Agnes Scott College

Decatur, GA

Agnes Scott College

Decatur, GA

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Undergrad Health & Medicine Business

The business of Business

Agnes Scott College, as an inclusive women’s college and national liberal arts institution, holds intellectual curiosity as our highest standard. Our goal is to guide our students to be reflective, intelligent, compassionate global citizens and fearless leaders within your four years of study. Our Scotties (as Agnes Scott students are called) focus on strength, honor, and inclusion as their guiding principles throughout their academic and social lives.

If you are interested in business or entrepreneurship, you will have the opportunity to work with strong professors in various different fields to prepare yourself for the future. As Dr. Tom Will, Associate Professor of Business Management, put it, “Majoring in Business Management at Agnes Scott immerses students in a more personalized experience than they would obtain at a large business school. Small, interactive class sessions enable students to really get to know their peers and their professors. We consider the major not merely informative, but transformative.”

Studying Business at Agnes Scott College
Students may find themselves studying Business Management at Agnes Scott. Business is a broad field; for the business management major, you’ll start by learning about the basics of business, and then everyone gets to explore into their own niche. Elective courses cover topics such as organizational psychology, investments, financial accounting, adaptive leadership, consumer behavior, nonprofit organization, human resource management, marketing, labor economics, banking, and econometrics. Students are really able to make their own path.

However, business doesn’t necessarily require that you study business management. Students may choose instead to study any of the numerous majors that intersect with business at Agnes Scott, such as Economics, Environmental & Sustainability Studies, Foundations of Artificial Intelligence, International Relations, Mathematics, Political Science, Pre-Law, Psychology, or Sociology & Anthropology. You might also be part of the 40%+ of students who choose to double major to diversify your knowledge base.

The SUMMIT difference
Our SUMMIT experience—which earned the College the designation as the #1 “Most Innovative Liberal Arts College” in the country by U.S. News & World Report—reinvents a liberal arts education for the 21st century and is exclusively available at Agnes Scott. SUMMIT allows every student to dive into a core curriculum focused on global learning, and leadership development and professional success that integrates coursework with experiences in Atlanta and around the world. This ensures all our students, regardless of major, are prepared to become leaders in our global society.

Under SUMMIT, the College has been recognized as the #1 First Year Experience in the country for five consecutive years. Here, you’ll read and learn as widely as possible and then discuss and debate new ideas, guided by professors who will expect a lot and push you to be your best.

In addition, successful leaders are prepared by strong mentors and broad social networks. That’s why all Agnes Scott students receive customized advising from day one, including peer advising, major advising and close work with a SUMMIT Advisor and career advisors. Your personalized advising experience will help you adjust to college and design an educational plan that will prepare you for postgraduate success.

Your first year will include foundational courses in global learning and leadership development in addition to an immersive leadership retreat during orientation. You’ll take a first semester seminar on how the liberal arts inform good leadership and your own leadership goals, with courses like Language, Conflict and Intercultural Communication in the 21st Century; Leadership for Introverts; and Media, Communication, and the Shape of Our World.

In the spring of the first year, you’ll take a course focused on global citizenship and then experience a week-long travel opportunity with that course. Upcoming courses include Germany in the Globalized World in Germany; Italian Fashion, Industry and Image in Milan; and Power and Symbol in New York City. The cost of this travel experience is included in Agnes Scott’s tuition, making it a possibility for all our students. You’ll then have further opportunities to study abroad, with 78% of our students choosing to complete an independent study abroad experience or guided global study tour with an Agnes Scott professor after the first year.

In your sophomore year, you’ll have the opportunity to see leadership in practice through SCALE, the Sophomore Class Atlanta Leadership Experience. This week-long externship allows you to choose a location and project in the Atlanta area to focus your skills and learning. Recent business-related SCALE placements include AT&T; BlackRock; Enterprise Holdings; Incentive Solutions; Southern Company; Turknett Leadership Group; and UPS.

Your professional success
To be truly successful in their fields, our Scotties are challenged to apply what they’ve learned in the classroom to real-world situations. Eighty percent of students complete an internship or mentored research project, and many do both. You’ll find opportunities to polish your writing, research and speaking skills by presenting at academic conferences, either one in your field or at our Spring Annual Research Conference (SpARC).

Post-graduation, our alums follow their passions all the way to the top, whether that means summiting the highest peaks on each of the seven continents; leading a Fortune 500 company; serving as a chief justice; winning a Pulitzer Prize, Oscar, Grammy, or Tony; or starting a mobile bookstore. With 96% of our students in graduate school or a job placement a year out from graduation, our graduates are ready to take on the world as soon as they walk across the stage. There is no limit to what an Agnes Scott graduate can accomplish.

That is very true for our graduates interested in business. Recent employers for graduates include Deloitte Consulting, Ernst & Young Global, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and UPS. Recent graduates have also moved forward to graduate programs at Brown University, Howard University, The London School of Economics, University of London, and University of Southern California.

If you’ve read this far, why not plan a campus visit? We’d love to meet you, and you deserve a chance to see campus for yourself! Schedule your campus tour today at agnesscott.edu/visit. Can’t make it to campus? Take our virtual campus tour instead at agnesscott.edu/virtualtour.

ACCOLADES

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For an unprecedented seventh year in a row, Agnes Scott College has been recognized as the nation’s #1 most innovative liberal arts college according to the 2025 U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges rankings

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#28 Best Value School | U.S. News & World Report

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#3 First-Year Experience | U.S. News & World Report

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#3 Undergraduate Teaching | U.S. News & World Report

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#6 Learning Communities | U.S. News & World Report

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#4 Top Performers in Social Mobility | U.S. News & World Report

Princeton Review badge

Agnes Scott College was again named to The Princeton Review’s Best 389 College rankings for 2024

Location

Decatur is a historic city with a small-town feel located just six miles from downtown Atlanta. With a population of about 25,000, Decatur is known as a community of “homes, schools and places of worship." The Agnes Scott campus is within easy walking distance to restaurants, shops, music venues and the MARTA station (Atlanta’s public transportation system).

Agnes Scott’s Bridge to Business Program

Agnes Scott’s Bridge to Business summer program combines your academic passions with your interest in the business world. In partnership with Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business, this intensive three-week educational experience reflects what an MBA experience would be like and will help you decide if an MBA is the right path for you. Students from all majors who are rising sophomores, juniors and seniors can participate.

Topics for the program include accounting, finance, marketing, business law, operations management, gender in business, organizational behavior, international business, strategic management, business communications, and career development. Through case studies, computer simulations, lectures, discussions, executive panels and onsite corporate visits, you'll develop an understanding of what the business industry entails. You'll also explore the opportunities that await in the corporate and nonprofit worlds, and in graduate study in business.

Geared toward liberal arts students, Bridge to Business assists humanities, sciences and social sciences majors in making the college-to-career transition. The program will help you discover how a strong liberal arts foundation can be a huge asset in the world of business.

An Inside Look

What students are saying about us...

  • "Bridge to Business is a perfect opportunity for Agnes students who are interested in successfully transferring over to the professional work world. Although I was not a business major, I understand I will be interacting with the business world and those in it, which requires the skills I learned from Bridge to Business. Though I initially didn't know anything about business and all its components, I am glad I had this experience."

    • Rebecca George
      B2B 2019
  • “I would recommend every student take this course, and if it was up to me, I would make it mandatory. The Bridge to Business program was an awesome end to my undergrad. I’m very thankful for this opportunity.”

    • Mariya Igorevna Vorochkova
      B2B 2018
  • “Whether I’m writing my master’s thesis in Ethics or addressing structural causes of income inequality, I know the quality of my Agnes education has prepared me to do well. From my first classes at Agnes, my professors supported my intellectual growth and encouraged me to question, analyze, and think with rigor and humility.”

    • Mallika Balakrishnan ’19
      Marshall Scholar
  • “This is a place where you can express yourself; find validation and reassurance. The support I’ve found through my friends, my advisors, and my professors has helped establish my role as a leader. They believed in me, and I believe in myself now.”

    • Sigal Kahn ’20