The School of Business gives students a second chance

Written By: Karim Hassan & Shahd Atef

Photo Taken By: Rayaheen Sam Qatena

Since it was announced during Fall 2022, the newly implemented declaration requirements for Business School majors  has left many students with renewed hope of declaring their desired majors, while others remain skeptical. 

According to its official site, AUC’s School of Business hosts over 900 students with a 90 percent employment rate after graduation, encouraging hundreds of students to join one of its majors and making entry to the school rather competitive. The department sought to cater to the high demand in Fall 2020 by turning the concentrations into individual majors, each with its own GPA requirements. 

Later, during the Fall of 2022, a trial phase was carried out for a new declaration system to supplement the GPA requirements with a personal statement, aptitude exam, and an interview.

Ahmed Tolba, Chairman of the Business Management Department, explained that students were previously only admitted based on high GPAs, but the department felt that they needed more students who were passionate about studying business.   

Finding passion in business 

Tolba explained that after filtering out students based on their performance on the personal statement, they are given an aptitude exam, which requires them to have good analytical and critical thinking, communication, problem-solving, and mathematical quantitative skills to pass. 

“In the competitive business major, personal statements serve as a filter, assessing students’ expressive abilities and meaningful thoughts. Even a four-point student may not advance if unable to convey their motivations and aspirations effectively,” said Tolba.

There are qualities that the department seeks to find in students during the interviews and these qualities make them more attractive candidates. The weight given to GPAs in the decision making process is therefore reduced, and more attention is put on the students’ natural business abilities and theor passion for the chosen major.

“Students should show excitement, motivation, and interest. We look out for students who have done internships and extracurricular activities and are involved in businesses,” he told The Caravan. 

Tolba explained that this change brought about a renewed sense of vitality as students realized they could get a second chance to declare and that reduced the pressure students felt from having to maintain a rather  high GPA to declare their intended majors. 

The department is also hoping to get approval to allow students entering AUC declaration at the gate like other majors. 

“We hope this gets approved by the administration soon. The goal is to increase the number of people who are given a chance,” said Tolba. 

Despite changing the requirements to ensure a better reflection of students’ abilities and passions, the department still cannot push past their student quota.  Like other high-demand majors, the Business School and its majors have a capacity that is determined by the number of faculty members and resources available and to prevent overcrowded courses. 

“High-demand majors have no fixed cutoff score; quotas exist due to capacity constraints,” said Tolba. 

Assessing the system

Having been implemented for a year now, the new system is still in its early stages, and the impact this has on students and the departments is yet to be assessed. 

Associate Chair of the Business Management Department Hoda El Kolaly explained that the department plans to review the effect of the new system on classes. 

“We just started two rounds, so we still cannot judge the impact… I do not think any of us now have this visibility,” said El Kolaly.

The students’ reactions to the changes were mixed, with some feeling relieved about the newfound opportunity and others feeling discouraged.

“After four semesters of attempting to declare a business major, I successfully did when the department made those changes to the declaration system,” said Mohamed Hatem, a senior majoring in Finance.

He explained that, after these numerous attempts, he had lost hope due to low grades in other courses and had to join a major he was not interested in, Multimedia Communication and Journalism (MMCJ), due to his GPA. The new declaration system, however, gave him a chance in the major he had hoped for.

Hatem argues that this change is especially helpful to students who are talented and passionate about joining the major, but need help reaching the required GPA.

“I think the new system is fairer than the old one because it’s not based on grades that we get from courses that are not related to the major that we want, but it is based on critical thinking and problem solving, which most of the students who want to major in business need to have,” said Hatem. 

On the other hand, some students who had declared through the old system were surprised by the changes. 

Hanna Zaky, a Marketing senior who declared under the old system, believes that the new system can be discouraging and over-complicated due to adding extra components alongside the GPA criteria.

“I prefer the old system simply because there are less factors, and it’s more straightforward,” Zaky said.

Fady Essam, a graduating senior majoring in Marketing who also declared under the old system, expressed concerns over the subjectivity of the new selection process. 

“You are either objective and rigid with the students based purely on GPA, or take into account a subjective factor to give more students a chance, which some may view as being unfair,” said Essam.