11 required courses
The business-fundamental courses¹ provide the foundation for understanding how organizations function and serve as gateways to upper-level business electives. Your pathway through these courses should be based on your academic strengths and interests.
Note that select fundamental courses have honors sections, which end in 8 (e.g., STAT 1018, LGST 1008). These courses will also satisfy the requirement.
All Business Fundamentals must be taken at the undergraduate course level and for a grade, not pass/fail.
Accounting (ACCT) 1010: Accounting and Financial Reporting
This course is an introduction to the basic concepts and standards underlying financial accounting systems. Several important concepts will be studied in detail, including: revenue recognition, inventory, long-lived assets, present value, and long term liabilities. The course emphasizes the construction of the basic financial accounting statements – the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement – as well as their interpretation.
Accounting courses are open to students beginning in the sophomore year.
Accounting (ACCT) 1020: Strategic Cost Analysis
The first part of the course presents alternative methods of preparing managerial accounting information, and the remainder of the course examines how these methods are used by companies. Managerial accounting is a company’s internal language, and is used for decision-making, production management, product design and pricing and for motivating and evaluating employees. Unless you understand managerial accounting, you cannot have a thorough understanding of a company’s internal operations. What you learn in this course will help you understand the operations of your future employer (and enable you to be more successful at your job), and help you understand other companies you encounter in your role as competitor, consultant, or investor.
Accounting courses are open to students beginning in the sophomore year.
Business Economics and Public Policy (BEPP) 2500: Managerial Economics
BEPP 2500 introduces students to “managerial economics,” the application of microeconomic theory to management problems.
Please note the following:
- Students cannot obtain credit for both BEPP 2500 and ECON 2100 (formerly ECON 101).
- ECON 2100 will satisfy the BEPP 2500 requirement.
- First-year students may not take BEPP 2500 or ECON 2100 in their first semester.
Finance (FNCE) 1000: Corporate Finance
FNCE 1000 introduces the theory and methods that are relevant for financial decisions made by firms. This course has prerequisites and is only open to students beginning in the sophomore year.
Finance (FNCE) 1010: Monetary Economics & the Global Economy
FNCE 1010 is an intermediate-level course about macroeconomics and the global economy. This course has prerequisites and is only open to students beginning in the sophomore year.
Students cannot obtain credit for both FNCE 1010 and ECON 2200 (formerly ECON 102). Students who have already taken ECON 2200/102 must take a higher-level finance elective to count toward the FNCE 1010 requirement. For students concentrating in finance, this higher-level elective may not count towards the finance concentration.
Legal Studies and Business Ethics (LGST) 1000 or 1010
Any 1 of these 2 courses will fulfill the requirement.
Legal Studies (LGST) 1000: Ethics and Social Responsibility
This course explores business responsibility from rival theoretical and managerial perspectives. Its focus includes theories of ethics and their application to case studies in business.
Legal Studies (LGST) 1010: Law and Social Values
This course considers basic concepts of law and legal process in the U.S. and other legal systems. It introduces the fundamentals of rigorous legal analysis.
Management (MGMT) 1010: Introduction to Management
This course addresses contemporary management challenges stemming from changing organizational structures, complex environmental conditions, new technological developments, and increasingly diverse workforces. The course examines the issues involved in managing and being managed.
Students should plan to take MGMT 1010 after the first semester as seats are very limited in the fall. (see MGMT 1010 enrollment policy FAQ)
Marketing (MKTG) 1010: Introduction to Marketing
MKTG 1010 introduces students to the concepts, analysis, and activities that comprise marketing management and provides practice in assessing and solving marketing problems.
Students should plan to take MKTG 1010 after the first semester as seats are very limited in the fall.
Operations, Information & Decisions (OIDD) 1010: Introduction to Operations, Information and Decisions
OIDD 1010 explores a variety of common quantitative modeling problems that arise frequently in business settings, and discusses how they can be formally modeled and solved with a combination of business insight and computer-based tools. The key topics covered include capacity management, service operations, inventory control, structured decision making, constrained optimization, and simulation. This course teaches how to model complex business situations and how to master tools to improve business performance. The goal is to provide a set of foundational skills useful for future coursework at Wharton as well as providing an overview of problems and techniques that characterize disciplines that comprise operations and information management.
Students may take this course starting in the spring semester of the first year.
Statistics (STAT) 1010 & 1020: Introductory Business Statistics
Two semesters of statistics are required after completion of MATH 1400/1100 (formerly MATH 104/110). First-year students who have completed MATH 1400/1100 may enroll in STAT 1010. Students who have AP credit or a waiver for STAT 1110/1010 may enroll in STAT 1020 upon completion of MATH 1400.
STAT 4300 and 4310 or ESE 3010 and 4020¹ (offered through the School of Engineering and Applied Science) may also be used to fulfill the statistics requirement and are usually taken by students who:
- Have completed MATH 1410 (formerly MATH 114),
- Have a strong interest in mathematics,
- Are concentrating in statistics, and/or
- Are enrolled in a dual-degree program with the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Students cannot obtain credit for both STAT 1010 and STAT 1110. Transfer students who have already taken STAT 1110 must take an at least 0.5 CU of higher-level statistics to count toward the STAT 1010 requirement.
Please note that dual-degree students majoring in SSE (Systems Science Engineering) and EE (Electrical Engineering) must take ESE 3010 and ESE 4020.
¹ Starting with Advance Registration in spring 2022, all course numbers are changing from 3 to 4 numbers/characters. In general, if the old course number was <100, the new course number will be the old number prefaced by a zero. If the old course number was >100, the new course number will be the old number with a zero appended to the end, e.g., FNCE 100 becomes FNCE 1000.