Special Topics: Business Fundamentals for Analytics

I actually enjoyed this course because I had never taken a business course before and it was good to get an 8-week overview of Accounting, Finance, and Supply Chain (oh yeah and Marketing was meh). My background is in applied math, computer science, and data. I can see why people feel like it's a wasted course in an analytics program though.

Your grade comes from 4 exams (I guess 5 in the fall/spring?) and 2 simulations. The exams require mostly memorization but it's not too bad. Accounting and Finance had some challenging problems but then it was pretty easy after that. The simulations don't feel that connected to the material. It felt like you could figure out what you needed to do through trial and error (you get like 10 simulation attempts) rather than by using a specific formula from the class. Overall I felt like I learned a lot even if I wasn't training any ML models.

Tip: Watch and practice alongside any Excel demo videos that a TA offers as they can really help work through the multi-step Finance problems.

This course combined both the best and worst components of OMSA. Despite not looking forward to yet another required watered-down business class, I thoroughly enjoyed the first 75 percent of the course. Unfortunately, the Marketing module was so ineffective and disengaging that it tainted my overall experience. Final grade: 97%.

The Good

• The asynchronous sessions should be a model for other courses, especially those where the main instructor is MIA. Given the relatively straightforward content, well-prepared TAs could easily run these sessions. Three of the four instructors used asynchronous time to cover fresh material rather than rehash lectures. Bob Meyers’ case study approach in particular made it feel like a real B-school class.
• By far the best TAs in the program. Even with a flood of simple questions on Ed, they consistently provided detailed, thoughtful responses.
• Excellent in both coverage and difficulty. They mirrored the exams so closely that redoing them regularly was enough to prepare and get an A on all exams. Typically I'd do all SA questions at the start of the module and then redo them every 3-5 days, supplementing this with GPT generated questions that used the SA questions I got wrong initially as a model prompt. Watched the lectures at 2x to get a general idea, but the key to getting a good grade in any course is to just do (difficult) questions.
• Simulations. They were really great! Wish there were more!

The Bad

• Marketing. The main lecturer and slide his slide-deck just put me to sleep and I never finished his lectures. Marketing is supposed to most interesting of the topic, but the way it was presented was terrible. Unfortunately, the synchronous lecture just covered the EXACT SAME material, but with a less polished slide deck. I watched about half of the lectures and just used the transcripts and SA questions to prepare for the exam. This exam made me feel like I was back in Middle School, just memorizing random facts about some historical event without needing to understand how it fit into a larger movement.
• Two business courses in an Analytics degree (one that's recently been rebranded as Data Science), come on. Especially when you don’t meaningfully incorporate computation or analytics. Opportunities to tie finance and SCM concepts to calculus, programming, or modeling were missed andleft this class far less rigorous than it could have been.
• Academic Integrity. In the whatsapp group, students openly asked what was on the exam and which questions to expect (thankfully nobody violated the honor code, but I was even privately messaged by several students asking me the same questions). Since Excel is allowed, sharing exam content is relatively easy. The course would benefit from multiple exam versions to reduce this risk and with genai this shouldn't be too much work.
• OMSA admission criteria. The bar for success here was pretty low (good study habits almost guarantee an A) yet many students seemed to struggle (or at least the ones struggling were very vocal in blaming the class, and not themselves, for their struggles). Harsh as it sounds, it felt like 25–35% of the class lacked the preparation expected of a graduate-level analytics program.

TLDR Excellent TAs, self-assessments, and simulations, but the Marketing module was weak, exams relied on memorization, and the course lacked rigor. An easy A that shows both the best and worst of OMSA.

(This review is for Summer 2025, not Summer 2024) Hey peers, both juniors and seniors-

I just wanted to leaave an honest review of my exper75ience with MGT8803 (business fundamentals for analytics, for those newer to the degree).

I intentionally chose MGT8803 as an easy Summer course to leave me extra Python/linear algebra prep time for CS6040 and boy did I make a poor decision.

First of all, I was not prepared for the shortened semester and did not calculate tightening a 15 week course into a 12 week course based off of the https://www.omscentral.com/ distribution stats for study time in this course. The workload on OMS central suggests an approximate average of 8 hours a week, but if we really want to chop that down to a 12 week course; it's more like 10 hours a week. That being said, I most likely spent an average of 13-14 hours a week cramming the dang near impossible amount of information in each module to perform well on exams.

Based off pure memory, I would say I spent about 25 hours on accounting - exam grade - 96.25

30 hours on finance - exam grade 88

24 hours on supply chain - exam grade 59/75 and simulation grade 22/25

Marketing simulation - 24/25

At this point, my only hope of pulling off a hat trick resulting in an A in the course was scoring above a 94 percent, (71/75) on the marketing exam.

I put about 32 hours into the marketing exam prep and just finished the exam with a 72.5/75.

That being said, I spent an additional 5 hours on the simulations and probably over another 6-10 hours reviewing content for the sole purpose of rote memorization of material that I guarantee is in one ear and out the other.

I thought that the accounting professor was really well-versed, knew his material well, and made the live-lecture hours engaging. Accounting for me was easy because the material was presented in a way that made it easier for me to personally internalize the information.

I can say a little less in regards to the finance professor, and even less for the supply chain and marketing professors. (In terms of the pre-recorded video lectures provided).

The accounting, and marketing sections pre-recorded lectures had extremely high correlation with exam content, while the supply chain and finance sections less-so, (in my personal opinion).

I'm extremely proud of myself for sticking through this course as a decent portion of it was neither engaging or personally relevant to me educational goals. I can say that I learned a lot more about business than I ever thought would be possible and I do have a newfound respect-appreciation for the business aspect of a lot of the positions I've worked. The course did help me to gain insight on analytics/data science applications outside of the realm of my domain knowledge which I'm appreciative of. Overall, I would have to give the course a higher ranking than the average scores reported on OMS-central. I would rank the course a 3.5 out of 5 in terms of its functional use, and for summer session closer to a 13-14 hours/week in order to achieve an A. Of course, this is all relative to my personal study habits and personal goals in this program.

(This review is coming from someone with absolutely 0 background in any type of formal business education). This course is not particularly difficult in understanding concepts or financial/accounting equations; rather it's the sheer volume of information thrown at you and expected of you to retain. The practice problems at the end of each pre-recorded video lecture were extremely useful for accounting and marketing, a little less so for finance, and much less so for supply-chain management. I did not read all of the supplementary material for supply-chain, so therein may lie my major flaw.. The Supply chain simulation was frustrating, but the marketing one was more enjoyable.

Side note: I'm pretty glad that I did not have to go through the final module: business strategy, which is included in fall/spring sessions. Oh, and I did not have a single extra hour to study Python to prep for 6040 so I will probably take MGT6203 in the Fall and try again :)

Thanks for reading, please feel free to leave your own perspective with this course and any insight you may have regarding the rest of the program. Cheers!

Third attempt at this course after withdrawing the first 2 times due to bombing the first module (Accounting). Luckily that module has been revamped and completely redone with Prof Blunck. I did much better on it this time! He also stays with you the entire course making appearances on the weekly zoom calls to relay any news. I was absolutely dreading this course but it wasn't so bad this time. First 2 modules are heavy math-based, then supply chain moves to 50/50, then the last 2 are mostly memorization.

The course in essence is not a bad idea

However in a program geared towards technology focused students, way too much time is spent glazing over business terms and mba related topics.

It would be better if this were an R or Python focused course with all the same materials and concepts, or something along those lines, to better help introduce programming that will be used throughout the rest of the program. If not I highly recommend doing so in your free time.

This course is much more delivered as a true business class, and its more or less 5 business classes packed into one. As such you will be given a lot of material to memorize, including formulas that are typed in line (difficult for reading/making sense of), and forced to complete many things on your own, like quizzing yourself.

Given you know how to generate questions with course material, it should not be super difficult.

The professor told us "just to study the formulas" for the first exam and we should be alright, and there was nothing more further from the truth.

All graded exams come from practice questions derived from formulas you may have or may have not spent time doing in practice or homeworks, so be prepared to be tested on everything.

AND, be prepared to be quizzed on anything that is included in the course documents, including "trick" questions from specific verbiage used surrounding terminology that may or may not be industry-wide knowledge, but specific to that class.

I really didn't think this course was nearly as bad as people say it is (besides the marketing section), although I do question how necessary this class is for the program as a whole. Definitely don't feel like we need two MGT courses.

TLDR: Accounting is great, finance is the hardest, marketing is terrible, and supply chain is well taught and not too hard conceptually but the exam questions can get tricky. Having an exam every few weeks can get exhausting, but doing the supplemental questions is a must to prepare for the kinds of questions you'll see on the tests, and TAs are helpful if there's anything you don't understand. I also felt the bonus points on the exams make getting an A reasonably doable.

The course starts off great as the new professor for accounting, Ryan Blunck, is fantastic. His lecture videos are great and as long as you study the notes from his recorded and office hour videos, you'll be golden for the test. This was the only module where they revealed the class performance and it was overall pretty high. I'm not sure how this module was before he taught it but I would rate this class a 5 if they were all taught by him!

Then there's finance. I thought this section was reasonably well taught but the material was definitely more difficult. The volume of material started to feel a little high by the end and the complexity level of some of the calculation questions are rough. Going to his office hours and going through every kind of practice question covered both in the videos and in the supplemental questions is a must to do well on the test. Once you understand how to answer these questions, I found the exam doable but these questions can definitely get hard, depending on your math and finance background. Go to the TA office hours if you're struggling as the TA for this section, Michael B, was super helpful. You may have to put in a lot of effort to succeed in this section, but I still found I learned a lot.

Next is marketing and I would easily rate this class a 1 if every section was like this one. Yes, it's the easiest conceptually and there's no calculations, but the lecture videos are long and just complete information dumps, throwing definition after definition and concept after concept at you. I found studying for this exam brutal as there was an insane amount of information to memorize. Doing well on this section depends on how easily you can memorize information, and how much time you want to spend memorizing it, only to then forget most of it once you take the exam. I also found the live office hours useless but you still need to go/watch in order to answer a couple exam questions. This section was such a shame as I otherwise really enjoyed the course. I also found the homework difficult to get full points on despite having 10 attempts at the simulation as there's very little guidance.

Lastly, there was supply chain. Bob Myers lecture videos are great and keep you engaged. The concepts covered are pretty straightforward and I didn't find there to be too much information. The calculation problems he covers in his recorded videos aren't bad, but the ones in his live videos get a little more tricky. And then some of the supplemental questions are even more difficult. Go to the TA office hours or ask in ED if any of them are tripping you up. Once you understand every kind of question they may throw your way, the exam isn't bad, but they do get tricky. I also found the homework on this module easier to do well on despite only having 3 attempts. My main gripe with this section is the material is already covered in MGT 6203 so it definitely doesn't need to be covered twice.

Since this was summer I can't speak to business strategy, but overall if it wasn't for marketing I would say this is a good course that is possible to do well in as long as you prepare for the exams by going through and understanding every practice question provided, and capitalize on the bonus points. I also recommend taking this in the summer since they remove a module instead of condensing the material, and you only have 4 exams instead of 5.

This course is as bad as everyone says it is - Georgia Tech should really remove this course as a graduation requirement. Even MGT 6203 is better than this course.

The material is extremely surface-level and usually boils down to memorization. The exams are all multiple choice (with some math) and occasionally cover some obscure fact covered in the weekly LIVE lectures. Also, weekly lectures are supposed to be ~1.5 hrs but almost always go long - usually to 2 - 3 hrs. These live lectures are in addition to the 1 - 3 hrs of recorded lecture videos.

This course is meant to be an introduction to the Business Side of analytics, but I honestly do not see the point of it, especially if you are a "C-Track" student. If you ever encounter any of the topics covered in this course, you can probably learn it on-the-fly within a week in a professional setting. This course seems more fitting for a Bachelor's degree, not a Master's degree.. because Master's degrees are supposed to be focused, not general purpose.

The best thing about this course is the fact that it is not too difficult. All of the exams have extra credit, which is nice. What is NOT nice, however, is that 90% of your grade is exams. So if you are not a good exam taker, you may struggle a bit (or stress unnecessarily around exam time, which is every 3 wks). The remaining 10% of the course is linked to two simulations that you have to pay 64 USD for via Harvard Business School Publishing. The simulations were just OK, and I found them very hard to score 100% on. It is definitely possible but you are provided close to no help or guidance.

I was so excited to take this class and was really let down! Lectures: Most of the lecture content could be made shorter and more concise (especially the marketing and business strategy sections). The finance section examples were hard to follow. Marketing lectures were outdated and middle school level. Marketing analytics is huge and I would've liked to learn some techniques instead of 3 hours of "know your customer!". Office Hours: I think office hours could be eliminated or utilized differently. Office hours were a repeat of lecture videos and they were insanely long (2-3 hours). I found it very frustrating to listen to the same 2 people interrupt and ask irrelevant questions or questions answered in lecture videos/10 seconds prior as it made the OH even longer and was disrespectful of everyone's time. I would've preferred having TAs present answering questions in the chat, a Q&A at the end of office hours, or students utilizing Ed Discussion. I would've liked to see office hours review Supplemental Questions or real world examples. Homework: I thought the marketing homework was basically a repeat of the other homework we did and could be eliminated. Additional Resources: The best additional resources we had to purchase were the Tesla and Trader Joe cases. The professor utilized them often and connected them to material. Otherwise, I think requiring students to purchase content on top of paying tuition is unnecessary and can be a barrier for some. I wish I would've been able to purchase the content I wanted (like just buying the homeworks, instead of having to buy everything and not use it. TAs/Course coordinator: I was a bit disappointed by the responses I saw on Ed Discussion. I found them short and often not helpful. I feel like there was some laziness and rudeness. Michael B and Ian B seem to be the most present in Ed Discussion and I found their answers helpful.