Columbia Business School

Degree Requirements

Prerequisites | Core Courses | MBA Electives | Other Electives| Master Thesis | Internship

Prerequisites

Prior to commencing the program, all admitted students are required to have completed three courses at the undergraduate level:

• Probability and Statistics
• Microeconomics
• Marketing Management

In addition,  it is highly recommended that students develop some knowledge and experience working with SQL, a database programming language, and any one of the statistical packages such as SPSS, SAS, Stata, and Matlab prior to joining the MS program.

Students are also required to attend a Math Camp that is offered by the Business School prior to joining the program during the month of August.

Back to top

Core Courses

All students are required to complete a minimum of two out of the following Ph.D. courses:

• Empirical Choice Models (B9699)
• Research Methods (B9708)
• Multivariate Statistics (B8832)

They are also required to take or exempt from these two MBA courses:

• Marketing Research (B8617)
• Strategic Consumer Insights (B8601)

If desired, students can substitute Strategic Consumer Insight (B8601) with either of the two Ph.D. Consumer Behavior courses (Consumer Behavior I - B9610-025 or Consumer Behavior II - B9610-015)

Back to top

MBA Electives

Students can take a maximum of two MBA courses in marketing.  Students choose the elective classes that are most relevant to their interests.  The following table contains a list of MBA courses to choose from: 

Students could substitute these courses with other MBA electives subject to availability of seats and with approval from the MS committee.

Back to top

Other Electives

Students are required to take a minimum of four electives chosen from courses offered by the Ph.D. program or approved courses offered by other schools at Columbia University. Students choose these electives to sharpen their analytical skills and/or build expertise in their area of interest. The following table presents a list of courses offered by the Ph.D. program to choose from:

Other graduate-level classes offered across the School and University may also be applied toward this requirement, subject to availability and approval of the Master of Science in Marketing Degree Committee. The following table presents an illustrative sample of courses:

Back to top

Master Thesis

All Master of Science in Marketing students are required to complete a master thesis under the supervision of a faculty adviser.  Students will provide regular progress reports on their work. The project will generally be grounded in an industry-related problem and/or a relevant academic research question. 

Back to top

Internship

The MS program requires students to go through a practical experience.  This experience could be either an internship in a company or serving as a research assistant to a faculty member from the marketing Division. The master thesis should be connected to this experience (e.g., writing a research article with a faculty advisor or writing a research report based on the internship project).  

Students opting for research assistantship are encouraged to identify a faculty member to work with, preferably in their first semester of the program. 

For students opting for an internship in a company, it is highly recommended that they search for internship opportunities prior to joining the program.  The internship can take several forms.   For example, the student could serve one day a week at a company working on their research project.  Alternatively, the student could arrange a summer internship.  The student could also fulfill the practical experience requirement through a field project course that is sponsored by a company.   The internship experience should give students an opportunity to work on a real-world marketing problem and apply concepts learned in the classroom to the project. Internships are typically analytically oriented, and require a greater focus on statistical analysis of data than MBA internships. 

Back to top