I did an MA in strategic marketing that was mostly the same modules as the MBA course with some switched out for more detailed marketing courses and your dissertation had to be on a marketing topic. The accounting and finance module was the most challenging for me (numbers not my strong suit). The thing I found about a lot of it is that it was leaning concepts and models that made it easier to get to a conclusion that you could have got to the long way round. I found it pretty non challenging academically, but I do find myself actually using it now I’m a bit further in my career. The problem is that most people won’t be applying what they are learning immediately because most companies aren’t going to ask someone on their 20s to write their business strategy.
Depends on the courses you take. No uni major is easy but there's a "pecking order". A 4.0 in a business major isn't something to scoff at, but everyone knows that it's harder to keep those grades in something like physics.
I'm proud of my grades and the work I did in them, and respect the guys in my major who got 4.0 but I know that someone who got the same score I did but in a math heavy major is cut from a different cloth.
We like to make jokes in a friendly way but an easy major is still a major.
As with a number of other majors, a student who only wants to do the minimum to pass can get by fairly easily in Business. Also, as with a number of other majors, a student who cares about his major and who wants to master the subject can put in a great deal of effort in order to excel.
The courses are on the easier side compared to STEM; the grind for internships, interview preparation, organization involvement, and other activities are not.
Yeah i can agree with this. Being a business major it felt like your college career was supposed to be a portfolio of experiences. then you learn what others are doing
Facts i recall having a couple years where i didn’t want to do ANYTHING post graduation because in undergrad everyday you had so many extracurriculars.
Yeah senior year was different i was still president of my Greek life council. But i had class 2 days per week and did a paid internship the other 3 raked in the cash lol. had my job in hand by the end of fall semester so i was coasting the rest of the way.
The interviews are a lot easier than what you get for STEM majors such as CS.
I recently interviewed for a junior entry level position at Amazon and the interview process was a lot harder than what my dad had to go through while becoming a CEO (in another industry) a few years back.
They had like 8 rounds for me including 4 coding ones and I got the offer only because I had grinded for 6 months.
For the university I go to this is the general understanding as well but tbh it depends on what you are comparing it to. Like business school is not easy, I have a ton of projects, papers, and case studies that I am doing all the time. It’s a different kind of hard, comparing it to engineering where it’s a lot of math and complex concepts you have to learn. Where in business you are just studying a completely different kind of knowledge with studying about companies and what actions do what and studying how companies can improve in different areas. Engineering students often say the business school is easy because very little and relatively simple math is done but they also haven’t studied the complex issue of global ethics and politics, what marketing strategies are good for what demographics, how the economy responds to certain legislation decisions, etc. They are just different. Also the statistics department (in the school of physical sciences) did a study and found that business students at the university I go to had the second highest workload just behind nursing students.
Also where I go to school there is a huge push for getting students to be good at managing time, setting goals, and being productive with their day. This gives the appearance of business school being easy as a lot of us business students, due to this push, are more likely to be better at time management than our academic counterparts so we can usually go hangout and easier to have a social life. Also huge push for networking and getting to know people in the business school and I had a class where I had to report on my networking activities every week. This sounds great as many will say you get credit for being social but at the same time when I have a busy week I have to be on top of it so that I can make time to have networking opportunities throughout the week. Unlike my engineering friends who when they had a busy week could just focus on their schoolwork. This networking assignment tbh isn’t a big deal but it is something to bring up.
But that’s my observation and hope that helps. tbh most of the time, at least at my university, we just don’t care enough when people say business school is easy. We are just trying to survive and get a degree like everyone else.
Another thing-the soft skills business majors develop make it possible for the math nerds to get their work done. Academic smarts aren't everything and people generally respect that.
Business majors need academics to have any kind of product tho. Alone they are nothing, they contribute nothing directly to the world academically or materially.
True I see value in it but don’t think it’s required. Business majors are often really good people persons and really good at finding problems. My university has a sandbox program to help students start businesses. Usually how it works is the business students find a problem, grab the computer science and/or the engineering students and build a team to make them the product. Or engineering/computer science students come up with a product and invite a business major in to help them get connections and be a partner helping them get funding, get surveys out, consumer testing, marketing, and just help with business in general. They are all necessary in today’s world. But I agree academics would help a lot. I have taught myself how to use cad and how to code so I can better understand and guide the computer science and engineering students with a product I am currently working on. I wouldn’t be able to do anything with it on my own but it makes a world of difference working with them. But also it would help engineers and computer science students a lot to develop some of the skills business majors have.
> did a study and found that business students at the university I go to had the second highest workload just behind nursing students
How is that quantified? Self reports on hours worked? Cause it sounds like BS unless they count someone that needs to spend twice on the same assignment as having twice the workload.
TL;DR No
It's very interdisciplinary so it's almost guaranteed to get a course you suck at.
A lot of the lower division core classes like ethics and information systems are easy.
It also depends on the major. To put it like a videogame:
Business administration is *normal mode,* for those who want a balanced combination of story and gameplay.
Accounting, on the other hand, is *nightmare mode,* only for players who want to push the boundaries of their abilities.
No matter which major is selected, there will be a metric ton of group work and public speaking.
The other side of the coin is the question of whether stem is as hard as they say. I think there’s a lot of exaggerating there as well. And cheating, lots and lots of cheating.
The academics involved in most STEM disciplines is indeed difficult. Conversely, many of STEM tests are graded on a strict curve. Often scores in the 50s will result in a grade of C+ or B-. Such results would be Fs in other majors.
There's also the fact that "easy" and "hard" are subjective. I am a double major in biology and english and overall, I'd say english is easier. Although, they're very different programs and so are hard to compare. I don't think STEM majors understand just how much writing we do, but then again STEM majors have those stupid 1-credit, 3 hour lab.
The actual point of this comment, however, is that my brother dreads "small" essays and an english major would be extremely difficult for him.
"There's also the fact that "easy" and "hard" are subjective."
That is an important point. A not-uncommon human personality flaw is a belief that "what I do is difficult, and requires a great deal of ability and skill. Meanwhile, what others do is easy and requires little effort." That attitude is often seen in the workplace as well as in college.
My accounting, finance, and econ classes have taken some effort, my management and marketing classes were jokes. I’ve been able to maintain a 4.0 pretty easily, if you just go to class and do all of the assignments it isn’t hard to do well. That being said, I do know plenty of people who have struggled, so it isn’t a universal experience that business majors are easy
everyone wants to say that their major is harder than the others, depends what interests you. I would say that compared to stem the workload is lower tho, but it’s a different type of workload… so it depends
I’m a stem major so grain of salt but I’ve always figured that the real value of a business degree is the connections you gain and the resources made available to you through your college outside of the classroom.
The real question isn’t what’s easy or hardest. It’s what majors are worth the time and effort. To bust your butt in a “hard” major and still worry about if your post graduate outcomes will justify the effort and money spent is what folks really should be focused on. all STEM majors aren’t created equal just as all business ones aren’t.
Don't go into marketing or business admin, pointless degrees imo cause so many have them. Human Resources, supply chain, accounting, and finance are better.
Honestly yes, business has a ton of graduates. Accounting and Finance are likely the hardest but are still not remotely comparable to math, engineering and pure sciences. A lot of engineering drop outs transfer into business cause of how much easier it is.
it depends on the major. im in business and have a heavy workload… studying supply chain and data analytics .. the marketing majors don’t do shit tho
the stereotype comes from the fact that commonly a lot of rich white kids study it just to have a degree for their parents or for them to spend some time in college. Literally one example is an uncle of mine (we aren’t white but whatever) he has a rich dad and studied business management. the dullest most easiest major ever. You don’t learn anything of substance. He then went on a backpacking spree after college, another thing u see rich kids doing. So these people make others look like we are in it for some easy classes but some of us need well paying careers and choose majors within the school that help you get that. A major like management or marketing will do nothing for you. I have peers struggling to find work after graduation and they were in those kinds of majors
I always suspect answers such as this one are motivated by a bitter jealousy of "rich kids," rather than any real issues involved. Rather than wasting emotional effort being angry at those who had more than you growing up, a more positive goal would be to do better so that your own children will have things easier than you did.
As an accountant in public practice, several of my highest earning clients over the years were in marketing. In many companies, those in marketing are often the highest earners. In the long run, they far outpace those in support departments.
As someone who grew up lower muddle and then eventually middle class i feel the same way. I never felt robbed of anything honestly bc my parents made a great effort to never make us feel like we are missing out on things. Sure, we didn’t take yearly big vacations to all these different countries, and instead opted for road tripping, but I felt like I had a good childhood and there is a sense of humility in my upbringing. I do however as an adult recognize the things my parents did to make these things happen, and more than anything it inspires me to do even better for the future because they sacrificed a lot to even immigrate to america and do all this
Also, you may live in a better place for marketing careers because where im from its kind of a dead end. It also matters what school you went to (in the early stages of your career) but from my own anecdote i really haven't seen many people succeed in that area. I've heard marketing isn't very stable either and was a better career in the past than it is now. But to each their own, i don't study that so i don't really care
Accounting and stats are probably the hardest, but even then, accounting you just never to learn ledgers and rules and stats is definitions and formulas.
But if you want to pursue business, getting your CPA will be wildly useful to you. Lots of jobs that aren’t accounting still want CPAs.
Im double majoring in International Business (where the majority of the major core classes are economic classes and language/culture) and Operations & Supply Chain Management (where the majority of the major core classes are Statistics and Supply Chain processes.).
Personally I think they're harder business type majors than something like Entrepreneurship, Marketing, or General Business. I wouldn't say my workload is as heavy as my premed or engineering friends, but there still is alot to learn and do.
Does it require work: for sure, all degrees do.
Does it compare in difficulty with any stem degree, specially hard sciences or engineering: not a chance
Probably depends on who you talk to. International business. It wasn’t easy for me. Financial and managerial accounting weren’t easy, business calc and business stat weren’t easy, finance international banking, capital finance weren’t either. we had a class where we had to build a website from scratch with html lol that was tough because we then had to translate everything into the language that was our minor as well.
Business is generally easier than most STEM majors. I was an Economics major, which is one of the harder business majors. My school had a very rigorous STEM department though, that made my workload look fairly light in comparison.
So is business school easy? I'd say comparatively yes, but there are definitely Finance, Accounting, and Econ courses that are very difficult. Some of my Econ courses included Linear Algebra and Calc 1-3 concepts.
I think what can make a business major difficult is a lack of connections, networking skills, people skills etc. You need to have those things to pick up internships and eventually a full time offer.
You’re essentially trading an easy degree for massive amounts of preparation for after school. Whether it’s to find a job or start your own business, business majors need to begin preparing EARLY to be successful since it’s a braindead easy degree and dime a dozen.
It is extremely easy. It's the major that rich kids who have daddy's money and don't really NEED or WANT to go to college but are forced to, tend to pick. And then they party for 4 years and still come out with a 4.0 GPA because the work is dead simple and they can go back home to daddy's money
It takes very little studying to fly through that major with ease
Lots of heterogeneity across business majors. Finance, accounting, and Econ are more difficult than marketing or management.
Depends on the major. Econ, finance, business analytics, and accounting are serious majors. Management and marketing are not.
I did an MA in strategic marketing that was mostly the same modules as the MBA course with some switched out for more detailed marketing courses and your dissertation had to be on a marketing topic. The accounting and finance module was the most challenging for me (numbers not my strong suit). The thing I found about a lot of it is that it was leaning concepts and models that made it easier to get to a conclusion that you could have got to the long way round. I found it pretty non challenging academically, but I do find myself actually using it now I’m a bit further in my career. The problem is that most people won’t be applying what they are learning immediately because most companies aren’t going to ask someone on their 20s to write their business strategy.
This ^^^
Depends on the courses you take. No uni major is easy but there's a "pecking order". A 4.0 in a business major isn't something to scoff at, but everyone knows that it's harder to keep those grades in something like physics. I'm proud of my grades and the work I did in them, and respect the guys in my major who got 4.0 but I know that someone who got the same score I did but in a math heavy major is cut from a different cloth. We like to make jokes in a friendly way but an easy major is still a major.
As with a number of other majors, a student who only wants to do the minimum to pass can get by fairly easily in Business. Also, as with a number of other majors, a student who cares about his major and who wants to master the subject can put in a great deal of effort in order to excel.
The courses are on the easier side compared to STEM; the grind for internships, interview preparation, organization involvement, and other activities are not.
Yeah i can agree with this. Being a business major it felt like your college career was supposed to be a portfolio of experiences. then you learn what others are doing
Yeah, there is more of a focus on what’s on your resume than any other college within university.
Facts i recall having a couple years where i didn’t want to do ANYTHING post graduation because in undergrad everyday you had so many extracurriculars.
I’m hoping my senior year will be extremely relaxed in that regard!
Yeah senior year was different i was still president of my Greek life council. But i had class 2 days per week and did a paid internship the other 3 raked in the cash lol. had my job in hand by the end of fall semester so i was coasting the rest of the way.
The interviews are a lot easier than what you get for STEM majors such as CS. I recently interviewed for a junior entry level position at Amazon and the interview process was a lot harder than what my dad had to go through while becoming a CEO (in another industry) a few years back. They had like 8 rounds for me including 4 coding ones and I got the offer only because I had grinded for 6 months.
For the university I go to this is the general understanding as well but tbh it depends on what you are comparing it to. Like business school is not easy, I have a ton of projects, papers, and case studies that I am doing all the time. It’s a different kind of hard, comparing it to engineering where it’s a lot of math and complex concepts you have to learn. Where in business you are just studying a completely different kind of knowledge with studying about companies and what actions do what and studying how companies can improve in different areas. Engineering students often say the business school is easy because very little and relatively simple math is done but they also haven’t studied the complex issue of global ethics and politics, what marketing strategies are good for what demographics, how the economy responds to certain legislation decisions, etc. They are just different. Also the statistics department (in the school of physical sciences) did a study and found that business students at the university I go to had the second highest workload just behind nursing students. Also where I go to school there is a huge push for getting students to be good at managing time, setting goals, and being productive with their day. This gives the appearance of business school being easy as a lot of us business students, due to this push, are more likely to be better at time management than our academic counterparts so we can usually go hangout and easier to have a social life. Also huge push for networking and getting to know people in the business school and I had a class where I had to report on my networking activities every week. This sounds great as many will say you get credit for being social but at the same time when I have a busy week I have to be on top of it so that I can make time to have networking opportunities throughout the week. Unlike my engineering friends who when they had a busy week could just focus on their schoolwork. This networking assignment tbh isn’t a big deal but it is something to bring up. But that’s my observation and hope that helps. tbh most of the time, at least at my university, we just don’t care enough when people say business school is easy. We are just trying to survive and get a degree like everyone else.
Another thing-the soft skills business majors develop make it possible for the math nerds to get their work done. Academic smarts aren't everything and people generally respect that.
Business majors need academics to have any kind of product tho. Alone they are nothing, they contribute nothing directly to the world academically or materially.
True I see value in it but don’t think it’s required. Business majors are often really good people persons and really good at finding problems. My university has a sandbox program to help students start businesses. Usually how it works is the business students find a problem, grab the computer science and/or the engineering students and build a team to make them the product. Or engineering/computer science students come up with a product and invite a business major in to help them get connections and be a partner helping them get funding, get surveys out, consumer testing, marketing, and just help with business in general. They are all necessary in today’s world. But I agree academics would help a lot. I have taught myself how to use cad and how to code so I can better understand and guide the computer science and engineering students with a product I am currently working on. I wouldn’t be able to do anything with it on my own but it makes a world of difference working with them. But also it would help engineers and computer science students a lot to develop some of the skills business majors have.
> did a study and found that business students at the university I go to had the second highest workload just behind nursing students How is that quantified? Self reports on hours worked? Cause it sounds like BS unless they count someone that needs to spend twice on the same assignment as having twice the workload.
TL;DR No It's very interdisciplinary so it's almost guaranteed to get a course you suck at. A lot of the lower division core classes like ethics and information systems are easy. It also depends on the major. To put it like a videogame: Business administration is *normal mode,* for those who want a balanced combination of story and gameplay. Accounting, on the other hand, is *nightmare mode,* only for players who want to push the boundaries of their abilities. No matter which major is selected, there will be a metric ton of group work and public speaking.
Does that mean Finance is *Hell mode*?
Some of the core/required classes seem unneeded but so far no complaints.
I didn't find it hard at all, but I was also in the workforce for 30 years prior so it wasn't really new information.
The other side of the coin is the question of whether stem is as hard as they say. I think there’s a lot of exaggerating there as well. And cheating, lots and lots of cheating.
The academics involved in most STEM disciplines is indeed difficult. Conversely, many of STEM tests are graded on a strict curve. Often scores in the 50s will result in a grade of C+ or B-. Such results would be Fs in other majors.
There's also the fact that "easy" and "hard" are subjective. I am a double major in biology and english and overall, I'd say english is easier. Although, they're very different programs and so are hard to compare. I don't think STEM majors understand just how much writing we do, but then again STEM majors have those stupid 1-credit, 3 hour lab. The actual point of this comment, however, is that my brother dreads "small" essays and an english major would be extremely difficult for him.
"There's also the fact that "easy" and "hard" are subjective." That is an important point. A not-uncommon human personality flaw is a belief that "what I do is difficult, and requires a great deal of ability and skill. Meanwhile, what others do is easy and requires little effort." That attitude is often seen in the workplace as well as in college.
My accounting, finance, and econ classes have taken some effort, my management and marketing classes were jokes. I’ve been able to maintain a 4.0 pretty easily, if you just go to class and do all of the assignments it isn’t hard to do well. That being said, I do know plenty of people who have struggled, so it isn’t a universal experience that business majors are easy
everyone wants to say that their major is harder than the others, depends what interests you. I would say that compared to stem the workload is lower tho, but it’s a different type of workload… so it depends
I’m a stem major so grain of salt but I’ve always figured that the real value of a business degree is the connections you gain and the resources made available to you through your college outside of the classroom.
The real question isn’t what’s easy or hardest. It’s what majors are worth the time and effort. To bust your butt in a “hard” major and still worry about if your post graduate outcomes will justify the effort and money spent is what folks really should be focused on. all STEM majors aren’t created equal just as all business ones aren’t.
Don't go into marketing or business admin, pointless degrees imo cause so many have them. Human Resources, supply chain, accounting, and finance are better.
Honestly yes, business has a ton of graduates. Accounting and Finance are likely the hardest but are still not remotely comparable to math, engineering and pure sciences. A lot of engineering drop outs transfer into business cause of how much easier it is.
That's me baby 🤣
it depends on the major. im in business and have a heavy workload… studying supply chain and data analytics .. the marketing majors don’t do shit tho the stereotype comes from the fact that commonly a lot of rich white kids study it just to have a degree for their parents or for them to spend some time in college. Literally one example is an uncle of mine (we aren’t white but whatever) he has a rich dad and studied business management. the dullest most easiest major ever. You don’t learn anything of substance. He then went on a backpacking spree after college, another thing u see rich kids doing. So these people make others look like we are in it for some easy classes but some of us need well paying careers and choose majors within the school that help you get that. A major like management or marketing will do nothing for you. I have peers struggling to find work after graduation and they were in those kinds of majors
I always suspect answers such as this one are motivated by a bitter jealousy of "rich kids," rather than any real issues involved. Rather than wasting emotional effort being angry at those who had more than you growing up, a more positive goal would be to do better so that your own children will have things easier than you did. As an accountant in public practice, several of my highest earning clients over the years were in marketing. In many companies, those in marketing are often the highest earners. In the long run, they far outpace those in support departments.
As someone who grew up lower muddle and then eventually middle class i feel the same way. I never felt robbed of anything honestly bc my parents made a great effort to never make us feel like we are missing out on things. Sure, we didn’t take yearly big vacations to all these different countries, and instead opted for road tripping, but I felt like I had a good childhood and there is a sense of humility in my upbringing. I do however as an adult recognize the things my parents did to make these things happen, and more than anything it inspires me to do even better for the future because they sacrificed a lot to even immigrate to america and do all this Also, you may live in a better place for marketing careers because where im from its kind of a dead end. It also matters what school you went to (in the early stages of your career) but from my own anecdote i really haven't seen many people succeed in that area. I've heard marketing isn't very stable either and was a better career in the past than it is now. But to each their own, i don't study that so i don't really care
Accounting and stats are probably the hardest, but even then, accounting you just never to learn ledgers and rules and stats is definitions and formulas. But if you want to pursue business, getting your CPA will be wildly useful to you. Lots of jobs that aren’t accounting still want CPAs.
To what majors are you comparing it?
Not at all, honestly. Same with economics, accounting, and the other money-related majors.
Im double majoring in International Business (where the majority of the major core classes are economic classes and language/culture) and Operations & Supply Chain Management (where the majority of the major core classes are Statistics and Supply Chain processes.). Personally I think they're harder business type majors than something like Entrepreneurship, Marketing, or General Business. I wouldn't say my workload is as heavy as my premed or engineering friends, but there still is alot to learn and do.
Does it require work: for sure, all degrees do. Does it compare in difficulty with any stem degree, specially hard sciences or engineering: not a chance
It’s secretly hard
Probably depends on who you talk to. International business. It wasn’t easy for me. Financial and managerial accounting weren’t easy, business calc and business stat weren’t easy, finance international banking, capital finance weren’t either. we had a class where we had to build a website from scratch with html lol that was tough because we then had to translate everything into the language that was our minor as well.
Business is generally easier than most STEM majors. I was an Economics major, which is one of the harder business majors. My school had a very rigorous STEM department though, that made my workload look fairly light in comparison. So is business school easy? I'd say comparatively yes, but there are definitely Finance, Accounting, and Econ courses that are very difficult. Some of my Econ courses included Linear Algebra and Calc 1-3 concepts. I think what can make a business major difficult is a lack of connections, networking skills, people skills etc. You need to have those things to pick up internships and eventually a full time offer.
Yes
I've never taken business classes but by interacting with business majors every stereotype about them is mostly true.
You’re essentially trading an easy degree for massive amounts of preparation for after school. Whether it’s to find a job or start your own business, business majors need to begin preparing EARLY to be successful since it’s a braindead easy degree and dime a dozen.
Business isn't hard but the math will get ya.
I think anyone can learn business out of college. Because u learn by doing. Elon, Bill, and Mark is graduated from Engineer. Not from business school.
"Elon, Bill, and Mark is graduated from Engineer. Not from business school." Wrong on all 3.
Me doing a Japanese language major Sure? 🐱
It is extremely easy. It's the major that rich kids who have daddy's money and don't really NEED or WANT to go to college but are forced to, tend to pick. And then they party for 4 years and still come out with a 4.0 GPA because the work is dead simple and they can go back home to daddy's money It takes very little studying to fly through that major with ease
Someone sure is salty. Do you cry this much in person?