Unlike many other schools, Goizueta offers its students an opportunity of choosing electives in the first year of an MBA program. After the fall-semester, when students finish the majority of the core courses, the spring semester is the time for the electives and this prepares the students better for the internships in the summer. Here are the electives that I have enrolled in for this semester:
Goizueta Marketing Strategy Consultancy (GMSC): This is a course and a competition combined into one. Six teams of 6-7 students work on a consulting project with a company to solve a real business issue that the company is facing. Throughout the spring semester, the teams receive guidance from second-year Team Guides and leadership team, faculty members, a number of external trainers and of course, the client. At the end of the semester, the teams present their recommendations to the client as well as to a judging panel comprising of experienced marketing and consulting professionals from Atlanta business community. The course is intense; the total time commitment varies between 12-15 hours a week and that’s not counting the classroom time!! But the learning experience is certainly worth the time investment. Actually, GMSC deserves at least one post of its own and I promise a post on this in near future. Meanwhile, you can have a look at these.
Managerial Accounting:
Sample these comments from recent alumni:
“Managerial Accounting changed my life. Before taking the class I was a real “girlie-man.” But thanks to activity based costing, I’ve got a great new job, tons of money, women, and a new attitude.”
“Prepare to be amazed. Once you’ve experienced The Death Spiral, nothing will be the same again. I’m a changed man.”
From these comments, you can have some idea about how much students love Managerial Accounting taught by Dr. Kristy Towry. I know it’s a bit difficult to imagine the words “love” and “Accounting” in one sentence, but this is perfectly acceptable, if Dr. Towry’s name is used in the same sentence! With her witty anecdotes, distinct sense of humor and excellent style of teaching, she literally makes accounting a fun-class. (For a sample, see attached scene from one of her classes. 
) No wonder, she has won a number of Teaching Excellence awards over last 6-7 years.
Analytics for e-markets: The course deals with the nuances of how Internet and e-Commerce has fundamentally changed the way business is done. As a former techie, I was naturally attracted to this class, but after going through a third of the course, I realize that these are the issues that everybody needs to address to survive in today’s business world. Like most classes at Goizueta, this class follows a balance between lectures and cases. In addition, we have experts coming from companies like Google and Yahoo to keep us updated on the latest in the industry.
/* BTW, why did I just call myself a “former” techie? Just 2-3 days ago, I successfully wrote and executed a “shell-script” on my mac to rename a specific set of images for this blog’s new design!! */
Ideation: This is a course about “Thinking”! May sound a bit unusual, but it’s no more unusual than Professor Joey Reiman: the man behind the concept. He had a great career in advertising (He even won a Golden Lion Award at Cannes Film Festival!) before he decided to start his own Ideation company: Brighthouse . Under the Ideation course, Joey lays out a sequential series of steps for coming up with great ideas to transform an ailing organization. This is purely an experiential class: each project team is asked to select a company, and uncover its purpose and impact on society. The purpose is to excavate and develop a Master Idea that aligns the company’s ideals, values, goals and objectives and allows it to stand for more than just its product offerings. In the past, the master-ideas from the class have made it to the CXOs’ tables and some of them have been implemented successfully by companies.
As you can imagine, life is much more hectic this semester (In addition to above, we have two core courses too!), even more than it was during the dreaded Block 2 of first semester. But with the choices I made in picking the electives, I am really enjoying the experience. Stay tuned for more updates on GMSC, internship hunt and more.
Read the full article: My electives this semester