Eligibility and admission requirements

1. Diploma requirements

The faculty's committee will assess whether the undergraduate degree is equivalent to the required degree, the bachelor of science in business economics organised at Ghent University, which gives direct admission to the master of science in business economics.

Ghent University's business economics bachelor programme consists of four learning paths. These paths should all be present in the candidate's educational background in order to be eligible for the master's programme. Moreover, we require a certain amount of credits, study hours and/or specific courses in order to make sure students have obtained the required final competences. In order to give international applicants a better idea of these diploma requirements, we have added the number of credits, study hours, courses and the final competences per learning path of the bachelor in business economics organised at Ghent University.

Economical learning path

• ECTS credits: 21
• Study hours:  630
• Courses: 4 (economics A, economics B, microeconomics, macroeconomics
• Final competences: students must be able to understand and use economic analysis, models, consequences of government decisions and public economy and be able to understand, analyse and explain consumer and producer behaviour theory and pricing. They should also be able to report and explain causal relationships in theories about behaviour of households and firms (e.g. Friedman's hypothesis), explain macroeconomic activity GDP and models such as Solow growth model and define and describe instruments of macroeconomic policy.

Business economical path

• ECTS credits: 58
• Study hours: 1740
• Courses: 13
• Final competences: student should understand the elements of Financial Statements and apply principles of double bookkeeping and valuation rules and record transactions into journal entries including end of year adjustments and preparing balance sheet and income statement. They should have insight in basic concepts in the functional management areas such as: general management, operations, marketing, financial management, information management; and understand the ethic and societal impact of new developments in business and understand the societal responsibility of an economist. Moreover, they have to  apply financial analysis techniques (i.e. analysis of the auditor's report,  horizontal and vertical analysis, cash flow analysis, ratio-analysis, models for success or failure and assess the financial position/soundness of a company and be able to propose suggestions for improving the financial position of a company. Students should also understand the basic features of the corporate tax, personal tax and the value-added tax and understand the inference of taxation into economic life and business problems. Students should be able to distinguish direct and indirect costs; and record accounting entries analytical cost accounting and allocate overheads to cost objects through an overhead analysis sheet. With regards to marketing, students should understand and applying the  concepts, theories, tools associated with market analysis, marketing strategy, marketing implementation, and marketing evaluation in traditional marketing (e.g. 4 P’s, segmentation, targeting, customer life-time value), in service marketing (e.g. marketing mix, customer experience management, ...), in digital marketing (e.g. digital innovation, SEO, SoLoMo, ...) and in transformative marketing (e.g. stakeholder well-being, social marketing, green marketing, ethics in marketing). Students should have knowledge of evidence-based leadership (transactional, transformational, servant, coaching, authentic), motivational mechanisms and leadership skills and be able to collaborate in a team,  written and oral communication skills.

Quantitative learning path

• ECTS credits: 14
• Study hours: 420
• Courses: 4 (mathematics IA, mathematics IB, mathematics IIA, financial mathematics)
• Final competences: students need a thorough theoretical and practical knowledge of linear algebra and real analysis, e.g.  limits, integrals, derivatives, infinite series and be able to  translate  economics problems into a mathematical one and solve it quantitatively /graphically. They should be able to apply mathematical techniques and proofs, representing functional relations graphically, analyse and interpret them; and mathematically deduce properties of functions and linear models from  economics. In addition, they also have to be able to translate an economical problem into a mathematical problem and solve it; link a new problem to a studied problem and apply the techniques which were there developed. They should be able to determine partial derivatives of functions of multiple variables and differentiate such functions implicitly; Solve an optimization problem, also graphically, and construct a solution to a linear first or second order difference equation. Finally, they have to understand an compute simple and compound interest rates, discounted value and future values; develop different  repayment schemes of debt including annuities and determine the purchase price a bond; Understand and compute natural growth e-functions.

Methodological learning path

• ECTS credits: 19
• Study hours: 570
• Courses: 5 (statistics IA, statistics IB, statistics II, research methods I, research methods II)
• Final competences: students should be able to use descriptive statistics; derive and discuss distributions and calculate probabilities; understand and construct (non) parametric tests; translate business problems into hypotheses and perform appropriate tests using SPSS, R and linear regression. In addition, they should also be able to select and use appropriate methods and techniques of data gathering and analysis to conduct qualitative and quantitative research and write an academic paper; evaluate the validity and reliability of existing research and be able to plan and execute a concrete research project.

2. Language requirements

English level B2 is required upon enrolment:  check the accepted language proofs.

3. Additional faculty requirements

he Faculty of Economics and Business Administration requires all non-EEA applicants to add a GMAT or GRE test score to the application file. Non-EEA applicants who fail to submit a GMAT or GRE test score, will not be considered for academic admission. EEA students are strongly advised to add a GMAT or GRE test score to their application file since the faculty will be granting 8 scholarships to students with outstanding scores on the GMAT or GRE test.

The faculty determined the minimum scores an applicant should obtain. Provided the applicants adopt an appropriate study attitude, this score gives a positive indication of their chances of success in the study programme. A lower score is insufficient and implies the applicants would have considerable difficulties in successfully completing the study programme, therefore, these applications will be refused.

The GMAT or GRE test is valid for maximum 5 years after the test date.

The institutional code for Ghent University that students can use to send their score report is 2643.

GMAT

• 49 on quantitative reasoning
• total score of 600

GMAT Focus

• 81 on quantitative reasoning
• total score of 565

GRE

• 162 on quantitative reasoning
• 152 on verbal reasoning