Establishing Proficiency in a Core Course

We believe that all Core courses are fundamentally important, and that broad knowledge of these areas of business will be valuable to you during your career. You are required to complete your program's Core requirements as outlined in the Program Structure section and have the option to establish proficiency in order to satisfy these Core requirements. In all cases, you must take a total of 60 credits for the MBA requirements. Any Core courses in which you establish proficiency will be replaced by elective credits.

Core Course Proficiency Methods

You may pursue three methods to establish proficiency in a Core Course. Details of each method are provided below.

You may request to establish Core course proficiency by any of these three methods through our Core Course Proficiency site.

Please note, all students must take a Capstone Core course. It is not possible to establish proficiency for this requirement.

Previous Course Work or Professional Certification Policies

Students who possess an undergraduate major or advanced degree in the Core discipline area may choose to establish proficiency in the respective Core course. You are not automatically given proficiency in the Core course(s). You must make a formal request on the Core Course Proficiency site, if you wish to establish proficiency in that course through your previous degrees. Below is a chart that identifies the previous course work that qualifies for each Core course.
 
Core Course Undergraduate Major Or Masters Degree
COR1-GB.1302 Leadership in Organizations Management
  • Substantial coursework in Organizational Behavior or Theory required. Proficiency established upon review and approval of transcripts.
COR1-GB.1303 Firms & Markets Economics
COR1-GB.1305 Statistics & Data Analysis Statistics
COR1-GB.1306 Financial Accounting & Reporting U.S. Accounting Majors, U.S. CPAs or Chartered Accountants
  • Students who have a CFA designation are required to take the Proficiency Exam, per the Accounting Department's policy.
COR1-GB.2310 Marketing Marketing
COR1-GB.2303 The Global Economy Economics
COR1-GB.2314 Operations Management Industrial Engineering or Operations Management
COR1-GB.2311 Foundations of Finance Finance
FINC-GB.2320 Corporate Finance (Elective) Finance
  • Students wishing to establish proficiency in Corporate Finance must have taken at least five courses in Finance, including at least one course in Corporate Finance.
  • Full-time students are not required to take the Corporate Finance elective course. However, a number of upper-level elective courses require Corporate Finance as a co-requisite or pre-requisite. Students who wish to establish proficiency in Corporate Finance as a co-requisite or pre-requisite may take the Corporate Finance proficiency exam or establish proficiency with previous course work.
You may establish proficiency in Financial Accounting & Reporting, COR1-GB.1306 (B01.1306), by demonstrating proof of any of the following:
  • a U.S. CPA License
  • a passing grade on the U.S. CPA exam
  • a chartered accounting certification
Accounting licenses from countries other than the U.S. are not acceptable to establish proficiency. If you have an accounting license from any other country than the U.S., you will need to take and pass the proficiency exam in order to establish proficiency in Financial Accounting & Reporting, COR1-GB.1306 (B01.1306).

Request to establish proficiency in Accounting through the Core Course Proficiency site.
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Proficiency Exam Policy and Course Topics

The Stern faculty wants you to grow and tackle new subjects rather than repeat material in areas in which you already have extensive knowledge. Proficiency exams provide the opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge of the material covered in some Core courses and qualify to substitute more advanced courses for them. The first step is to review the Core course topic list provided below. If you feel that you are proficient in all of these topics, we encourage you to take the proficiency exam for that course.
             
  • The exams are offered throughout the year for all MBA students.
  • All exams are closed-book.
  • You have two hours for each exam.
  • All proficiency exams will be offered during each 2-hour exam session.
  • You may take only one exam per each 2-hour exam session.
  • You may take each proficiency exam only once.
  • You are permitted to use standard or financial calculators.
  • You are not permitted to use smartphones, tablets, laptops or similar devices.
  • Exams are graded "Pass/Fail," and exam grades may not be appealed.
  • If you do not pass an exam, you must register for and complete the Core course if it is part of your Core requirements or to satisfy an elective pre-requisite.
  • If you pass, you may register for subsequent electives that require this course as a pre-requisite.
  • You are only eligible to sit for Core proficiency exams within the first year of starting your program.
    • In some extenuating circumstances, you may need to take a proficiency exam after the first year of your program. If this is your situation, you may make a request in the form of a petition to the Academic Policy Board.
COR1-GB.1302 Leadership in Organizations Topic List
  • Dynamics
  • Organizational Effectiveness
  • External Environment
  • Strategy
  • Organizational Design
  • Strategy & Structure
  • Control
  • Power & Networks
  • Leadership
  • Managing Change
  • Groups
  • Decision-Making
  • Negotiation
  • Motivation
  • Organization Behavior
  • Perfect competition, demand & supply, market equilibrium, market efficiency, comparative statics
  • Demand, elasticities, consumer surplus, estimating demand, identification problem
  • Economic costs, opportunity cost, sunk cost, marginal cost
  • Monopoly, profit maximization, price & the elasticity rule
  • Price discrimination, market segmentation, versioning, bundling
  • Game theory, strategies & payoffs, normal & extensive form games, best responses & nash equilibrium, prisoners dilemma, backward induction, commitment & credibility, entry
  • Hazards of price competition, Bertrand competition & how to avoid it
  • Collusion, mergers, government policy toward market power
  • Externalities
  • Asymmetric information, adverse selection
  • Data summary: Types of data, descrip stats (mean, median, standard deviation, covar, correlation), stem & leaf display, box plot
  • Probability:  Algebra of events, conditional probability, independence
  • Random variables: Probability mass function, mean, variance, std dev, covariance, correlation
  • Specific distributions: Binomial, normal
  • Sampling from a population: Central Limit Theorem
  • Confidence interval: Mean of a continuous population and the binomial proportion
  • Hypothesis testing & inference: tests of significance, types of error, tests for means.
  • Simple linear regression: One predictor model, inference, t & F tests, R-squared (coefficient of determination), standard error of estimate, prediction, residual analysis, regression diagnostics.
  • Multiple regression: t & F tests, R-squared (coefficient of determination), standard error of estimate, interpretation of coefficients, prediction, residual analysis, regression diagnostics, model repair, multicollinearity, model building, transformations.
  • The accounting equation and financial statements,  Cash flow vs. accrual-based earnings
  • Transactions analysis, Revenue recognition concepts, operating income vs. net income
  • Current Assets, valuation and amortization of  PP&E and Intangibles, depreciation methods and asset impairment assessment
  • Long & Short-term Investments – valuation and mark-to-market accounting
  • Long Term Debt and Capital Leases - valuation and determination of interest expense, contingent liabilities and assets
  • Shareholders Equity: capital stock, retained earnings,  comprehensive income, treasury stock transactions and  stock options
  • Basic & diluted earnings per share calculations, cash and stock dividends
  • Cash Flow Statement  preparation - direct & indirect methods
  • US GAAP vs. IFRS: measurement differences
  • Financial ratio analysis
  • Measurement in macroeconomics
  • Domestic production & economic growth: Engines of growth, Solow's model, total factor productivity
  • Markets for labor & int'l goods: Labor markets, gains from trade, trade & policy
  • Business cycles
  • Monetary & fiscal policy: Debt & deficits, money & banking, inflation, monetary policy
  • Exchange rates & capital flows: Exchange rates, bal of payments, policy instruments for open econ, global cap markets
  • Developing a marketing strategy
  • Strategy over the product life cycle
  • Market definition, competitor analysis
  • Consumer behavior; organizational buying behavior
  • Market segmentation
  • Product positioning
  • Branding & brand equity
  • New product development
  • Pricing & behavioral pricing
  • Communications & advertising
  • Channels of distribution, direct marketing, personal selling
  • Customer relationship management & determining the value of a customer to firm
  • Basic quantitative analysis for marketing
  • Market research
  • International marketing
  • Process design
  • Operating systems, types of operating processes
  • Process flow analysis: Performance metrics, identification of bottlenecks, process improvement
  • Effect of uncertainty: Waiting lines and capacity management in service operations
  • Simulation
  • Project management
  • Quality as basis for competition: Six-sigma and statistical process control
  • Inventory Management: Performance metrics, continuous review models, newsvendor models.
  • Supply chain management
  • Linear programming
  • Market structure
  • Present value, yields & returns
  • Equilibrium one period yields
  • Arbitrage & the law of one price
  • Portfolio theory
  • Capital market equilibrium and the CAPM
  • Introduction to capital budgeting (NPV, IRR, decision rules)
  • Common stock valuation
  • Fixed income securities: yield calculations, yield curve & forward rates, duration, swaps, risk & the term structure of interest rates
  • Options
  • Futures
  • Market efficiency
Note: The basic material on this examination is covered in Brealey, Myers, and Allen, Principles of Corporate Finance, Damodaran, Corporate Finance: Theory and Practice, and other standard Corporate Finance textbooks. There is also a wealth of useful material, including practice problems and old exams, on Professor Damodaran’s website.

This topical outline is indicative of the topics covered and is not intended as an exhaustive list of topics on the proficiency exam.
  • 1. Basics of Interest Rates
    •  Risk-free return and risk premiums
    • Term structure and credit risk structure of interest rates
  • 2. Time Value of Money
    • Valuing risk-free and risky cash flows
    • Net present value, payback period, and internal rate of return
    • Valuing annuities and perpetuities
  • 3. Option Valuation
    • Relationship of option price to underlying variables
    • Valuing convertible bonds
    • Real options
  • 4. Efficient Markets and Financing Decisions
  • 5. Relating Risk and Return on Financial Assets
    • The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM)
    • Systematic and unsystematic risk
    • Alternative theories of asset pricing
  • 6. Cost of Capital Concepts
    • Estimating the cost of debt and equity
    • Weighted average cost of capital
    • Modigliani-Miller theorem
  • 7. Project/firm valuation
    • Calculating expected cash flows
    • WACC, APV and FTE approaches
  • 8. Capital Structure Concepts
    • Costs and benefits of debt versus equity
    • Optimal capital structure
    • Selecting a capital structure
    • Pecking order theory
    • Relating risk to capital structure
  • 9. Dividend and Stock Buy-Back Policy
    • Conditions under which dividend policy matters to shareholders
    • Dividends and signaling theory
    • Alternative ways of returning cash to shareholders
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