BBA Areas of Study

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. The Accounting area depth gives you critical skills to help you make complex decisions in an ever-changing environment.

Businessweek recently ranked Goizueta's undergraduate accounting program #3 in the U.S., and roughly one-third of our BBAs acquire a concentration in accounting. We offer two accounting tracks — one for Financial Accounting and Analysis and one for Professional Accounting (CPA).

Our Financial Accounting and Analysis concentration, 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.

Our Professional Accounting (CPA) concentration is taken by students preparing for professional careers in accounting. If you follow this path, you will join professional accounting firms in their auditing, forensic, tax, or consulting practices. Other common career paths include internal audit and financial management in corporations and governmental and not-for-profit entities, as well as careers that focus on a wide range of professional capabilities to serve the business community. Corporate managers prefer the advice of accounting information experts who understand the organization as a whole and the strategic and tactical problems of senior management. Many of the top financial professionals —the controller, the treasurer, the director of internal auditing, the director of financial planning, the vice president of finance, the chief financial officer — are CPAs.

Area Depth Details

If accounting is the language of business, then finance is the science. 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. If you enjoy math and the sciences, you will likely enjoy the structured way of thinking in finance. 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.

Businessweek recently rated Goizueta's BBA program #2 in the area of Financial Management, and our Finance track is consistently one of the top concentrations at Goizueta. The curriculum is carefully designed to equip you with the analytical skills and practical expertise necessary to excel in finance careers. Many students graduate to join banking firms on Wall Street, and other common career paths include corporate finance and investment management. Our course offerings also allow you to emphasize career tracks in real estate as well the growing areas of private equity, hedge funds, and new venture financing through Goizueta's Center for Alternative Investments.

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The 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). Recent ISOM majors have been placed at such firms as Bain, McKinsey, PwC, and Hitachi.

To gain an appreciation of the dynamics of systems and processes, the ISOM curriculum 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.

Goizueta’s ISOM faculty ranks #4 internationally in terms of research productivity in elite outlets such as the Journal of Operations Management, MIS Quarterly, Production and Operations Management, and Information Systems Research. The ISOM curriculum reflects the strength of this knowledge base.

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Marketing is concerned with creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. Goizueta's 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.

Marketing majors 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. Besides students whose focal interest is a career in marketing, the Marketing major is popular for students interested in general management careers, as well as in the media and entertainment field, and management consulting.

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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.

The Organization & Management faculty at Goizueta 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, Journal of International Business Studies, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, and Strategic Organization.

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The 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.

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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.

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The 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.

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.

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The 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. The depth also requires study or work experience abroad to provide students with a contextual grasp of international business.

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The 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.

Area Depth Details