Duke Daytime MBA Student Blog
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Admissions
25 Interesting Facts About Me
To give you a better idea of how you might respond to Fuqua's application question, here’s my list of 25 Random Things.
This year’s application includes an untraditional essay question which asks applicants for a list of 25 random things. Read more about the new essay question in this blog post from the Director of Admissions. To give you a better idea of how you might respond to the question, here’s my list of 25 Random Things:
- I love puns and clever jokes and plays on words. I love Scrabble but don’t like Words with Friends because you can use words that don’t really exist.
- I quote Finding Nemo often. I once started a “Just keep swimming” chant during a UVa football game across the 60,000 person stadium when they were down in the final minute of a big game.
- I love DIY television shows, blogs, and magazines although I don’t own a house or know how to safely use a power tool.
- I participated in Holi in Jaipur, India, this past March. My classmates from India didn’t warn me that my scalp and fingernails would be pink for a whole week!
- I started reading The Wall Street Journal at age 18 (I had it delivered to my college dorm). However, I still skip the Money and Investing sections more often than not.
- I organize my cookbooks by color. It’s just prettier that way.
- I did catering in college and probably cut more than 50 wedding cakes (the secret is to dip the knife in hot water between slices for the cleanest pieces).
- I met my husband at a leadership conference in high school . . . seriously.
- I lived in six houses by the time I was 12 (various houses in Kentucky, Ohio, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts and Virginia) and my parents were not in the armed forces.
- When I play golf, I sometimes make people turn around so they can’t watch me tee off.
- Every year we organize a “Generational Celebrational” in the fall and invite our friends from the University of Virginia and their parents for an Olympics between the ages. Then we head to a football game in our orange and navy.
- I consistently have a pile of books on my nightstand ready for reading, yet I continue to buy new ones to add to the pile.
- I drove to the 2012 Super Bowl in Indianapolis with 7 other people from Fuqua in an RV and camped outside the stadium for three days. We never made it to the game but we set up a TV outside of the RV with the stadium in the background.
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I make my own spaghetti sauce that is my grandma’s recipe. Growing up, my sister and I wanted to have an exercise video based on making and rolling meatballs for the sauce.
- I have a ridiculously good penguin dance. It was so good that I wrote my college essay about it and got in.
- I have a freckle at the end of my nose that is perfectly centered. I have often wondered if people would look at me differently if it wasn’t. It’s also coincidental since my maiden name means “nose” in Italian.
- I auditioned for the high school talent show singing a Dixie Chicks duet with my best friend. They canceled the show before we found out if we made it in . . .
- I used to build model cars in high school and tried to bargain with my parents to buy a 1969 Chevelle but instead I got a 1996 Toyota Camry that was not mine but rather the “third family car that only I drove.”
- My parents were each the first and only ones in their families to earn college degrees. My mom went back to grad school a few years ago to switch careers and go into teaching. She beat me to the first family master’s degree by four years.
- I don’t like shows that make you feel uncomfortable and often have to leave the room when they are playing. This mostly includes anything that has the following actors: Jim Carrey, Dave Chapelle, or Sacha Baron Cohen.
- I can’t work or read with the television on in the background but love listening to music instead.
- I lost the second grade spelling bee in extra rounds on the word “friend” to this kid nicknamed “The Brain.” To this day, I am fearful of spelling any words that have “ie” or “ei” unless spellcheck is available.
- I took a 4-week long cross-country road trip with two of my friends after college (to California and back to the East Coast). We slept in a place called the Border Inn which sat on the border of two time zones so the time changed when you walked between the bedroom and bathroom of the motel room.
- It took me over two years, but I finally have the courage (and the fitness) to run the Washington Duke “WaDuke” trail.
- I set my alarm at weird times (e.g., 7:23 am or 6:47 am). Subconsciously, I think it must be like those speed limit signs that are 19 mph in neighborhoods — it’s meant to catch your attention.
See more examples from and insight on Fuqua’s 25 Random Things essay