The Inside Scoop on Duke’s Master of Engineering Management (MEM)

Are you an engineer who wants to use your technical skills and move into an entrepreneurial or managerial role? Well, Duke's Master of Engineering Management or MEM may be just the ticket for you, and it provides two options, on campus and online. The program has been around for over 25 years and aims to prepare engineers with business knowledge. In this episode of Admissions Straight Talk, Luis Morales, Executive Director of the program, shares more of what the program offers and how applicants can successfully present themselves.
In this episode:
2:00 Professor Morales, welcome to Admissions Straight Talk.
2:06 Can we start with an overview of the Master of Engineering Management program at Duke? Who is it for? What need is it intended to fill?
4:40 There are two versions of the MEM program. There's the online and the in-residence. Can you go over how they're structured?
6:07 Are there three residency experiences?
6:10 How long are they?
6:51 Do the in-residence and the online students get together?
8:11 Do you have people in the in-residence program that are coming straight from college or do they usually work for a little bit?
9:51 What do you see as the most significant differences between the MEM and an MBA?
13:42 I'm sure that some people listening to this are thinking, “Well, if I'm going to get the leadership skills and I'm going to get the business skills, and it's going to complement my undergraduate training, wouldn't I be better off getting an MBA and having the flexibility?” How would you respond to that concern?
17:20 I noticed that the MEM focuses very much on professionalism and its five principles. Can you touch on what they are and their importance in the program? Often, programs will have some very nice sounding motto or mission or key principles, whatever you want to call them. And they sound great, but they're not really ingrained in the program. So when you're talking about them, how are these principles guiding you? How are they realized in the program?
26:08 You touched on experience or professional experience already. Is a GRE required?
27:09 What else are you looking for in the admissions process?
30:56 What if an applicant is interested in attending the MEM? Maybe they didn't graduate in engineering, but maybe they took a lot of biology classes or biological anthropology or something like that. It's not hard STEM, but it's getting close. Can he or she take specific classes to get the technical foundation that you expect? And what would those classes be?
33:01 How short should the essays be?
36:52 Can you touch on the video interview and why you have that?
38:11 What can applicants invited to interview expect during their in-person interview?
41:02 During the in-person interview with the alum or the admission staff person, would they ask questions about how the applicant has handled particular situations? Are they going to be asking about decision points in the resume? Is the interview blind or have they reviewed the application?
42:23 What is a common mistake that you see applicants make in their applications?
43:45 What question would you like to answer that I haven't asked? What piece of information would you like to convey to listeners that we haven't discussed?
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