<p>I am thinking of getting the engineering business minor. Of the list of electives to chose from (after the required courses), what are the the most interesting ones in your opinion?
<a href="http://www.seas.virginia.edu/advising/businessminor.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.seas.virginia.edu/advising/businessminor.pdf</a></p>
<p>If you only have room for three classes, I would take the two accounting classes and the business law class. If you can take an additional class, maybe the investment class, but some of that class's material will likely be covered in managerial accounting.</p>
<p>My dad says too many engineers (and college profs w/side business) aren't very good at pricing and interpreting financial info.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply. That's what I thought too, but I hear the first accounting class is very hard.</p>
<p>My son is in that program. As a business person, I believe the courses that would help you the most are both accounting classes, then the law class. While microecon will be very helpful, I think you will find that macro is not that useful in a business environment unless you want to be involved in capital structure issues (stock, debt, etc). Same with investments. You can pick up the fundamentals of marketing by reading a short book. </p>
<p>Your interests may dictate other choices, but if your goal is to be able to converse with business people outside of engineering, those are my recommendations.</p>
<p>The program looks like an easy line to add to your resume and a chance to take some interesting courses. I agree that the accounting courses would be most useful. Beyond that, just take stuff you find interesting.</p>
<p>None of that stuff is really "required" to work in a business job, though. As an engineer you'll graduate with plenty of quantitative skills and analytical reasoning ability, which obviously puts you ahead of the humanities and social sciences people. You could probably pick up on most of the topics of those courses on your own with a little bit of effort.</p>
<p>Ehh, accounting. Why isn't ECON 301/302 in that list? One of the most relevant (yet easiest things) for students of the hard sciences to learn is some hard math-based econ. The math will be especially familiar to engineering students, though the applications might be epiphanic.</p>
<p>I think the Financial Accounting class (Comm 201) is more important than any of the required classes. Take it. It may be more difficult than some of the other choices but it will be infinitely more useful. It's really hard to be "business literate" if you don't know what a balance sheet is.</p>
<p>I think Managerial Accounting (Comm 202) is a waste of time. It is not interesting, it is not intellectually challenging and it is not useful. </p>
<p>I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for with your class choices, but I don't know anyone who has regretted taking Comm Law (Comm 341) with Wheeler.</p>
<p>The other classes that sound interesting (and useful) to me are Investment Analysis, Strategic Management, and Construction Engineering and Economics. But thats just me.</p>
<p>The Strategy class is probably somewhat like marketing in the sense that you could probably learn most of the concepts by reading a book (say one of Michael Porter's books). But I think its valuable to be exposed that line of thinking and a good professor can really make it easier to understand why the material is relevant.</p>
<p>I actually disagree about Econ 202 HartinGA - I think some basic understanding of Monetary Policy (like, say, being able to define what it is) is important. But it's probably true that it won't be as directly applicable to whatever it is you end up doing archrival as financial accounting.</p>
<p>I disagree about Econ 301 and 302 being "more relevant" galoisien, but I would be interested in you defending your position. To me those two classes are important because they are gateways to higher level Econ classes. I don't really see what those two classes and those two classes alone prepare you to do that you don't get out of the less math intensive principles classes.</p>
<p>^^ I was wondering why you thought COMM 202 was a waste of time? I wanted to take it because it seems like it's more about management which I really wanted to learn about.</p>
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To me those two classes are important because they are gateways to higher level Econ classes. I don't really see what those two classes and those two classes alone prepare you to do that you don't get out of the less math intensive principles classes.
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<p>It could reduce the learning curve such that it becomes easier to self-study other advanced economics material online; I believe the mathy stuff is a lot of the barrier why even Wikipedia pages on more advanced economics concepts are hard to decipher for someone with Econ 201/202 credit.</p>