What they teach you in an MBA program
MBA programs are rigorous and expose you to various functional areas in management.
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A typical MBA program is divided into two parts - Core and Electives. In core terms the student is exposed to common concepts in management which are required to understand more advanced topics. The core terms typically focus on following areas -
- Microeconomics - This course aims to provide basic tools to address issues like pricing, cost determination, compensation, entry and exit from a market.
- Marketing Management - This subject focuses core marketing concepts such as
- Assess market opportunities by analyzing customers, competitors, strengths and weaknesses of a company
- Use quantitative and qualitative methods to recommend most appropriate marketing strategy
- Accounting - This course helps students understand financial statements and analyze them. It focuses on basic accounting concepts and the mechanics of the three primary statements - the balance sheet, the income statement, and the statement of cash flows. The course will also discuss concepts like liquid assets, inventories, fixed assets, long-term obligations, and investments.
- Statistics - Basic concepts of statistics and their application in management.
- Decision making theories and models - This course will equip the students with a solid understanding of quantitative techniques to take optimum decision taking into consideration various business constraints. You will be able to answer questions like how much quantity should a retailer stock in the store based on demand for past one year.
- Macroeconomics - Students will understand the fundamental issues of the national and global economy, such as production and long run economic growth, international trade, inflation, unemployment, monetary fiscal policy, short run fluctuations of the economy, international capital flows, and exchange rate determination.
- Competitive Strategy - Analyze the competitive strategy of a firm considering its short-term and long-term competitive position. The course will focus on all concepts of management.
- Managerial Accounting - The course focuses on how managers use accounting data and other related information in decision making, planning and control.
- Corporate Finance - Focuses on valuation techniques for various asset classes. Student will learn basic concepts like cost of capital, net present value, capital structure, mergers and restructuring, discounted cash flow, time value of money etc.
- Operations Management - The course focuses on competitive advantage on production and distribution side of a business. You will learn concepts like how queues are formed, inventory analysis, process flow parameters. You will be able to answer questions like how much should a company produce to satisfy market demand, what should be the distribution network, how to mitigate the risks arising changes demand, etc.
- Information Technology - This course focuses on how a firm can leverage Information Technology to gain competitive advantage, how technology can be used to create new market opportunities, etc. You would be able to answer questions like how can a company reduce the cost of repetitive tasks using technology, how a company grow through the use of technology, etc.
- Investment Analysis - This course will focus on pricing and valuation of various financial instruments like stocks and bonds. It will also cover concepts on risk and return, constructing optimal portfolio, asset pricing models and asset classes like options and futures.
