Duke Fuqua MBA Essay Guide (2024 Entering Class)

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Short-Answer Essay: What are your post-MBA career goals? Share with us your first-choice career plan and your alternate plan (100 words)

Essay 1: The 'Team Fuqua' spirit and community is one of the things that sets the MBA experience apart, and it is a concept that extends beyond the student body to include faculty, staff, and administration. Please share with us “25 Random Things” about you. The Admissions Committee wants to get to know YOU - beyond the professional and academic achievements listed in your resume and transcript. Share with us important life experiences, your hobbies, achievements, fun facts, or anything that helps us understand what makes you who you are. (Max 2 Pages)

Essay 2: Fuqua prides itself on cultivating a culture of engagement. Our students enjoy a wide range of student-led organizations that provide opportunities for leadership development and personal fulfillment, as well as an outlet for contributing to society. Our student-led government, clubs, centers, and events are an integral part of the student culture and to the development of leaders. Based on your understanding of the Fuqua culture, what are 3 ways you expect to contribute at Fuqua? (300 Words)

Who Should Buy the Duke Fuqua MBA Essay Guide?

If you don’t know how to answer the Duke Fuqua 100-word Short-answer questions, we provide a framework to answer the three questions

If you want Sample Essays for inspiration, we have included five samples for the goals question:

Sample Duke Fuqua Post-MBA Career Goals (90 Words) (Product Marketing for FinTech start-up)    

Sample Duke Fuqua Post-MBA Career Goals (98 Words)(Financial Consulting to Management Consulting)    

Sample Duke Fuqua Post-MBA Career Goals (100 Words) (IB to Entrepreneurship)    

Sample Duke Fuqua Post-MBA Career Goals (95 Words) (ML to Marketing)  

Sample Duke Fuqua Post-MBA Career Goals (100 Words) (Healthcare to Retail)   

If you don’t know how to answer the 25 Random Things long-form question, the Essay Guide includes specific tips and examples on how to answer them with wit and intrigue while capturing aspects of your personality not covered in the resume.

We have included two examples for inspiration:

Profile 1: Chinese Engineer with cross-cultural exposure    
25 Random Things: Chinese Female Engineer    
Profile 2: Indian Product Manager with International Ambitions    
25 Random Things: Indian Product Manager with Strong Community Engagement

If you don’t know how to create a 300-word narrative for the Fuqua Community and you essay, we have a summary of all the extracurricular that you can use in the essay

If you need sample essays, we have included five in the Essay Guide

Sample Duke Fuqua Essay: The Fuqua community and you (Consulting)  (279 Words)    
Sample Duke Fuqua Essay: The Fuqua community and you  (Education Club) (295 Words)    
Sample Duke Fuqua Essay: The Fuqua community and you (Performance-Based Micropayments) (256 Words)    
Sample Duke Fuqua Essay: The Fuqua community and you (Transforming Grant Making for a Family Foundation) (300 Words)    
Sample Duke Fuqua Essay: The Fuqua community and you (Addressing Bias in Patient Experience)  (299 Words)   

If your essay looks too bland, Duke Fuqua MBA Essay Guide will demonstrate how to use storytelling to create an engaging narrative.

We show how to use emotional connectors, use journey narration, and struggles to connect with the reviewer.

We also demonstrate the power of Active Verbs, Vividness, and Chronology to keep the reader on edge.

If you are facing a writer's block or don’t feel confident to write an essay, Duke Fuqua MBA Essay Guide will give you tips on silencing the analytical mind.

If you feel that your Essays are not persuasive, Duke Fuqua MBA Essay Guide will teach you how to use the W-Pattern narrative, Contexts, Turning Points, and "The Show Don't Tell Approach" to write a Winning MBA Essay.

If you don't have enough leadership experience, Duke Fuqua MBA Essay Guide includes tips on highlighting secondary leadership traits like Listening Skills, Personal Responsibility, and Self-awareness to prove your potential.

If you don't know how to review your essays, Duke Fuqua MBA Essay Guide includes an exhaustive list of Editing and Reviewing tips, with special emphasis on removing review biases.

Author: Atul Jose, Founding Consultant (F1GMAT)

Atul Jose spent 14+ years editing, and reviewing Essays for MBA applicants. When no consultant in the market was willing to show how to write an essay that can get you a seat in the hyper-competitive M7 and T10 MBA programs, Atul went about capturing his wisdom as an Essay Specialist into an easy-to-read book format. With Sample Essays for Duke Fuqua MBA and the writing tools and frameworks, you will learn to turn mundane life experiences into interesting stories and 25 random things. Although he spends most of his time writing essay guides and helping applicants gain admission to top MBA programs, he is also the Editor and lead author at F1GMAT - the highly popular MBA and Master's admissions blog.

Book Details

Page Length: 318

Entering Class: 2024

 

Reviews: 

“I purchased the Essay guide after struggling with my 25 random things about me list. The life examples of widely different profiles and their journey helped me see ways in which I could capture my uniqueness. I very much enjoyed the notion of using humor and quirkiness in the list. Each entry was an exercise in finding stories from routine examples that were not routine for an outsider. I chose the entries that were part magic and part chaos, mixed them up, and by the 3rd hour of referring to the list in the book, I was done with my 25 random things questions. Whoohoo! Thank you for the lovely book!” – Verified Purchase (Duke Fuqua Daytime MBA 2023 Entering Class)

“I really felt Duke Essay Guide presents different ways in which community engagement can be presented as a narrative. My favorite section was the summary and value of each student club. It forced me to carefully connect my past engagements with the value proposition. Instead of dreading to create stories out of ordinary events, I accepted my life's unique developments. Adding elements of the story from the book, I challenged the reviewer's perception of a place, event, or expectations from my journey. This strategy was the 'secret' to the book's examples, where each entry from the 25 random lists felt like a story in itself. A worthwhile read for anyone struggling to complete the application for Duke. ” – Verified Purchase (Duke Fuqua Daytime MBA 2023 Entering Class)

“There are two perspectives to gain from reading the book: as a guide to writing the goals & community essay and an inspiration to understand the strategies to write the 25 random things examples. The examples in the list were an exercise in remembering that brief life moment that was surreal but offered truths about life's beauty, randomness, and limits. I enjoyed explaining my travel experiences and encounters with grief and isolation during the first cycle of the pandemic. The role models cited in the examples connected with me and helped me cite a few of my own even though they were not American celebrities or from the popular culture in Western Media. ” – Verified Purchase (Duke Fuqua Daytime MBA 2023 Entering Class)

“I like the chapters on storytelling the most. The ideas on writing are practical, with anecdotes and strategies for improving essay drafts. I especially like the 25 Random Things examples that became my go-to template for crafting my list. My initial list was too long, with lines spilling over to paragraphs. The book shows how to edit the entries and keep memories that stand out from the page. The writing is conversational, and that helps to keep the technical strategies accessible to a non-writer. ” – Verified Purchase (Duke Fuqua Daytime MBA 2023 Entering Class)

“It is a pleasant surprise when the book exceeds your expectations and becomes useful in so many applications. I read the book as a reference for my Duke application, but the chapters on editing, reviewing, storytelling and leadership transcended the school-specific prompts. I felt as if I was on a crash course on writing application essays with stories and common fallacies included in the examples. The List question didn't go as planned. My first draft was all one-liners and, quite frankly, drafted with a stand-up comic-style setup and reveal. Some of the entries in the examples showed me that even stories could be drafted to 1.5 sentences with the right transitions. ” – Verified Purchase (Duke Fuqua Daytime MBA 2023 Entering Class)