ECU Graduate Certificate in Finance
Cross-posted from a thread I started at DegreeInfo.com:
So, a little less than a year after finishing my MBA program, I’ve decided to tackle a new challenge: a graduate certificate in finance at East Carolina University. This program is four courses long, which the student chooses from any of the Finance electives available to MBA students at ECU.
The program can be done either entirely online, entirely on-campus, or as a mixture of both. To be admitted to the certificate program, you must either be an ECU MBA student, or already have an MBA from an AACSB-accredited institution. Total tuition and fees for one three hour course is $654 for in-state students, which means that the program will cost about $3000 once books and exam proctoring fees are included. In addition to the courses, my $3K also buys me access to the same resources available to full-time MBA students, including on-campus recruiting and other career services.
Why am I pursuing this certificate? Partly for personal interest – finance was the one subject I did worst in at Duke, and I want to shore up my knowledge in this area, and partly for access to the career services tools that I don’t have access to at Duke. When I’m done, I hope to use this certificate and my MBA as a springboard away from IT into (most likely) management consulting or maybe even investment banking/venture capital type work. I’m hoping to be done in May 2009 taking one class this term, two classes in the fall, and then one class in the spring of 2009.
I’ll use this thread to detail my experience with the program. Class doesn’t start for another week, but here’s what I know so far:
The online delivery platform is Blackboard. No surprises there. Exams are proctored. I haven’t been in a program that used proctored testing before, but I actually used ECU’s testing office for my CLEP testing during undergrad, so I expect that the process will be somewhat similar – call and schedule the test, and they’ll be waiting for me at the appointed hour.
ECU’s business school is transitioning from an advisor-managed registration process for its grad students to a self-service process, and certificate students are going to be the last to make the transition. This means that this semester (and possibly next), I was in line behind all the MBA students when it came to picking classes, leaving me with pretty slim pickings. I’m registered for a Real Estate Finance class, even though I’m not particularly interested in Real Estate, because it was the only class available to me that met program requirements. My advisor assures me that there will be more options available to me in the next few semesters, including some intriguing on-campus possibilities.
Overall, I’m pretty excited to be starting the program!
[...] Funny Name Here” starts a graduate certificate in finance online program through East Carolina University. Incidentally, [...]
I attended ECU for my undergrad (finance) and MBA. Going to ECU was the biggest mistake I ever made. ECU’s reputation is terrible, especially in business and outside of NC. The academics are a joke and employers know it. If you plan on living in Eastern NC for the rest of your life it may not be a bad choice, but if you don’t want to end up living in trailer- don’t go to ECU.
My experience is a bit different. I believe that ECU is so little known outside of NC that an ECU degree neither helps or hurts you significantly when job hunting in other states.
[...] and a half years to complete a four course sequence, but I’m done at last! Looking back at my original post on the program, I realize that my personal and career objectives have changed, and that I probably [...]