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Your Duke MBA will provide you with the skills, knowledge, and cross-cultural awareness needed to become a valuable collaborative leader, able to manage effectively in global business environments.

Overview

As you compare business schools around the world, one of the first differences you'll notice about The Duke MBA is the breadth and depth of our content and the strength of our faculty. Ranked among the top business schools by BusinessWeek, US News and World Report and the Financial Times, The Duke MBA offers students the world's first truly global business education experience. 

This breadth, built on our world-class multi-disciplinary faculty, offers what we call our Research Advantage - an unparalleled ability to help you go beyond the basics and bring the insights of cutting-edge research by renowned thought leaders in all subject areas of relevance to your career.

And with The Duke MBA's global focus and the opportunity to concentrate on an area of particular interest within a general management framework, The Duke MBA provides outstanding preparation for a career in today's complex multicultural and multinational business environment.

As a Duke MBA student, you will start the process of developing collaborative leadership and organizational management skills along with a global outlook the moment you step into our program, during the first term's Global Institute.

You will then dive into a rigorous exploration of the major functional areas in business, gaining a firm foundation in economics, quantitative analysis and statistics, accounting, finance, marketing, strategy, and operations management, while reinforcing your functional skills with additional management communications education.

As you continue in the program, you have the chance to undertake a wide-ranging general management education designed to suit your individual goals; alternatively, you might choose to focus more directly on a particular career path through a variety of inter-disciplinary Concentration and Certificate opportunities.

Global Knowledge

At Duke, your intellectual range knows no boundaries.

The Duke MBA program begins with a three-week Global Institute held in August. The institute features two core courses: Leadership, Ethics and Organizations; and Global Institutions and Environments. The Global Institute begins the process of helping you become a collaborative leader with a deep understanding of the multifaceted global business environment.

With an internationally experienced faculty, a curriculum geared toward a global perspective, a cosmopolitan student body, and partnerships with leading corporations and public organizations worldwide, your Duke MBA will provide you with a competitive edge in today's world economy.

You will also have multiple opportunities to experience business and cultural practices in other countries firsthand through our extensive array of Global Academic Travel Experience (GATE) courses and exchange programs - indeed, most of our students choose to take advantage of these programs.

For more information regarding international coursework and learning opportunities, please visit the International Center .

Flexible and Focused

Courses in The Duke MBA - Daytime are taught in six-week terms. This arrangement allows you to take more courses (three or four per term) with the same number of faculty contact hours as in a more traditional system - giving you greater breadth of knowledge without sacrificing depth. Thanks to this term schedule, you will have taken at least five elective courses by the end of your first year - more if you exempt core courses. See more about The Duke MBA --Daytime curriculum here.

This structure gives you the opportunity to explore a particular area in more depth, which provides a competitive edge as well as additional knowledge to draw upon as you consider, interview for, and then begin your summer internship. This flexibility continues through your second year, when you can select from a broad menu of elective courses as you move toward job interviews and career choices.

The Duke MBA's flexible yet focused format, with a rich array of courses that are informed by the latest research and business trends, offers you the opportunity to gain both the depth needed for early career success and the breadth needed for lifelong success.

Concentrations: Inter-disciplinary Depth

The Duke MBA offers optional specialized Concentrations in all of the major functional areas (such as accounting, decision sciences, finance, management, marketing, operations, and strategic consulting) and in topical areas (such as entrepreneurship, international business, leadership and ethics, and social entrepreneurship). Each concentration identifies a set of electives from which you will choose six courses.

Duke MBA concentrations have a common "4-2" structure, where the concentration typically has four courses in a focal area (e.g., Finance) and two courses from other areas that provide supporting breadth for the focal concentration.

This structure of thoughtful, supporting breadth for the focal concentration is unique among leading business schools - this interdisciplinary feature connects directly to Duke's tradition of providing a general management education and our reputation for innovation through collaboration. As organizations work toward improved coordination of organizational activities, your education should reflect how functional activities and skills can be enriched and strengthened by other perspectives.

Concentrations are not required; you may choose none, one, or a maximum of two concentrations. If you choose two concentrations, think of the first concentration providing depth needed for early career success and the second concentration providing breadth needed for lifelong career success. Note that even if you choose two concentrations, you still have room in your schedule for additional electives to customize your MBA experience for either greater depth or breadth, as needed.

Information regarding concentration offerings can be found here .

No matter your career path, your grounding in the principles and practices of general management coupled with opportunities to specialize in a particular set of skills offer limitless opportunities to apply your Duke MBA to career goals. 

Certificates of Excellence: Specialized Depth and Breadth

Along with concentrations, The Duke MBA offers the opportunity to earn a certificate of excellence in finance. The new certificate of excellence program in finance allows you to send a strong signal about your depth of knowledge in a single area. At the same time, if you choose this path you are required to take two additional courses, in total, to ensure that depth does not come at the expense of breadth of general management skills and perspectives necessary for lifelong career success.

Health Sector Management: A Certificate Program for Fast Track Careers

If you aspire to a business career in the health care industry - whether in pharmaceutical leadership, biotechnology business development, hospital administration, health sector consulting, health sector investment or other segments of the industry - Duke offers one of the most respected education programs in the world. The Health Sector Management program adds a specialized understanding of the unique facets of the health care industry to the general management skills you will acquire during your core program, teaching the skills you will need to steer your business through the complex issues surrounding health care.

More information regarding the Health Sector Management Certificate can be found here .

Accessible, enthusiastic and innovative, The Duke MBA faculty are thought leaders in every discipline, renowned authorities at the heart of Fuqua's Research Advantage. At The Fuqua School of Business, you can study with professors who are recognized experts in their fields and at the forefront of new trends in the global business community.

The Duke MBA's faculty members - ranked #3 in the world for faculty research contributions in a 2008 survey by the University of Texas at Dallas School of Management - are noted scholars in the academic and business world who regularly receive top awards and honors for their research and professional service.

Our faculty bring insights from their research, along with a host of innovative ideas, into the classroom to merge academic concepts with real-world application. From leadership and participation in prestigious conferences and professional organizations, to involvement in the local community and businesses, to close corporate connections through research and consulting, the diverse experience and knowledge of our faculty members provides Duke MBA students with a rich and relevant academic learning environment.

Meet The Duke MBA faculty online at www.fuqua.duke.edu/faculty/ .

The Duke MBA program boasts one of the most active - and proactive - student bodies of any business school in the United States. The Fuqua experience offers extracurricular activities ranging from industry sector career clubs to organized athletics, community service groups, cultural organizations and more. In addition to the clubs and organizations currently available, students are encouraged to found new clubs should they identify an unmet need in the Fuqua community.

The close partnership between the student body and our faculty and staff provides additional opportunities for students to contribute to the school through student government, the Leadership Development Initiative, or as academic, admissions, career, executive or leadership fellows. Fellows take on a number of roles, including organizing conferences and guest speaker visits on campus, providing career mentoring to peers, and conducting admissions interviews with prospective students.

Students who make up The Duke MBA community frequently note the value of their extracurricular activities in enriching their leadership skills and assisting them in building strong business contacts and experience. To learn more about the myriad clubs and organizations that make up the Fuqua "extracurriculum," please visit the MBA Association (MBAA) site .