BBA Areas of Study

The Academic Experience

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Functional Area Depths

These area depths represent the key functional areas of business and correspond to our school’s faculty departments. We offer five area depth topics that correlate with many of the career interests students pursue post-graduation.

Accounting is the language of business, and fluency in financial reporting, the legal environment, and taxation should be part of your vocabulary. Every business decision involves choices of transaction structure, resource allocation, reporting to constituents such as shareholders, creditors, and investors, and compliance with many levels of government regulation and taxation. Our Accounting area depth gives you critical skills to help you make complex decisions in an ever-changing environment.

This depth, often taken in conjunction with an area depth in finance, is pursued by students preparing for careers in corporate finance, financial analysis, investment banking, portfolio management, venture capital and private equity, and commercial lending. In your future career as a professional, when deciding whether to allocate capital you will have to analyze and predict future performance and risks for firms. Strong fundamental understanding of financial reporting and accounting and strong analytical and conceptual thinking are crucial components of such predictions.

In addition, BBAs can opt to combine any undergraduate depth with the joint Master of Professional Accounting (MPA) Program. Whether as a corporate executive, public accountant, consultant, entrepreneur, or investment banker, graduates of the BBA/MPA Program obtain a wide variety of professional credentials to help demonstrate their level of competence and experience in leading business fields.

Examples of Accounting electives offered at Goizueta: Strategic Cost Management, Sustainbility Measurement & Reporting, Accounting Analytics, Tax Strategy, Financial Reporting, Audit, LedgerTech: Blockchain & Crypto, Machine Learning, Firm Fundamentals & Mispricing, Compensation & Management Control, Accounting for Mergers & Acquisitions

Our goal in the Finance area is to provide you with a strong framework for financial decision making, from the Nobel Prize-winning models of the early theorists to the state-of-the-art methodologies of today. An understanding of the principles and practice of finance is often essential for career development, particularly as graduates' responsibilities become more general in nature as they progress in their careers.

A Finance area depth provides students with the knowledge, skills, and insights necessary to thrive in the ever-evolving financial sector. Course options include financial analytics, FinTech, security analysis and portfolio management, investment banking, consulting, real estate, mergers and acquisitions, private equity, and venture capital. Many students graduate to join leading investment banks commercial banks, and corporations, and our Finance track is consistently one of the most popular area depths at Goizueta.

Examples of Finance electives offered at Goizueta: Strategic Valuation, Mergers & Acquisitions, Derivatives, International Finance, Global Macroeconomic Perspectives, Investment Banking, Fixed Income, FinTech, Applied Investment Management, Entrepreneurial Private Equity, Real Estate Finance, Sports Finance, Economics and Finance of Film

Our Information Systems & Operations Management (ISOM) area deals with the variety of approaches to structured and unstructured problem solving that have become critical to today's businesses and the hallmarks of modern consulting best-practices. The ISOM curriculum is designed to inform a wide range of professions, perhaps most emblematically that of consulting, in which systems and process problems are regularly tackled.

To gain an appreciation of the dynamics of systems and processes, our ISOM area offers a range of analytics courses that prepare you for dealing with large data sets, how to best apply statistical and computational methods in prediction, risk-assessment and strength/weakness detection, and the task of decision support application development to help automate and encapsulate intelligent approaches to problem solving. Along with preparation for analytical work, the ISOM curriculum offers courses that prepare you for best practices in management activity, including how to effectively account for operational and IT capabilities in strategy development and deployment and how to account for idiosyncrasies in individual and group psychology — issues that can either help or hinder strategic efforts.

Examples of ISOM electives offered at Goizueta: Foundations of Digital Enterprises & Markets, Data Science for Business, Advanced Decision Analytics, Superforecasting, Data Visualization, Project Management, Appcology, Supply Chain Management, Operations Strategy

Marketing is concerned with creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. Our marketing faculty is comprised of highly accomplished scholars well known for their work on customer relationship management, marketing analytics, customer loyalty programs, customer valuation, pricing, auctions, brand management, market structure and evolution, social media, shopper decision-making, multi-channel management, and assessing market opportunities in emerging markets.

If you focus your studies in marketing, you will select from electives that develop your toolkit to analyze customers and market opportunities, assess and create marketing strategies, and implement marketing programs. Our students gain proficiency in the latest methods and concepts for understanding customer behavior, devising effective marketing strategies, and implementing and assessing marketing programs. Further, the shift in marketing resources to online media and channels, the emerging importance of consumer-generated communications, and the growing prevalence of customer databases present opportunities for graduates whose skills combine the traditional creative approach to marketing with a data-driven perspective to resource allocation.

Graduates with an area depth in marketing have obtained positions involving product and brand management, digital and interactive marketing, e-business, advertising and marketing communications, marketing research and customer insights, customer relationship management, pricing, sales and account management, and consulting. Students can look forward to career opportunities in large and small organizations representing a spectrum of industrial, consumer goods, service, electronic commerce, and consulting firms/institutions in the public and private sectors.

Examples of Marketing electives offered at Goizueta: Product & Brand Management, Pricing Strategy, Data Driven Market Intelligence, Consumer Behavior, Global Marketing, Entertainment & Media Fieldwork, Marketing Consultancy Practicum, Advertising & Marketing Communication, Sports Marketing, AI in Marketing

Organizations are the engines of technological and social innovation, the foundations of individuals' careers, and therefore the bases of social advance and diversity. The academic study of organizations is a multi-disciplinary endeavor that draws from various social science disciplines including economics, political science, psychology, and sociology. Organizational scholars utilize an array of quantitative and qualitative research methods to develop important insights about the antecedents and consequences of organizational behavior.

Our Organization and Management faculty embody this diversity of disciplines and approaches and collectively have an active program of research and publication in leading management journals, as well as those in the corresponding social science disciplines. Members of our faculty play visible roles on the editorial boards of leading academic journals including the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Discoveries, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, and Strategic Organization.

Examples of Organization & Management electives offered at Goizueta: Negotiations, Leading & Managing Change, Managing Groups and Teams, Business & Society, Philanthropy Lab, Bias in the Workplace, Management Consulting, Competitive Advantage, Leading with Evidence, Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital & Minority Enterpreneurship

Interdisciplinary Area Depths

In order to equip BBA students to meet the challenges of a fast-changing and globally integrated world, our faculty has designed cross-functional depths that make use of a range of electives from across academic areas. Interdisciplinary depths allow students to benefit from additional directed choices that provide focused study alongside integrated thinking.

Please note that the Analytic Consulting depth is being sunset after the Class of 2025, and two new interdisciplinary depths have been launched in Business Analytics and Consulting.

Our Analytic Consulting depth exposes students to a rigorous analysis of business from multiple functional perspectives and prepares them to holistically address business problems and make meaningful recommendations. In addition, the electives in this depth enhances students' ability to identify relevant information and patterns in that information, with an emphasis on analyzing, optimizing, monitoring, and controlling.

The Business Analytics depth helps students develop proficiency in the development and application of analytics tools and methods. Specifically, the depth provides students with a foundation in coding and developing computational tools and methods, such as A/B testing, regression, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, and allows students to apply and extend those methods and tools to address practical business challenges.

The Business and Society depth emphasizes the critical nature of the relationship between organizations and society, and the correlation between ethical behavior and corporate performance. Electives expose students not only to the emotional and cultural dimensions of the business world but also to the relationship between social responsibility and business strategy. Students explore the dual goals of improving economic performance while simultaneously integrating social and corporate values. In this depth, the focus is on harnessing information, analyzing complex situations and synthesizing data for ethical decision making.

The Consulting depth provides students with skills needed to be an effective consultant across any industry, context, or function. To prepare for working with clients and teams, students in the Consulting depth will have the opportunity to develop skills in client relationship building, client communications, project management, personal and team leadership, and the client industry, competitor, and value chain. Students will also learn about strategy, organizational dynamics, and design and process improvement, and can select elective coursework that helps them gain a grounding in marketing, financials, and/or operations. Students will gain knowledge in the consulting approach, including how to define and break down problems, to develop hypotheses, and to gather, cleanse, structure, analyze, model, and visualize data. They will learn how to effectively storyboard and storytell and how to effective present deliverables.

Our Entrepreneurship depth provides multi-disciplinary immersion into the intricacies of launching a new venture. The depth allows students with immediate entrepreneurial aspirations to develop and operationalize their concepts. For those whose entrepreneurial intentions are more long-term, the depth offers the foundational knowledge and skills needed to understand and evaluate start-ups. Whether you have a great idea, have already started your company, or are simply interested in what it takes to become an entrepreneur, you can take advantage of entrepreneurial courses, resources, and events within the Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Students have the opportunity to enrich their entrepreneurial journey at Goizueta via access to mentors, investor, and incubator space.

A range of largely-experiential courses across all academic disciplines provides students with hands-on opportunities to both work on projects of their own choosing and to partner with existing entrepreneurs. Concepts covered build the ability to conceive of and test ideas, identify markets and engage in customer discovery, utilize appropriate technologies as both venture platforms and back-end infrastructure, create sustainable competitive strategies, develop proformas and calculate valuation, and understand venture capital and other sources of funding. Faculty make use of both traditional and emerging pedagogical approaches to provide students with the most robust learning experience.

Our International Business depth prepares students for conducting business in an increasingly globalized world by providing a broadened world perspective. Specified electives in the depth focus on one or more aspects of international relationships, such as formulating global strategies, understanding and reporting global transactions, dealing with the complexities of global trade and finance, and marketing across geographic boundaries. In addition, students have the ability to select from a wide range of Emory electives that provide a liberal arts perspective within a global context, as well as the opportunity to study abroad at one of 45 partner schools throughout the world.

Our Real Estate depth is centered in the Finance department. Students are trained in the nuances of the real estate industry, with emphasis on factors that make up the market and the intricacies of properties as an asset in money management. In addition to fundamentals, students receive high-level training in development, REITS and capital markets. Courses allow flexibility and interaction with local professionals, giving students a competitive advantage.

Goizueta's proximity to Atlanta is one of the greatest differentiators from other real estate programs. Not only is Atlanta one of the largest real estate markets in the country, but it is also home to the regional offices of various real estate companies that operate throughout the U.S. and beyond.

Beyond the area depth, Goizueta offers a robust real estate program. Through coursework and experiential learning, Goizueta empowers students with the knowledge and skills necessary for successful careers in private equity and real estate, including strong professional networks and faculty and industry mentorship.