Learn about the Curricular Tracks
A track consists of a set of courses and includes two types of courses:
- Fundamental Courses - while not required, taking fundamental courses is recommended. They will provide you with the fundamental knowledge and skills you will need to excel in this field.
- Recommended Electives - take as many of these as you would like. These courses can also count for a concentration you are pursuing.
Tracks provide you with a roadmap of coursework that will help you develop both intellectually and professionally in areas of interest that cross traditional disciplines. Tracks are multidisciplinary, in-depth, and supplemental to your business concentration(s). Completion of a track will not be noted on your transcript.
Each track has a Track Champion dedicated to developing and monitoring the track curriculum, advising students, and facilitating professional development.
Important Note: You must fulfill all required prerequisites for any course listed. Please refer to the Course Index and College of Arts and Sciences website for information regarding course prerequisites.
Tracks include:
Asset Pricing
The Asset Pricing Track provides rigorous training in the pricing/valuation of financial instruments, including corporate, fixed income, and derivative securities, investment strategies, including performance evaluation and portfolio theory, and the workings of capital markets, including the various participants in these markets, their roles, and the regulatory environment. Elective courses can be chosen to emphasize macroeconomic foundations, empirical methods, or quantitative finance. With an appropriate choice of elective courses, this track provides in-depth preparation for careers in asset management, sales and trading, fixed income and equity research, credit analysis, private equity, private wealth management, insurance, global finance (e.g., IMF, World Bank), central banking, regulation (e.g., SEC), economic consulting and policy, as well as graduate school in finance or economics.
Business Analytics
The business analytics track is designed to expose students to the skills, methods, and practices that are useful for data-driven decision-making. This multidisciplinary field has strong roots in computer science, information science, mathematics, operations, and statistics. Topic areas include data organization and management, computer programming, data mining, and machine learning, optimization, and statistical methods, used to both investigate past business performance and predictively model future performance. This track provides preparation for careers in a wide range of fields at companies that are committed to the use of data to gain insights about their business (including consulting, entrepreneurship, financial services, marketing, risk management, sales, social media, and technology), as well as graduate school in the social sciences.
Corporate Finance
The Corporate Finance Track provides rigorous training in corporate financial decision-making, including value creation, corporate governance, and agency issues and the markets for corporate claims and corporate control, including the role of financial intermediaries. Elective courses can be chosen to emphasize financial management and reporting, entrepreneurship, banking, or international issues. With an appropriate choice of elective courses, this track provides in-depth preparation for careers in investment banking, private equity, venture capital, equity research, credit analysis, corporate treasury, financial consulting, corporate accounting and audit, tax and law, global finance (e.g., IMF, World Bank), central banking, and regulation (e.g., SEC), economic consulting and policy, as well as graduate school in finance, economics, or accounting.
Digital Marketing
The Internet and advances in digitization and social networking are transforming how companies and governments interact with customers and partners. Virtually every company in every industry is committed to establishing a “digital presence” that enables it to interact with customers and suppliers in new ways. As a result, today’s marketing managers need a deep understanding of how digital tools can be used to develop insights about customers and competitors and make key decisions about price, communications, channels, and products. This specialization provides students with the strategic and analytical skills to obtain positions in organizations that are using digital marketing tools and to add value to those organizations. The companies include the “suppliers” of these new digital tools (e.g., Google, Facebook), consulting firms and advertising agencies, and traditional companies that are routinely using these tools to aid in making everyday decisions.
Luxury Marketing
The Luxury Marketing track allows students to develop the perspective and skills necessary to pursue careers in the luxury sector. This is an important part of the economy, both in the US and worldwide. Marketing luxury products and services present a number of unique challenges including the nature of the target market, the importance of establishing a strong relationship with customers, the critical role of brand image, and the nature of the distribution system.
Management Consulting
The Management Consulting track teaches you how consulting is an effective way of thinking about businesses and solving business problems—skills that are applicable to any position both inside and outside the consulting industry. Consultants identify and adapt best practices to the firms that hire them, working on different projects across varied industries, usually having access to top executives in those firms. This track is an excellent complement to a concentration in management as well as other areas such as finance, marketing, and accounting. Students who select this track develop a number of core skills, including data analysis, and problem-solving, peer leadership, as well as written, verbal, and visual communications. With an appropriate choice of elective courses, this track provides in-depth preparation for careers in management consulting, strategy consulting, economic consulting, healthcare consulting, and information technology consulting.
Real Estate
The Real Estate track provides rigorous training in the economics of real estate development and investment, the financing of such projects, leasing, and appraisal of buildings, the pricing/ valuation and trading of financial instruments with real estate as the underlying asset; such Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITS), residential and commercial mortgage-backed securities (MBS), and related derivative and structured finance products such as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), credit default swaps (CDS), and index products (CDX, ABX, etc.), and the workings of real estate primary and secondary markets, including the various participants in these markets, their roles, and (iv) the legal, taxation, and regulatory environment. With an appropriate choice of elective courses, this track provides in-depth preparation for careers in real estate development, real estate brokerage, real estate project investment for private equity firms, family offices, sovereign wealth funds, and careers in real estate finance in the fixed income or equity desks of investment banks (research, sales and trading), hedge funds, and sovereign wealth funds.