About

Appalachian’s Master of Business Administration program provides educational experiences to prepare students for life-long learning and professional leadership responsibilities in a dynamic global environment. The program’s flexibility allows each student to receive the best educational experience possible with the opportunity to complete your degree in one year – through part-time or full-time tracks on the main campus in Boone or part time off campus in Hickory.  

We offer rolling admission so you can start your program in the fall, spring or summer. The program provides individualized attention through dedicated career services and academic advising, as well soft-skills and professional development. Appalachian’s MBA program believes that networking and team building are extremely important in the process of building future leaders. Wherever you find yourself in life, you can always call on an Appalachian graduate for help, advice and support.

Appalachian’s MBA program has seven concentrations:

• Business Analytics – Designed to provide advanced skills and techniques that can be applied to discipline-specific and more general business problems. This concentration will leverage the importance of data analytics and enhances it with the business and advanced analytical skills that today's organizations demand for decision making.
• Economics – Helps students understand markets, firms, financial organizations, and public debate about economic policy, including taxation, government expenditure, trade, globalization, health and welfare.
• Interdisciplinary Business – Similar to a General Management concentration, this concentration allows nine hours of any graduate level courses. This provides flexibility and gives students broad exposure to various fields.
• International Business – Provides the analytical tools and conceptual framework needed to understand the international financial, political and economic environment, how that environment influences a firm’s strategy and performance, how culture plays a role in guiding a firm’s strategic activities, and how a firm can leverage home and host country resources to overcome challenges inherent in managing a multinational enterprise.
• Leading and Managing Human Resources – Designed to help students enhance their competencies in areas such as planning, staffing, rewarding and developing talent, and cultivating an organization's people and culture.
• Supply Chain Management – Provides a comprehensive knowledge of planning and managing an organization's resources and processes that create products or services. The resources include the work force, technology, supply chain, production and service creation processes, materials, and information, all of which typically represent a significant portion of an organization's total costs and controllable assets.
• Sustainable Business – Prepares a student to identify green market opportunities and to manage organizations for the triple bottom line of environmental, social and financial performance.

More Information

People

• Masters Matter: Dr. John Whitehead and Kimberly Dull, Business Administration

• Masters Matter: MBA Trip to Cuba

Application Essentials

Required Entrance Exam: GMAT OR GRE (score must be no more than 5 years old)

Required number of references to specify in the online form: 3

Supplemental Information: Resume (Required upload for application submission)

Basic Conditions for Consideration of Admission: Meeting or exceeding the conditions below does NOT guarantee admission. All applications for a given entry term will be weighed based upon the number of seats available and the quality of the complete application packages. With special permission from the Graduate School, a program may admit a limited number of students with exceptional circumstances who do not meet the graduate school minimums.

Students applying to the MBA program who need prerequisite courses have the option of an accelerated prerequisite program. The accelerated program offers a range of self-paced courses that are designed to be used as prerequisites to a core set of courses in graduate business education. This will allow the MBA to be open to all undergraduate majors who wish to apply and finish the degree in one year.

Graduate School: 3.0 GPA in the last earned degree and official scores from the appropriate admission test(s), OR 2.5 GPA in the last earned degree and official scores at the 25th percentile level from the appropriate admission test(s).

Admission to Business Administration: Both qualitative and quantitative aspects of applications are reviewed in comparison to the current applicant pool.

Employers

• Accenture
• IBM
• Duke Energy Corporation
• Hanesbrands Inc.
• Bank of America
• Deloitte Consulting LLP
• Abbott Laboratories
• Mariott International
• Hillshire Brands
• PNC
• Syngenta
• BB&T
• Piedmont Hospital
• Blue Bell Inc.
• Alpine Pro
• Lockheed Martin Corporation
• Lowe’s Home Improvement
• American Express
• Cisco Systems Inc.
• Appalachian Regional Healthcare Foundation
• Synchrony Financial