Duke University Fuqua School of Business Spring 2014 Travel report Minshu Jia Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 3 Preparations before departure .................................................................................................................... 3 Visa document ......................................................................................................................................... 3 Living in Durham .......................................................................................................................................... 4 Housing ................................................................................................................................................... 4 Transportation ......................................................................................................................................... 4 Phone operator: AT&T or T-Mobile .......................................................................................................... 5 Study in Fuqua ............................................................................................................................................. 5 Raising Capital ......................................................................................................................................... 5 Corporate Finance ................................................................................................................................... 6 Managerial Accounting ............................................................................................................................ 7 Decision Models ...................................................................................................................................... 8 Behavioral Economics .............................................................................................................................. 8 Leisure time ................................................................................................................................................. 9 Reference: ..................................................................................................................................................11 Introduction Duke University is a globally well-known university with high reputation in North Carolina, USA. The MBA program they provided is also highly ranked among the top MBAs. The Fuqua School of Business will definitely provide you an amazing exchange experience to you. Fuquans are open-minded, passionate, respectful and ambitious students who come from different nations, cultural background. Their career placement is also quite impressed among all the business schools. The Fuqua school of Business building is located on the west campus. It has a separate library inside of the building, a PC lab, a cafe that has different lunch alternatives, team rooms for students to do the after-class discussions etc. Fuqua holds various event and conferences frequently, which might be in-school clubs or invite outside companies. It was a great chance to get to know the school culture and corporate life in US. Preparations before departure The most important thing is applying the visa before departure. Based on my personal experience, the international office coordinator will start to send you all kinds of information once you have selected to Duke. The visa process might get delayed sometimes, so I highly recommend that you start to apply it as soon as possible once you have got your confirmation letter. Visa document As an international student, you need to apply the US visiting scholar visa (J1) to stay in the US. You need to send necessary documents in hard copies to Duke, such as the proof of financing your stay in US, and then you will receive the visa form from Duke visa office. It might take a month to get all the material received. So plan ahead the time and make the appointment on time. During the interview, it is better to have all your material ready: - Fill in the DS-2019 form before - Receipt of Sevis fee payment - Fill in DS 160 application form - A valid passport - Financial certificate I applied my visa in my home country since I am not a permanent resident in Finland. So they also required my certificate of birth etc. Living in Durham The nearest airport to Durham is Raleigh/Durham International airport (RDU) which is located around 26km from Duke University. The custom checking is relatively time consuming, so make sure that you have enough time to your connection flight. In addition, I recommend to book a taxi from Skyshuttle to pick you up from the airport which is much cheaper than just grab a cab in local. Housing The housing issue is the most concerned part before departure. It usually takes time to get your apartment within your budget. Most of the apartments do not obtain any furniture. So please confirm the apartment condition. Duke University International House has a list that you can contact with about the housing alternatives (http://www.studentaffairs.duke.edu/ihouse/resources/). Alternatively, once you have you duke email, you can also subscribe the International House email. A lot of people are posting for subleasing their apartment as well. I got my shared apartment from the International House list. I subleased the room from a master student in Duke. It is a two-bedroom, two-bathroom furnished apartment. It is from Griffin Realtors, and located on Swift Ave on campus. The rent is $495.00 per month. The electricity varies from $40 to $90 per month per person based on the AC usage. The internet is $15 per month. I chose here because it obtains the furniture which save a great problem for me, plus it is on campus which takes around 5mins local bus time to Duke Chapel. It also has a fresh grocery Whole Food around it. However, most exchange students choose to stay in Station 9, which has better facilities and utilities. But most parties hold there as well, almost every weekend or even more frequent. There are other relatively cheaper options around the campus, such as Popular West, Campus Walk, University Commons etc. But if you would like to get a car, you can definitely find better options. Eversgreen and Aden Place are the places that I visited. It is clean, secured and more comfortable than the on campus apartments. In addition, Duke University provides a safe van to take you home from 7pm to 5am within certain radius (http://parking.duke.edu/buses_vans/bus_sched/index.php). You can also take this as your reference to pick your apartment. Transportation The local transportation, includes research triangle, is free for Duke students. You need to show you valid Duke ID to the administration office, and then you get a goPass card. Just swipe the card and show your Duke ID to the driver. However, most of the buses come in half an hour per time or an hour per time. Some of them just operate till Saturdays. You can also get a bike from Target or Wal-Mart, but some roads do not have a bike lane. You need to be careful about the traffic. Walking is quite common on campus and in many residential areas. But avoid walking alone in the night, especially in dim roads. Phone operator: AT&T or T-Mobile The most common phone operator in Durham is AT&T and T-Mobile. I chose AT&T simply because the T-Mobile get lose signal sometimes in Fuqua. AT&T got higher coverage area in Durham, so it have stronger signal in Fuqua. I have got the monthly prepaid package for $40.00 plus taxes: 200mins of nationwide calling, unlimited domestic text and 200Mb data. Most of our exchange students chose this AT&T package or higher package with more data service. Study in Fuqua The MBA courses are taught in different style than that in Aalto. They focus more on the in-class discussion. The professors would like to know your ideas about the specific topic; some courses even have a cold call policy to encourage those relatively silent students in class. Here are the course descriptions that I took in Fuqua. Other than these, there are some other popular courses: Entrepreneurial Finance, Game Theory, International Strategy, Leadership and other business fields (medical, operations etc.). Some courses have more than 2 groups which are taught in morning shift or afternoon shift. Usually the maximum of one group of the course is 75. So go register the courses that you want to take in advance, otherwise it might get full and remain on waiting list. It is possible that you cannot take your course at your schedule time. Once you have got your Duke ID, you could also review the previous course evaluations to know the feedback including workload, recommendations and evaluations. The link is on the course description site (see reference). Raising Capital Professor: Puri, Manju This course covers financial markets, instruments, and institutions, with the primary focus being on the capital raising and financing activities of firms at different stages in their life cycle. One of the critical activities a company must do well, to succeed is the raising of capital. The when, where, and how of raising capital is the focus of the course. The perspective will typically be that of a firm wishing to raise capital, though we will, quite often, also examine financing transactions from the viewpoint of the participating financial intermediary. We analyze financing choices for younger firms,