Duke Fuqua’s MBA Class Of 2023 Profile Sets New Records — And A High Bar

The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University is nearing gender parity in its full-time MBA program

The most diverse class in school history. That’s the claim made by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business on the release this week of its MBA Class of 2023 profile — and they have the numbers to back it up.

Forty-seven percent of the class holds international citizenship, up from 38% last year. Twenty-five percent identifies as underrepresented minorities, up from 23%. Forty-five percent identifies as minority, up from 38%. And perhaps the most momentous number, Fuqua took another step toward gender parity with 48% women in this year’s intake — a school record.

Impressive numbers — but the school isn’t planning to rest on its laurels, says Shari Hubert, Duke Fuqua’s associate dean for admissions.

“We are never satisfied with our diversity numbers,” Hubert tells Poets&Quants. “At Fuqua we are focused on creating the business leaders the world needs. Business benefits when talent is diverse, bringing a wide variety of perspectives to solve problems in companies and organizations. Business schools must provide talent from populations who are underrepresented in the field of business in order to help organizations reach their full potential.

“While we have made great progress at Fuqua in yielding increasingly diverse cohorts, there is still much work to be done, and we remain committed to recruiting and developing students from a wide variety of backgrounds.”

FUQUA'S NEWEST MBA CLASS IS ALSO NEARLY ITS LARGEST

Shari Hubert, Duke Fuqua associate dean for admissions. Duke photo

Duke Fuqua's new MBA cohort isn't just the school's most diverse. It's also nearly its biggest-ever at 447 students, the result of another jump in applications, from 3,356 to 3,762, a 12% increase. It's the second year in a row Duke has received more apps than the previous year after a big dip in 2019. In the 2019-2020 cycle, as the chaos of coronavirus impacted the later application rounds at most business schools and led to some, including Fuqua, creating a fourth round to handle a sudden uptick in demand, Duke reversed a slide in apps with a jump of more than 10%.

The bigger class — up from 408 last year, a 9.6% increase — is second only to the 450 MBA students Fuqua enrolled in 2015. And it's not happenstance. Deferments played a role — admits who deferred during the pandemic have enrolled this year — and, Shari Hubert says, moves by the admissions team also had a big impact.

"We were excited to have received close to the highest volume of applications in our history," she says, noting that the highest came in 2017: 3,796. "Our applications grew 12% over last year and I believe a number of factors were in play: We made it easier for applicants to re-apply by cloning their application data form and recommendations; we increased our events (international, domestic and diversity) virtually; we saw greater international interest resulting from the U.S. administration change; and with the development of a vaccine we saw a renewed interest in retooling skills to take advantage of the post-pandemic economy and job opportunities.

"We saw Team Fuqua in action and in overdrive as our admissions team, along with our current students, faculty, and staff, worked as a village to ensure our admitted students remained connected to our community and received invaluable resources and attention, prior to arriving. For example, we hosted a separate admitted student weekend just for our deferrals, and hosted our first annual International Symposium for international prospective students."

Add it all up and Duke Fuqua not only dropped its acceptance rate below 20% (from 25% last year), it also set a school record for yield: 61%, up big from last year's 48.7% and eclipsing even the school's best mark of 56.8% in 2019.

A RECORD AVERAGE GMAT

The good news doesn't end there for Fuqua. The school also set a new record for average GMAT score, which skyrocketed to 713 from 702 last year.

"At Fuqua, we aren’t trying to hit a specific average test score," Hubert says, echoing her counterparts at every elite B-school. "We are looking for students who can handle the academic rigor of the program, and more importantly, those who will find belonging in our unique community. If you look at the median GMAT score between this year and last, it’s actually the same, a 710. So while we may have had a few more higher test scores or a few less lower test scores, overall the class is very similar to prior classes."

She credits the jump to multiple factors, most stemming from the ongoing pandemic.

"With the pandemic, students may have had more time to focus on test preparation, for example," Hubert says. "The rise in MBA applications overall this year, an influx of pent-up demand from the market, may have also played a role, as we had people who delayed their applications by one year due to the pandemic come into this year’s applicant pool. Fuqua does not waive test score requirements for applicants, but we do accept GMAT, GRE, and Executive Assessment, so we have three test options for students. While we didn’t have a significant change in the number of GRE or EA scores submitted by our applicants, giving students three test options does allow students the opportunity to choose the test that is the best fit for them, which is going to overall lead to higher average test scores over time, for all test types."

The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University has enrolled the second-largest MBA class in its history, with 447 students — just shy of the record 450 set in 2015. Justin Cook photo

GRE NUMBERS & CLASS BACKGROUNDS

Speaking of the Graduate Record Exam, for the first time in years the percentage of applicants submitting GRE scores to Fuqua's admissions team dipped, to 33% from 38%. It had leaped from 23% in 2019.

"The percentage of applicants applying with a GRE score was about the same this year versus last year, but we did have more students apply with an Executive Assessment," Hubert says. She explains that high-yield GRE applicants to Fuqua surged at the end of last year as a result of the pandemic, "so greater test diversity plus greater access to GMAT online testing led to a lower percentage of GRE scores in the class." The GRE average score did climb, however, from a cumulative 315 to 317 (158 Quant and 159 Verbal).

In terms of the new class's career backgrounds, the biggest group comes from financial services (14%), with consulting a close second (13%). Eight percent come to Fuqua with a focus in healthcare or health services, while 6% each come from nonprofit/education backgrounds, tech, or analytics backgrounds. The career focus chart below has 21 different categories, plus "Other."

Duke Fuqua MBA Class of 2023 pre-MBA career focuses

'FRESH TIRES ON THE BUS'

The continuing X-factor in all talk about the start of classes, which for Duke MBA students began August 2: Covid-19, which is surging everywhere once again. Hubert says Fuqua's staff and faculty will continue to remain vigilant in ensuring that students, staff, and faculty are safe. "Our admissions team is conducting interviews virtually this cycle to be fair and consistent to applicants no matter where they are around the world," she says, "and all admissions events are also virtual through the end of the year as we continue to monitor the situation with the Delta variant. However, we have developed just as many virtual events as we did last year and plan to ensure that prospective students continue to have access to our team and our community as they’re going through the application process.

"This year we returned to pre-Covid deferral policies, which meant for military deployments, personal or family illness, and on a case-by-case basis. The vast majority of people were able to get to campus in time, we only had a handful of people who faced visa issues. We had a few students (four max) who started online and will join us in person in August due to delays in visa appointment availability. In general, our philosophy is to try to work with students on their individual situations, and for those who were having visa difficulties, we worked closely with them. In a limited number of cases, we did defer admission, but also provided the option of starting online for the first couple of weeks."

Last year, Hubert described the 2019-2020 admissions cycle as “changing the tires on a moving bus.” So how much is the bus still moving in 2021?

"The bus never stops," she says. "Admissions is a 365-day operation, especially with a portfolio of 10 degree programs. I can never fully express how fortunate I am to be part of an amazing team of professionals who continually pour themselves into the mission of attracting, recruiting, and yielding students who will thrive in our community. The pandemic has definitely stretched our limits, but it has not broken our determination and passion for this profession.

"With that said, as a school we are staying vigilant and responding to the changing dynamics of the pandemic as new information becomes available. During the height of the pandemic in 2020, school leadership formed a weekly Covid-19 Working Group led by our dean, Bill Boulding, and we still meet weekly to discuss the changing dynamics so that we ensure our students, staff, and faculty remain safe, while continuing to provide our students with a value-added and transformational learning experience that they expect and deserve. We feel very good about the safety protocols we have in place. This year, we are requiring that all students be vaccinated in order to attend classes, with the plan being to hold 100% of classes in-person. Similarly, our staff and faculty are expected to be vaccinated by September 1st. In addition, we have entry and surveillance testing in place to identify and contain asymptomatic cases, and we recently re-instituted the requirement for everyone, regardless of vaccination status, to wear masks when inside our buildings.

"So, we continue to roll along — and after successfully changing out the tires last year, we are thrilled to have fresh tires on the bus for the next academic year!"

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