What Students Say
Likes
- The campus is beautiful and has a lot of space for you to study, eat and have fun
- There is a lot of diversity and you will find people from different cultures and backgrounds
- The curriculum is pretty flexible
Dislikes
- The MEM cohort is not very diverse
- Not a lot of ties with indsutries to help students land internships/ Co-op's
- The batch size is a little large
Colleges Where I Was Accepted
Reason for choosing my college
- The curriculum, the program duration and the alumni network. The location of the campus is pretty great and has a decent amount of companies in the vicinity (research triangle park)
- The extracurricular activities organised by Duke, like hackathons and case competitions, help build your profile and expand your domain knowledge.
Colleges Where I Was Rejected
Reason for Rejection
- I did not work very hard on the applications for Dartmouth and Cornell and submitted them on the very last day of the deadline. No idea about why I did not hear back from UWash; probably my profile was not well aligned as it was not a MEM program
- Lesson to be learned: Research your program well before including things in your SOP.
Required Exams for Admission
Required Documents For Admission
SOP |
CV |
LOR
Tips to enhance your application
- Do your research before applying to these colleges; know why you want to get into this program, what you want to do post graduation and how you can contribute to the program as a student.
- Connect with alumni and include information that is not readily available on the internet to stand out.
Admission Experience
- Reason for selecting USA: I have a few connections in the United States and my program is popular here as compared to other countries.
- Academic Reputation: #6 in US News.
- Few Courses offered: Marketing, Finance, Product Management, Competitive Strategy, Design Thinking and Innovation, Managing product Design, etc
- Location: Durham
- NC Overall experience: quite positive, beautiful campus, great student clubs and events.
Class Schedule
- Classes in a week: Depends on your coursework but usually 3-4; Class timings vary wildly from 8:30 in the morning to 9 in the night.
- Average strength: 100+ Indians: MEM has a lot of Indians
- Time commitment: Varies for everyone but took me 3-4 hours every week (includes self-study and assignments and meetings)
Faculty
- The faculty-to-student ratio is great. Best faculties in my experience: Kathie Amato, Tony Driscoll. Allegra Jordan
- Faculties do help a little bit with getting full-time jobs. They do help students by giving them teaching assistant roles as a part-time job and also help students stop their unemployment clock by allowing students to volunteer in their companies.
Campus Life
- Duke has 2 main campuses in the United States and China.
- Facilities: Two major recreation centres (Wilson and Brodie) that have gyms, saunas, swimming pools, squash courts, pickleball and tennis courts, table tennis rooms, basketball courts, badminton courts, etc
- Fests: All festivals from different communities are celebrated.
- Popular event: Duke basketball campout
Part Time Jobs
- Average pay rate is around 16$/hr -184/hr It is not very difficult to get part-time jobs. Most of the Indians work in Duke Stores, Wilson Recreation Centre, Duke Libraries, etc.
- There are a lot of students working in the Teaching Assistant roles under different faculties as well. The usual process to apply is through networking and a job board called JobX.
- TA Roles: usually every faculty hires 2-3 TAs so a lot of students get these roles.
- On campus jobs: Others include working at the recreation centers, duke university stores, duke university theatres, libraries, etc
- Max number of hours allowed to work: 19.9 hours normally and around 40 hours in the breaks.
Placement
- Not sure of the numbers but currently the market is pretty rough so only 50-60% of them find decent jobs 6 months after graduation.
- Salaries go from as low as 60,000 USD to as high as 200,000 USD. Typically, students land jobs through job boards, networking and some through career fairs. Note: No official numbers quoted here, just based on my hunch.
Accommodation
- Join online WhatsApp communities to find accommodations. Some popular accommodations amongst Indian students: Chapel Towers, Belmont, Lofts, Erwin Terrace, Campus Walk
- Usually someone circulates a google sheet to fill out your preferences for a room mate. Ideally, get an individual room but if you want to save up some money, you can also share a room.











