P&Q’s Must Reads: Duke Adds A 4th MBA Admission Round

Hello everyone  –- Welcome back to Poets&Quants’ Must Reads, a quick, digestible recap of the top business school news, sponsored by CentreCourt, P&Q’s virtual admission events.

I’m your host, Kristy Bleizeffer, and I’ll be highlighting the most important P&Q stories you might have missed. So, let’s get to it. 

No. 1: Duke Adds A 4th MBA Admission Round

The tech industry continues to implode. Covid is surging again. And the war in Ukraine rages on.

These are just some of the challenges faced by candidates for graduate business education worldwide, sparking changes in admissions calendars at many elite MBA programs, which we have covered extensively in the last couple of months. 

The latest top U.S. B-school to adjust to the radically shifting workplace realities is Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, which has announced an extension to its MBA application round 3 and the creation of a fourth round.

Read about why Duke made the surprising move in our news tab.

No. 2: NYU Stern’s One-Year Fashion & Luxury MBA Is One Of A Kind

In 2018,  New York University’s Stern School of Business launched two one-year specialized MBAs as the school thought more broadly about how it could differentiate itself in a crowded MBA market. In this story, we look more deeply at the school’s Fashion & Luxury MBA, a one-of-kind degree offered in the heart of the world’s fashion capital.

“It’s very rare to find a program that gives you such a curated and specific experience and also doesn’t take you out of the industry for so long,” one student told Poets&Quants.

“When I was looking at MBA programs, it was quite literally the only one that allowed me to get such a focused degree from an esteemed and respected university, and also only have to leave the industry for a year.”

Take a closer look at the program, featured now on our homepage.

 No. 3: The Year In B-School Scandals & Tragedies

Every year at this time we look back at the previous 12 months and assess the year’s biggest controversies. It’s never a dull task. The challenge, as it were, is in choosing the biggest scandal, the most sordid tale among a plethora of choices. In 2022, that choice was easy.

It was all about bad rankings.

You can read all about these ranking head-scratchers and missteps in our full story, up now in our news tab. And don’t miss stories on the first b-school dean sentenced to federal prison for his ranking scandal, racial slurs at Stanford GSB, and other scandals featured in the collection.

No. 4: Our Weekly Round Up of  News You Can Use

No matter where you are in your MBA journey, we bring several helpful stories for you this week.

First up: Ready to tackle that MBA application? Fortuna Admissions has 5 Top Tips To Maximize Your MBA Application Process – including the benefits of starting early. Find this and other great advice in our admissions hub.

Next: For school searchers, we’ve collected all the year’s employment reports and class profiles into one handy list. From there you can compare the data from all the top business schools to find the program that’s best for you. Find the collection in our news tab.

Finally: If you’re looking for an MBA program to help secure that lucrative job at the other end, check out our story on how executives at top companies rank the best programs.  CEOWORLD, a magazine aimed at C-suite executives, asked its in-the-know readers to evaluate schools that help respondents land the job. You can find the story on our homepage.

And, that’s it for this week’s Must Reads recap. 

I also want to alert all the school seekers out there to CentreCourt’s upcoming MBA Festival, where you’ll get front-row seats to leaders of some of the top MBA programs. Our next event is February 7-8, and is the must-attend event for any serious MBA candidate. Register now for free.

Again, I’m Kristy Bleizeffer, and you can join me next week, right here, for a recap of what’s important in the world of business education. Thanks for listening and, as always, stay informed!