Go on Alex’s journey as a
Questrom student, and experience a retooled business education.
First, Develop Foundational Knowledge
General education courses introduce key frameworks
Alex begins her first year by taking courses in the academic foundations of business, including Introduction to Business, Markets, and Society, as well as Teaming & Leadership and Critical Thinking for Business. They collectively provide an understanding of basic business principles, the nature of competition in global markets, how individuals and teams contribute to organizational success and ways to structure effective business decisions.
“What’s going to be more complex in a world [with] generative AI is judgment and decision-making,” Furman says. “It’s building relationships. It’s being reliable. And it’s being able to identify what the problems are, and what the general solution spaces might be.”
Beyond teaching Alex business fundamentals, early stage classes also introduce her to “Quests,” which Furman describes as ideas, concepts and frameworks that are then reinformed and expanded in later undergraduate coursework. Furman explains that repeated exposure to these “Quests” ensures students are continually upskilling along important dimensions of business acumen, so they graduate with key capabilities like critical and innovative thinking, analytics and modeling, teaming and leadership, global competitiveness and cultural competence.
APPLYING IT IN THE REAL WORLD
As a freshman, Alex studies quarterly statements of real businesses in an introductory finance course. Learning to assess the financial health of a company and identify how its past performance can shape investment decisions sparks an interest in financial analysis and investment banking, informed by a critical understanding of real-world information.
Then, Get Hands-On Experience
After completing her foundational learning, Alex can begin signing up for courses that introduce her to areas of business like accounting, finance, information systems or marketing, to name a few. Unlike traditional undergraduate programs that require students to follow a set class sequence before they’re exposed to professional concentrations, Questrom offers the flexibility to enroll in courses in the order that best suits their individual interests and goals. Furman explains that this is intended to empower students with the choice to decide whether they’d like to select a specialization early on in their undergraduate studies. That, in turn, can help them secure their first internships as soon as their sophomore year—as opposed to having to wait until the end of their junior year for the opportunity.
“The biggest change that we've seen in the market is that students require internships in their chosen fields earlier in their college careers,” says Furman. “So, we're moving towards a curriculum that's going to be more flexible for students, to allow them to get to their areas of interest earlier.”
Real-world projects reinforce key frameworks
APPLYING IT IN THE REAL WORLD
During her sophomore year, Alex interns for a Boston-based startup as it prepares to pitch venture capital investors. Alex brings classroom concepts into a real business setting, helping her supervisors build a valuation model that accurately estimates the startup’s net worth. Its founders use the model in their pitch and successfully secure seed funding, leading them to invite Alex back for a summer internship—and cementing her decision to specialize in finance.
Next, Learn Specialized Skills
As Alex delves further into her chosen finance discipline, she gains more targeted, specialized industry-specific knowledge with signature experiences in concentration courses. These courses help Alex apply theoretical knowledge as she works with companies and engages with her peers to solve complex problems.
Furman says these opportunities help students collaboratively gain practical experience as well as industry exposure.
“One of the great features of being in the Boston area … is that you can look up and see a finance company. You can look up and see a biotech company. You can look up and see an athletic apparel company,” says Furman. “And they are all so close to Boston University that we have a very nice opportunity to work directly with organizations to help give our students experiences that you might not be able to obtain [elsewhere].”
Concentration courses expand frameworks
APPLYING IT IN THE REAL WORLD
Alex participates in a team project advising an athletic-wear brand on whether it should acquire an emerging shoe line. Applying what they’ve learned on specialized financial topics like mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyouts and advanced comparative valuation techniques, Alex’s team collaborates closely with the brand to craft a data-backed recommendation. The brand agrees with the students’ recommendation to add footwear to its portfolio and, down the line, invites them to the launch party celebrating their new acquisition.
In her finance lab, Alex examines the growing volatility concerns of a hedge fund ahead of an expected Federal Reserve rate change. Using actual market data, she builds predictive models to demonstrate the market impact of various scenarios and recommends a strategy for each potential outcome. Alex also presents her findings in a professional format, gaining experience in executive-level communication.
APPLYING IT IN THE REAL WORLD
Throughout their academic journey, Questrom students continually revisit and expand upon the foundational frameworks introduced their freshman year. As juniors, they take part in lab courses, which function as high-intensity consulting experiences.
“Every area of specialization within the school will offer an action learning [lab] course where the students are working with a company,” explains Furman.
Students act as analysts, strategists, marketers and subject matter experts to develop meaningful solutions to real industry challenges. For example, Alex would work with real market data in her finance lab to build predictive models and evaluate economic risks—just as she would in a corporate setting. Then, students tailor their learnings to a particular business, whose leaders critique and evaluate their ideas alongside classmates and the professor.
“Employers are looking for students who don’t just know how to use data, but who can turn incomplete instructions into innovative solutions,” Furman says.
Lab courses apply expanded frameworks
Refine And Develop Expertise
As graduation nears, Alex begins applying to jobs. During a networking event, she speaks to a Questrom alum at a leading financial institution in Boston, who connects her with a recruiter at their firm. Alex lands an interview and draws on her coursework, team leadership, internships, business experience and lab applications to demonstrate her preparedness for the position’s demands, as well as a deep understanding of global markets and expertise in other key competencies gained at Questrom. Alex receives an offer—and graduates ready to thrive on Wall Street.
APPLYING IT IN THE REAL WORLD
Before and after graduation, Alex can leverage Questrom and B.U.’s expansive alumni network and unique hiring resources, along with Boston’s active business environment, to gain broader exposure, make connections and access new opportunities. Career-focused programming will also ensure Alex graduates with industry experience, professional contacts and tangible work samples that give her an edge in competitive job markets.
Questrom requires Alex complete three abbreviated Careers and Professionalization courses before graduation. The first class, taken early on in the undergraduate curriculum, and second, taken around the two year mark, help students prepare for and obtain internships. Closer to graduation, they can enroll in the third course, which focuses on helping students like Alex showcase their specialized expertise, sharpen interviewing skills and convert internships into full-time jobs.
Throughout her final year, Alex engages in structured networking, mock interviews and employer-led recruitment sessions. Questrom also provides direct alumni mentorship, linking students with business leaders across industries, as well as job coaching from a group of former corporate executives Questrom has brought on solely to help soon-to-be graduates get hired in their chosen industry.
“We’re ensuring that students have multiple pathways—whether through internships, projects or networking—to secure top-tier jobs,” says Furman.
Dynamic career services give graduates an edge
Tap Into Professional Opportunities
“Students will be better able, from day one in their organizations, to accept incomplete instructions and turn [them] into solutions that are better than the managers would've been able to identify on their own. They’ll arrive professionalized and able to handle these challenging situations.”
Jeff Furman
Associate Dean, Undergraduate Program, Boston University Questrom School of Business
How Questrom Transformed Its Business Education
Aggregated Key Insights
Questrom began reevaluating its undergraduate program several years ago, and from 2022-23 started a formal process of interviewing faculty, alumni, students, recruiters and business leaders.
“We came back with a strong set of recommendations … to make the curriculum more flexible, let students get to their functional courses earlier and allow them to go into greater depth in those functional courses,” says Furman.
Armed with those key insights, Furman and Questrom leaders spearheaded an initiative to empower future graduates with the innovative capabilities and competencies they’d need to succeed.
Modernized Learning For Market Reality
To reengineer its program, Questrom had to persuade a number of stakeholders and leaders across Questrom and B.U. to challenge their own assumptions.
“It's hard to change large organizations that have done things in a particular way for a long time,” he says. “Academic organizations turn more slowly than the Titanic, so to get everyone on board with this change and to have basically unanimous support … speaks to our [ethos].”
In particular, the initiative zeroed in on increasing use of experiential learning, which traditionally isn’t part of an undergrad’s coursework until well into their junior year.
“So, not just case studies, but doing projects as if you were working with a company, and … other projects directly with companies—that's an area that we're going to invest in quite a bit,” Furman says.
With generative AI, in particular, there will be about two weeks devoted to AI in one of the new core courses. Students will therefore learn how AI is changing work in all their areas of study. Drafting text, writing code and preparing presentations are only three examples of how Questrom’s approach to using AI will prepare students to thrive in every business environment.
As advancements like generative AI emerge and evolve at lightning speed, the most valuable employees will be those who can do what technology can’t. Questrom’s new curriculum will introduce a new core course that devotes about two weeks to teaching students how AI is changing work in all of their areas of study. Drafting text, writing code and preparing presentations are only three examples of how Questrom’s approach to using AI will prepare students to thrive in every business environment.
“Students will be able to generalize, from their experiences at Questrom, how organizations interact with each other, how global competition affects the specific problems their organization is dealing with on a daily basis—and feel comfortable working with people across regions and across countries in coming up with solutions,” he says. It’s those very skills that will lie at the core of Questrom’s reimagined program—designed to cultivate the real-world-ready graduates businesses need.
Pioneered A Real-World Ready Future
