Families of New Students

Virtual family engagement sessions for family members will be hosted by the university’s Academic Advising Initiatives Office beginning the week of May 6, 2024.  

In Pamplin, we use a mostly “centralized” advising model – Our office consists of professional academic advisors who work with students in all the business majors.  Our goal is to challenge, empower, and equip students so they’re able to design college experiences that fit their educational, professional, and personal goals.  Additionally, we have two Real Estate advisors in a separate office on campus who work specifically with Real Estate department majors. 

During the virtual advising and registration program, all new Pamplin students should have the opportunity to interact with an advisor through email and an advising session.

• Academic Advising for Business degree students
• Academic Advising for Real Estate degree students

The Pamplin College of Business offers majors in the following departments:

• Accounting and Information Systems
• Business Information Technology
• Finance
• Hospitality and Tourism Management
• Management
• Marketing
• Real Estate  

The pie chart graphic represents the three types of classes students will take to reach the minimum 125 credit hours required to earn their business degree.  

• The orange piece of the pie represents Pathways General Education requirements.  All undergraduate students at Virginia Tech must satisfy Pathways general education requirements.
• The maroon piece of pie represents the Business Core and major-specific courses.
• The green piece represents free electives.

The Real Estate degree requires a slightly different set of classes.  Students are still required to complete general education courses and free electives, but the major classes will consist of interdisciplinary courses from areas across campus as well as restricted electives.  Restricted electives are chosen in coordination with the Real Estate advisor and usually result in a second major or minor in a field of study such as property management, building construction, or business.  

The general education requirements at Virginia Tech are known as “Pathway” concepts.  The purpose of the Pathways General Education curriculum is to prepare students to engage with diversity, complexity, and change and to provide them with a broad knowledge of the world.  Business students are required to take specific pathway courses for several of these concepts.  For example, concept 5 will be satisfied by business calculus (MATH 1524) and the business statistics sequence (BIT 2405 and 2406). For concepts 2, 4, 6, and 7, students can choose what classes they’d like to take to satisfy the requirement.  Students will take these general education courses throughout their time at Virginia Tech.  

The Business core courses are required for almost every Pamplin business major.  These courses cover a range of disciplines to ensure that all business students have a strong business foundation, regardless of major.  All these courses require a grade of C- or better in order to graduate.

• ACIS 1504: Intro. to Business Analytics & Business Intelligence
• ACIS 2115 & 2116: Principles of Accounting
• BIT 2405 & 2406: Business Statistics, Analytics & Modeling
• BIT 3414: Operations & Supply Chain Management
• ECON 2005 & 2006: Principles of Economics
• FIN 3054: Legal & Ethical Environment of Business
• FIN 3104: Intro. to Finance
• HTM/MGT 2314: Intro. to International Business
• MATH 1524: Business Calculus
• MGT 1104: Foundations of Business
• MGT 3404: Principles of Management
• MGT 4394: Strategic Management
• MKTG 3104: Marketing Management

FERPA stands for the “Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974.”  FERPA was designed to protect the privacy of a student’s educational records. Virginia Tech staff do not disclose personal information on a student’s records to anyone, including family members, without the student’s documented consent via a FERPA passcode. For more information, please visit the University Registrar website.  

Full-time student status is considered 12 credit hours per fall or spring semester. Dropping below 12 hours can impact things like financial aid & scholarships, athletic eligibility, and car or health insurance.  While 12 hours is considered full-time, most students take at least 15 hours a semester to stay on track for graduation.  

The Pamplin College of Business has specific computer requirements for incoming students.  Please visit the Pamplin Office of Information Technology website for more information on the minimum specifications as well as using Windows on Mac computers.  

Once students have finalized their fall schedule, they can find textbook information for each course on the University Bookstore website.  Students are not required to buy books from the University Bookstore, but they can use the ISBN number to look for books at other retailers.