Duke University. Fuqua School of Business

Transcription

1 Duke University Fuqua School of Business Spring 2014 Travel report Minshu Jia

2 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

3 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.

4 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 ( Alternatively, once you have you duke , you can also subscribe the International House . 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 $ 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 ( 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.

5 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

6 the viewpoint of the participating financial intermediary. We analyze financing choices for younger firms, for which there exists little or no security price information, and then examine capital raising issues relevant to larger, listed firms. Topics to be covered in this course include the role of financial intermediaries - such as commercial banks and investment banks - in the capital raising process, the decision to go public, mechanism and pricing of initial public offerings, role of investment banks in IPOs, high-tech firm financing, privatization, bank debt, private placements, public debt markets, commercial paper and junk bond markets. Corporate Finance Professor: Robinson, David T This course examines important issues in corporate finance from the perspective of financial managers who are responsible for making significant investment and financing decisions. The concept of net present value, suitably adapted to account for taxes, uncertainty, and strategic concerns, is used to analyze how investment and financing decisions interact to affect the value of the firm. A large portion of the course covers capital budgeting, first without and then with uncertainty. Throughout, emphasis is placed on the interaction between taxes and the cost of capital and capital structure. The course also includes a treatment of payout policy and the CAPM as they relate to the value-maximization objective of the firm. We emphasize the development of problem-solving skills based on a good understanding of the business environment. Because of the practical importance of the material and as an illustration of the relevant theory, we will discuss examples and cases. Your course grade is based on a combination of Case studies One midterm exam One final exam Possibly graded homework assignments

7 The cases are an integral part of the course. Preparation for the cases is done in groups of four to six. Case teams will be assigned randomly by the professor during the first week of class. Managerial Accounting Professor: Dyreng, Scott D Managerial Accounting (ACCOUNTG 341) emphasizes the use of accounting information for internal purposes as opposed to the external disclosure focus of the financial accounting course. The design of management accounting systems for planning and controlling operations and for motivating personnel is covered. The course integrates accounting with ideas from microeconomics, data analysis, decision analysis, finance, and operations management. There are no prerequisites for this course. Managerial accounting information is directed to users internal to the firm, such as managers, auditors, and directors. Financial accounting information, such as financial statements and other regulatory filings, is directed to external constituencies of the firm, such as regulatory bodies, securities analysts, and (current/potential) shareholders. The primary differences between financial and managerial accounting are: Financial accounting Managerial accounting Users Outside the firm Inside the firm Time period Historical transactions Future transactions Format Standardized Customized Feature Auditable: comparable and precise Useful: improved decision making Unit Macro: organization as a whole Micro: level desired (product, unit) Regulation Mandatory (GAAP) Optional (Benefits must justify cost) Nature Publicly available Proprietary The Fuqua managerial accounting course is divided into two parts. First, we examine firms' managerial accounting systems and their use in decision-making. Second, we examine these accounting systems and their use in planning, control, and performance evaluation. The course begins with a discussion of the basic vocabulary and mechanics of managerial accounting systems. For the remainder of the course, students focus on identifying and extracting relevant information

8 from managerial accounting systems as an input to decision making and performance evaluation. The course objectives are reinforced through the lecture notes and course packet readings, assigned case write-ups, class and group discussions and problem-solving, and numerical problems. Decision Models Professor: Brown, David Benjamin/Balseiro, Santiago Successful management requires the ability to recognize a decision situation, understand its essential features, and make a choice. However, many of these situations - particularly those involving uncertainty and/or complex interactions - may be too difficult to grasp intuitively, and the stakes may be too high to learn by experience. In these cases, we may benefit from using decision models - simplified representations of these situations that allow you to consider the different possible scenarios (i.e., ask "what if") and learn more about the problem. This course introduces several commonly used modeling tools and provides an introduction to the art of modeling. The skills learned in this course are applicable in almost all aspects of business and should be helpful in future courses. The course is divided into three parts. In the first part (classes 1-4), we discuss the use of decision trees for structuring decision problems under uncertainty. In the second part of the course (class 5-8), we discuss Monte Carlo simulation, a technique for simulating complex, uncertain systems. In the third part of the course (classes 9-12), we discuss optimization. Throughout the course, we will use Microsoft Excel as a modeling and analysis environment, using add-in programs as necessary. Familiarity with Excel is an important prerequisite for this course. Behavioral Economics Professor: Ariely, Dan Behavioral economics and the closely related field of behavioral finance, couple scientific research on the psychology of decision making with economic theory to better understand what motivates investors, employees, and consumers. This course will be based heavily on my own research. We will examine topics such as how emotion rather than cognition determines economic decisions, irrational patterns of how

9 people think about money and investments, how expectations shape perceptions, economic and psychological analyses of dishonesty by presumably honest people, and how social and financial incentives combine to motivate labor by everyday workers and CEOs alike. This highly interdisciplinary course will be relevant to students with interests in General Management, Behavioral Finance, Entrepreneurship, Social Entrepreneurship, and Marketing. Leisure time - blue devils, NBA game - Fuqua vision - Fuqua Friday - travel around (east coast), Mexico Other than the study life, I do enjoy the free time in Durham. The most important part of the free time here is the basketball game. Duke basketball team, Blue Devils, is one of the most successful teams and won the NCAA champion four times. Blue Devils is part of the identity of Duke University. Coach K Krzyzewski leads the team for 20 years and luckily we got the experience to hear his speech in Fuqua. The basketball game is a must for exchange student to get to know their sports culture whether you are a basketball fan or not. Sadly, this year they didn't get the triumph. Not only has the basketball game, Duke also had other sports activities: baseball, golf and tennis. Although it might not be as hot as the basketball game, it is also worthy to watch it. For your own fitness, the Wilson center is the gym for Duke students which just takes 10mins from Fuqua. It has all the facilities includes swimming pool, basketball field, badminton fields, running machines etc. Durham is not a place for all the fun night life. But there are still some places you can go get some beer after work. The Shooters is the most famous bar in Durham that many undergraduates and MBA students are there. Most of the bars and pubs are on the 9 th street in town, you can also find some good restaurants here as well. One of the most important events in Fuqua is the Fuqua Friday that starts every Friday at 5.30pm and usually ends around 7pm. It is a perfect time to get along with the classmates and enjoy the after class time. Fuqua Friday will serve free food and free drinks, but you have to show your ID to get the alcohol drinks. According to North Carolina Law, you can drink alcohols after 21-year-old. Every Friday one Fuqua club will chose a theme to get some activities and food accordingly. For example, there is a Latin-American Friday along with the Latin-American music and served the tacos, nachos that day. The Luxury brand club once even threw a fashion T-walk theme on Fuqua Friday with all hand-made costumes. At the end of each term,

10 Fuquans will organize a Fuqua Vision which is the videos that Fuquans made during the term to record funny, interesting things. It is also a great experience watching the videos with all the daytime and exchange students. During the spring break, most of the students went out for traveling. I personally travelled around in the east coast: you could drive to Washington DC in 5 hours, NYC in 8 hours or you can take a flight. It cost me $300 dollars for the round trip since I flew to Boston and got back from Philadelphia. The price will fluctuate depends on when you book the ticket. If you want to visit Mexico, it is also quite convenient from North Carolina. Just make sure bring you DS-2019 form with you in order to re-enter to US. Last but not least, I really enjoy every moment of my exchange. You will meet all different kinds of people with different background. It is a fantastic experience, believe me!

11 Reference: Fuqua course descriptions,