Quantic School of Business and Technology

Congratulations! I felt the same way going into my masters program at Duke. I have classmates that work at Google, Microsoft, JPMorgan, Fidelity Investments, etc. from undergrads like Duke, Stanford, MIT, etc. It is certainly intimidating however, you have to remember you are there because you are just as capable as those folks and the admissions committee saw that. Good luck in your EMBA!

 

Your grade is made up 10% of SmartCases, 70% your grade on the midterm and final, and 20% on the projects you have to complete. The SmartCases are exactly the same as the regular coursework except they use more concepts/are longer (because they're at the end of a block of say 5 or 10 lessons.) You make between 15 to 20 selections. Most are multiple choice, some are fill-in-the-blank. You can repeat them until you get 100.

In Quantic's language, courses are concentrations. There are 10 concentrations, and your Business Foundations course makes up the first one. The other concentrations are
Accounting, Markets and Economies, Data and Decisions, Leading Organizations, Marketing and Pricing, Finance, Supply Chain and Operations, Strategy, and
Entrepreneurship.

Inside each concentration are modules. Inside modules are lessons.

So the Accounting concentration, has for example:

• Accounting I - 12 lessons (part of Business Foundations)
• Accounting II: Revenues and Expenses - 11 lessons
• Stocks and Bonds - 11 lessons
• Accounting III: Financial Statements - 7 lessons
• Accounting IV: Working with Ratios - 8 lessons
• Managerial Accounting - 12 lessons

And the lessons in Stocks and Bond include:

• What is Stock?
• Common and Preferred Stock
• The Stock Market
• Accounting for Common Stock and Dividends
• Accounting for Treasury and Preferred Stock
• Smartcase on Stock
• What are Bonds?
• Bond Values and Yields
• Types of Bonds
• Accounting for Bonds
• Smartcase on Bonds

I should be much more interested in my Eastern data science content, but I'll be damned if that Quantic platform does not make learning about the accounting treatment of bond issues really fun! I'm finding myself hopping on the app in lieu of web browsing or playing Tetris and doing a few lessons.

My only concern at this stage is the speed in which one can move through the lessons. It's a 12 month program, and Quantic advertises that you should spend 5-15 hours a week. 5 hours a week for a year is 260 hours which feels low. On the other hand, it's possible that the projects are intensive and the amount of time evens out. If the curriculum really is teaching me more efficiently than I shouldn't use hours spent to advance through it as the best metric, but still.

 

Thanks for the brief above.

I'm not sure if the MBA has it, but for the EMBA they recently advertised the inclusion of Blockchain. I welcome this as I have background on Blockchain.

I feel 5-10 hours a week is decent. I have to put aside some concurrent online learning. I just recently completed the AKAD University Digital Transformation Nanodegree and I found that very taxing due to the amount of reading involved. The student notes were lengthy with small prints. I will likely focus exclusively on Quantic.

 

The MBA has no specialization unlike the EMBA, but Quantic's big library of courses and those are available to any MBA/EMBA student and alumni. I'm especially interested in the courses on Excel, Data Science and Statistics.

 

Thanks for posting these updates, Dustin. I've been working through the free classes they have and am really enjoying their learning platform. It's like playing a game and, much to my surprise, I'm actually retaining the information. I haven't applied to the program (EMBA) and don't know if I will. If I could get in free or at a low cost, I'd consider it, but I don't want to pay $9,000+, but I'm going to work through as many of the free courses as I can and if I finish before the deadline, I may apply.

 

I was accepted too but into the Executive MBA with a scholarship of about 15% off the regular price. I have not enrolled. I need a bigger scholarship to consider enrolling but they are allowing me to defer my enrollment with the scholarship still attached up to a year.

 

Yeah at $8500 it still strikes me as too expensive for an EMBA, given that you could earn an RA MBA at WGU for less than that. I wonder if they're offering a mix of need-based and "want-based" scholarships since someone else noted they have a good income and live in Australia but still got a 100% EMBA scholarship. Most that I've seen are 15-50%.

 

Price is subjective. I have friends pursuing EMBAs at Wharton, Fuqua, Booth, Kellogg, etc. and these degrees are upwards of $100,000-$150,000 or more. Is it worth it? To them it is regardless of the price because of the brand and alumni network. The same could be said for the Quantic EMBA. $8,500 may not be worth it. But for some, it is because they like the brand and they like the alumni network.

 

Good point! I'm notoriously stingy, but I've often said I would pay $60,000 to earn a Master's degree from Harvard or Columbia because of the name.

 

Exactly. I told myself if I was accepted into a Top 15 or Top 20 Business School, I was attending regardless of price because the brand was important for me. Needless to say, it happened so I jumped at the opportunity.

 

ROI can be calculated in a few ways in my opinion. Obviously, there is Hard ROI = (Amount Gained - Amount Spent / Amount Spent) x 100. Then, there is the Soft ROI. Do you feel that the brand, education and time was well spent in that, you got what you wanted from your investment outside of income.

 

When you finish each module, you get course summaries automatically available for your review. Remember that Quantic uses "course" to mean module, and "concentration" to mean course. So the Accounting concentration is made up of these courses. I've got 2 left, and they've started to get a lot longer. The 8 lessons of the Accounting IV: Ratios module include around 20 "clicks" of content or exercises (which can include matching, making calculations, etc.) So the number of lessons is a bit misleading because one lesson can have 5 items and the other can have 25.

When you finish a module, you get a certificate. Once I finish a full concentration/course (which I plan to do this weekend) I'll see what that looks like. Pedago is the company that owns Quantic.

Finally, each module has access to other helpful information, like in this case an accounting T-table to help you remember how assets and liabilities affect the cashflow statement.

There's also a percentage displayed for each concentration/course and the program. You start with 10% of the program complete just because of your Business Foundations content (which I think is a clever way to help it seem less overwhelming.)

I'm 71% complete the Accounting course, and 17% the full curriculum (keeping in mind I started at 10 so I'm really 7% through.)

Edit: Forgot to mention, I saw on LinkedIn someone who has a physical copy of the course summaries. I'm not sure if that's something he got printed up or he was able to buy from the school after he graduated but it looked beautiful and I'm going to make one myself once I finish if I can't buy one.

Edit 2: Turns out, reserved for alumni as this person mentions in French. https://twitter.com/pjgrizel/status/1337459384612478977/photo/1

 

Good ole financial statements! Nothing like the study of balance sheets, income statements and statements of cash flow! Lol

This is interesting to see the approach that Quantic takes. Good luck man!

 

Hey Dustin, thanks for all this info. The physical copy of the course summaries is a great idea. I was actually was going to ask if they have something in either physical form or maybe a PDF to refer to later, long after you've finished the MBA.

 

Finished my first concentration. It finished no different than the others, except a social media prompt.

So far, one critique is that the lessons don't require you to do many of the calculations, even once. This allows you to look at a sentence like, "Because the contribution margin is highest with option 2, Widgetco should (accept/reject) that deal" and be able to guess that a higher contribution margin is a good thing.

My hope is that the exams will force people to really study so that they can't just guess.

Edit: Ah, turns out the prompt shows up every course finish, I just missed it.

 

I got an email this morning letting me know I was on track and providing information about next week's courses. I also see it on my curriculum dashboard. That was kind of neat. For a business executive, doing the minimum to complete each course in time this is super helpful.

 

I didn't realized that you were also attending Eastern. It's not far from my neck of the woods. I've know them to be expensive but I see that your program is very affordable.

 

Goodness, $748 a credit hour for traditional undergraduates studying part time and $17K per year for a full-time courseload (which makes it $1100 per credit hour.)! I had no idea they were that expensive.

This MS in Data Science program is $330 per credit hour, 30 credit hours, so $9,900.