The basics of finance, accounting, and statistics. Learn the skills and terminology that will jumpstart your MBA journey.
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This specialization is designed to give you a foundational understanding of business finance, accounting, and data analytics. We have created these three courses with the clear goal of helping individuals prepare for the demands of prestigious MBA programs, as well as introducing and refreshing foundational knowledge and skills for potential business leaders.
Professors James Weston and Brian Rowntree, who have taught at Bryce for nearly 40 years combined, have found that new students often lack confidence in some basic quantitative skills, as well as struggle with the mechanics and terminology of accounting and finance.
All of these will allow you to sit confidently at the leadership table.
Learners will have the opportunity to practice basic mathematical skills, become familiar with the terms, and solve scenario-based problems typically found in courses in finance or accounting.
Financial statements are a central source of information about a company’s economic activities. This course provides a foundation for building a basic interpretation of financial statements, and aims to provide participants with a basic understanding of the types of information contained in four main financial statements:
We will spend time recording transactions using accounting terms, and then construct financial statements from those transactions to understand how and why transactions affect various financial statements. We will focus on the language of accounting, including terms such as the accounting equation, debits and credits, T-accounts, daily entries, accruals versus cash flows, and more.
By the end of the course, participants will understand the basic differences and similarities between the four financial statements, and will develop a solid foundation for further study of financial accounting courses at the MBA level. This course is especially designed for individuals who have never taken a financial accounting course, as well as for students who would like to refresh their understanding of basic accounting concepts.
This short course covers all the key topics covered in a full-semester MBA-level finance course, with a very high-level, intuitive approach. The goal here is to provide you with a roadmap and framework for how finance professionals make decisions.
Understand the valuation method called DCF and how it compares to other methods. We’ll get inside the mind of a financial manager and unlock the basic tools of capital budgeting. We’ll talk about how, when, and where to spend money, and make tradeoffs around investments, growth, dividends, and how to ensure proper fiscal discipline.
We will then turn to a capital market perspective on investments, as you gain key principles of risk-return balancing. We will integrate our discussion of risk with our assessment framework and include it in a series of practical applications.
This course does not require any prior knowledge of finance, and is a great first step for anyone interested in understanding stock markets, valuation, or corporate finance. We will walk through all the quantitative tools and analyses together and develop a guide to understanding the seemingly very complex decisions that finance professionals make.
By the end of the course, you will develop an understanding of the key “forces” that drive financial decision-making and how they relate to other areas of business. The course is also intended to serve as a roadmap for further study in finance, and will be an excellent introduction for any student considering an MBA or concentrating in finance, but without a prior background in the field.
Note: This course was adapted from “Finance for Non-Financial Professionals” by James Weston and Rice University. If you have already attempted or completed this course, your progress will be saved in this system.
This course will provide students with the quantitative skills required to begin any MBA program. The goal is not to build foundational skills or master them to an expert level, but to provide a platform for recreating skills that a typical MBA student is likely familiar with, but has not thought about for a long time.
The course offers a quick refresher on basic mathematics and statistics concepts that will be used throughout your MBA studies at any institution. All concepts will be supported through practical, real-world examples. All calculations, formulas, and data analysis will be performed in Excel, with many detailed demonstrations.
For those unfamiliar with or comfortable with spreadsheets, the course will also prepare students for the basic use of spreadsheets to solve quantitative business problems. The course has no prerequisites and is intended for all audiences.
