Prerequisites

Prerequisites ensure the Professional MBA student has appropriate functional competency in key business foundations critical to academic success in the Program. Prerequisites permit faculty to move ahead with advanced course work having confidence that all students have solid fundamental business knowledge. Below is a description of the topics that professors expect students to have proficient knowledge of in each Financial Account, Micro Economics, and Statistics.

• Financial Accounting
• The meaning of accrual accounting
• The accounting equation of assets = liabilities + equity
• The format of the balance sheet, income statement, and statement of retained earnings and the interrelationships among these statements
• The format of the statement of cash flows and how to interpret it
• How to assess the impact of transactions on a set of financial statements
• How to compute and interpret financial statement ratios.
• How to perform horizontal and vertical analysis of financial statements


• Micro Economics
• Prices and Market Equilibrium (aka “Supply and Demand”)
• Price Elasticity: causes and effects
• Cost Concepts (fixed vs variable, average vs incremental)
• Profit maximization under perfect and imperfect competition
• Entry and exit in “the long run”
• Market structure and implications


• Statistics
• Descriptive Statistics
• Basic Elements of Probability (expected value, variance, co-variance)
• Probability Distributions (normal)
• Parameter Estimation (confidence intervals for one population case)
• Test of Hypotheses (one population case)
• Simple Linear Regression and Correlation

How to Meet the Prerequisites

• For each of the three prerequisites, complete an equivalent undergraduate course and receive a grade of “C” or better


OR


• Achieve a 75% or better score on Miami’s standardized test for each of the three prerequisites

Miami courses (ACC 221, ECO 201, and STAT 261 or DSC 205) are used as the standard for each of three topics. If you completed these courses (or higher level course/s) at Miami, you meet the requirements. If you have completed a similar course/s at another school, or a nonaccredited institution Transfer.Org will be used to evaluate whether your coursework is equivalent to the standard.

If you have taken required courses several years ago and are unsure if you still have a comfortable working competency for each area, it is suggested you take the competency exam/s to identify how much of the material you have retained.

Work experience does not allow you to meet the prerequisites if you have not taken all of the three classes listed above. As it is difficult to evaluate your level of subject-matter competency in the absence of a test, you will need to take the subject exams even if your work experience allowed you to develop a good working understanding of these topics.

Each subject-matter test is a 60-minute multiple choice exam and will be administered at the Voice of America Learning Center in West Chester. Please contact our office at 523-529-2936 to schedule your appointment to take an exam. There is no cost for this test.

Additional Resources*

• Accounting Tutorial published by Columbia College of Columbia, Missouri
• Accounting Lectures published by Simple Studies
• Business Accounting Tutorial published by Developer Shed
• Accounting and Bookkeeping Tutorial published by Bean Counter's
• Basic Micro Economics published by Boise State University - Ch. 8-10 and Ch. 12-14
• Introduction to Economic Analysis E-book by Preston McAfee, California Institute of Technology - Ch.2, 4, and 6
• Electronic Textbook StatSoft select Elementary Concepts, Basic Statistics, and Linear Regression from the menu bar

*Miami University does not assume any responsibility for the content of these resources or for any opinions expressed in them.