia, China, the United Kingdom (probably London) and Dubai. We just announced it at the end of September.


For prospective applicants it means that Duke will be one of the first business schools to actually be on the ground in all of those locations. We have revamped one of our EMBA programs – our cross-continent program – and students in that program will be able to take classes in those regions of the world. We also will have career services and other resources on the ground in those regions. So it will definitely benefit our full-time MBA students in terms of curriculum, faculty and career services options.

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CA: How does your team approach the essay portion of the application specifically? What are you looking for as you read the essays? Are there common mistakes that applicants should try to avoid? One key thing they should keep in mind as they sit down to write them?

LRH: There are a couple of things in the application process that applicants control and then there are things they can’t do anything about. Their undergrad record, GMAT scores – those things are what they are. But everything else they can control. The essays and the interview really give the applicant a chance to differentiate themselves. So they are a key part in terms of us getting to know why they want to come and their potential fit.

We want students who really want to come to Duke, so we are looking for evidence of why they chose Duke and why they think it’s a good fit for them as individuals.

In terms of the most common mistake we see, that would have to be applicants who don’t answer the essay question. We see that a lot. For instance, in answer to a question about how an MBA fits into short- and long-term goals, many candidates will tell us what they want to do right after they graduate, but not tell us anything about their longer-range plans.

My ne piece of advice to applicants as they sit down to write their essays is this: Have someone read your essays without giving them the questions. If they can tell you what the questions were after reading your answers, then you have answered the questions.

Again, while the essays are only one component of the application process, they are a really important component.

In closing, I think it’s a really exciting time to be a student at Duke University. We have a new dean who is an incredible visionary and who has a strategic plan for how Duke can make a significant shift in business education. And the fact that we are going to be on the ground and have a physical presence in five other regions around the world is one of the most ambitious strategic plans I’ve seen in the 15 years I’ve been here. We are all really excited and we know it will have incredible benefits for our students.

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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 (e.g. how many “reads” does it get, how long is each “read,” who reads it, does the committee convene to discuss it as a group, etc.).

LRH: Once an applicant hits the submit button our operations team takes over. They download all the applications and print them, and then they are put into folders with labels and divided up for reading among the Admissions Committee, which is approximately 20 people. Each application is read at least twice and most often three times before the Admissions Committee meets to discuss it. It takes 45 minutes to an hour to read one application.

The first reader uses an evaluation criteria we have established. As part of that criteria, an applicant’s undergrad record, GMAT scores, essays, recommendations, interview, community involvement, leadership – all are assigned equal weight in the process. I really like that because an applicant can have a blemish on his or her application but still be a great fit, and if we’re looking at the applicant as a whole being instead of just one component it really allows us to create the diversity that we want here. It’s like creating a mosaic.

Once each file is read, we have an Admissions Committee meeting where each file is discussed and a vote is taken. In the case of a tie, I break it.

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CA: What is the one area of your program that you wish applicants knew more about?


LRH: I would say that a lot of people, just from reading our website, aren’t really familiar with the kind of culture that our students experience here. We are of the philosophy that Duke is a collaborative leadership culture. In other words, we believe students can be both collaborators and leaders, as opposed to having the philosophy that those two things are in opposition.


Everything at Fuqua is designed to give students the opportunity to work in teams but also to define and refine their leadership skills. I think students are closer as a result. They challenge each other to be better and to improve and to continue to get better.


We have lots of ways for students to practice what they are learning in a low-risk environment. Our students are not passive participants in their business school education. They are actually encouraged to be a really great part of helping to Fuqua to be a really first-rate school. For example, our Career Fellows help their fellow students in the job search process, and our Leadership Fellows help peers work on leadership skills. Students here have the opportunity to really get involved with the running of the school.