Boston University Undergraduate Finance Curriculum: A Comprehensive Overview

The global finance landscape demands leaders equipped with cutting-edge technological skills and sophisticated management techniques to navigate its complexities, challenges, and opportunities. Boston University's Questrom School of Business and Metropolitan College (MET) offer a robust suite of finance programs designed to prepare students for success in this dynamic sector. These programs blend a solid foundation in general management practices with specialized knowledge and tools applicable to corporate financial analysis and capital budgeting.

Curriculum Overhaul and Focus

Recognizing the evolving needs of the finance industry, Boston University has undertaken a significant overhaul of its undergraduate business curriculum. This initiative, led by Associate Dean for the Undergraduate Program Jeffrey Furman, Senior Associate Dean of Programs Barbara Bickart, and Senior Associate Dean of the Faculty Anita Carson, aims to equip students with real-world, job-ready skills. The redesigned curriculum emphasizes experiential learning, strategically sequences courses to facilitate internships between the sophomore and junior years, and integrates critical thinking and analytical skills throughout.

Key Changes and Goals

The curriculum redesign addresses several key areas identified through research with alumni and employers:

Earlier Finance Exposure: Students now have opportunities to take finance courses as early as their freshman year, addressing the need for earlier exposure to the subject matter for internship opportunities. Carson's benchmarking project revealed that 70% of peer institutions offered finance courses in the freshman year.
Unstructured Problem Solving: The curriculum places greater emphasis on developing students' abilities to solve unstructured problems, mirroring the demands of the modern workplace.
Relevance and Hands-On Experience: Alumni and employers emphasized the importance of hands-on experience and embedding students in real-world business scenarios.
Business as a Force for Good: The introductory course has been redesigned with the theme of business as a force for good, aligning with the Ravi K. Mehrotra Institute for Business, Markets, and Society.

This comprehensive redesign impacts over 2,300 students and 250 full-time faculty in Questrom’s undergraduate business program, a highly selective program admitting only 8% of applicants.

Degree Requirements

The Questrom School of Business curriculum balances core requirements with a wide array of electives, fostering both competence and flexibility. The Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BSBA) program requires the completion of a specific number of credits.

Core Courses and Electives

The full-time, four-year BSBA program consists of 19 core courses and 13 electives. Students must also complete the Career Journey sequence of courses (ES110, ES210, and ES310; transfer students take ES215 instead of ES110 and ES210).

Concentrations and Dual Degrees

Students have the option to complete at least one concentration within the BSBA program. Furthermore, dual degrees are available through collaborations with other undergraduate schools within Boston University, with popular choices including Economics, International Relations, and Communications.

Minors

Pursuing a minor is optional, but Boston University offers over 90 minor programs, allowing students to explore interests outside of business, either within or outside of Questrom.

Course Offerings

The finance curriculum at Boston University encompasses a wide range of courses designed to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of financial principles and practices.

Introductory Courses

Introduction to Accounting and Financial Analysis: This course introduces fundamental concepts, methods, and problems in accounting and financial analysis. Topics include accounting principles, measurement and disclosure issues, financial statement analysis, the time value of money, cash flow projection and analysis, capital budgeting and project evaluation, bond and equity valuation, cost of capital, and capital structure.
Financial Management: This course examines saving and investment decisions by households, investment and financing decisions by corporations, and the role of securities markets and financial intermediaries. It develops the tools required to analyze these decisions and their interaction within the financial system.
Financial System: This course explores the financial system and its functions, including the role of money, the importance of interest rates, the operation of central banks, and the activities and risk management of financial institutions.

Core Finance Courses

Corporate Finance: Covers the financial manager's role in obtaining and allocating funds, including cash budgeting, working capital analysis, dividend policy, capital investment analysis, and debt policy. Students will learn to use financial models and spreadsheets.
Investment Analysis: This course introduces the investment management process, including defining investment objectives and constraints, Modern Portfolio Theory, CAPM, APT, Efficient Markets, and stock and bond valuation models.
Financial Modeling: This course aims to sharpen students' ability to frame a business problem and organize the relevant information in a way that is conducive to developing a spreadsheet model, and to perform logical analyses in an organized and rigorous fashion.

Advanced and Specialized Courses

Managerial Economics: Focuses on decision problems managers face and the economic analysis needed to guide these decisions. Microeconomic tools are used to structure complicated decision problems about production, pricing, and investment.
Financial Statement Analysis: Develops skills in interpreting and analyzing external financial reports, studying both traditional and recently advocated methods of financial statement analysis from the perspective of investors and creditors.
Private Equity: Exposes students to the world of Private Equity (PE), focusing on LBOs and their position in the "alternative asset" class. Students learn about the activities of a PE firm including formation, fundraising, investing, and exiting.
Fixed Income Securities: Covers the nature and analysis of fixed income securities, providing an in-depth examination of the features of major classes of fixed income instruments, valuation, sensitivity to risks, and management of fixed income portfolios.
Futures and Options: Covers the theory of futures and option pricing, and develops a framework for analyzing hedging and investment decisions using futures and options.
Investment Banking: Provides an overview of the economic functions provided by investment banks, including a history of the industry, current events, and valuation techniques for IPOs and M&A transactions.
Real Estate Finance: Provides an introduction to and an understanding of real estate finance, drawing together major functional areas including structuring, ownership, finance, taxation, property valuation, and analysis.
Financial Regulations and Ethics: Thoroughly reviews the important topics of financial regulations, policies, and ethics. Provides an overview of the financial systems, their history, problems, and issues, for the purpose of understanding the enactment of regulations as a method to protect the financial systems and investors.
Empirical Finance: Equips students with empirical techniques used in the analysis of financial markets, with a strong focus on financial applications using actual data.
Financial Derivatives: Provides an overview of operation, mechanics, and structure of the derivative markets and covers in-depth quantitative valuation of derivative instruments, such as options, futures, and swaps.
Corporate Valuation: Examines the corporate valuation process by which takeovers and other corporate control transactions take place. Includes financial forecasting, based on expectation models, scenario analysis, and due diligence.
Multinational Financial Management: Applies the concepts of corporate finance and risk mitigation to the problems of multinational financial management, including foreign exchange risk and hedging strategies.
Sustainable Investing: Analyzes and illustrates what investors can do to grasp the environmental and social challenges by redirecting financial flows towards projects supporting and strengthening sustainable development, as well as controlling and mitigating the ESG-related financial risks.
Computational Finance: The course will teach students how to use computational techniques to implement financial algorithms for security pricing and risk analysis including, bonds, stocks, and options.

Experiential Learning and Career Support

Boston University emphasizes experiential learning to provide students with practical skills and real-world experience.

Experiential Learning Opportunities

The curriculum redesign includes a major expansion of experiential learning opportunities, allowing students to apply their knowledge in real-world settings. This includes case studies, simulations, and projects that require students to work in teams and solve complex business problems.

Career Journey

Students participate in a coordinated Career Journey sequence of courses (ES110, ES210, and ES310) designed to provide career support and prepare them for internships and job opportunities. These courses focus on exploring career options, developing professional networks, and honing interview skills.

Internship Opportunities

The strategic sequencing of courses in the redesigned curriculum facilitates internships between the sophomore and junior years, allowing students to gain valuable work experience and apply their knowledge in a professional setting.

Outcomes and Career Prospects

The Questrom School of Business has a strong track record of preparing students for successful careers in finance.

High Job Placement Rate

Over the past few years, 99% of Questrom graduates have reported obtaining a job (or a position in graduate school) within six months of graduation.

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Professional Development

The collaborative aspects of the coursework and the focus on student extracurricular activities contribute to the professional development of graduates, making them highly sought after by employers.

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