There are four substantial courses, eight exams and a 10-day final case study, and that’s more than many IU students know about the Kelley School of Business’ semester-long intensive program. However, stigma about its difficulty has spread.
“We’re like an urban legend,” I-Core coordinator Rex Cutshall said.
I-Core, which stands for the Integrated Core, is a semester-long program students are required to take to graduate from the Kelley School of Business. It is composed of four courses: finance, marketing, operations and leadership. Students receive a separate grade for each of the three credit hour courses, Cutshall said.
Each course has the standard twice-a-week lecture format, with two exams. One takes place around week six and another around week twelve. After the second exam students enter a ten-day case period.
In groups of six students analyze the information and data from a 40-50 page document they are given. After assessing this document, they create their own, which is about 100 pages, that incorporates aspects from the four courses they took throughout the semester Cutshall said.
Although senior Kasey Cross said he expected I-Core to be more difficult and time-consuming than it was, he said the case study met his expectations.
“I expected the case study to be a time-consuming thing with moderate difficulty, and it matched that,” Cross said.
Cutshall said the case study component of the program is important for students because it is 20 percent of their final grade in each course.
Although the final grade in each course is determined by only two exams and the case study, only about three to four percent of students don’t receive the necessary C to graduate in one or more of the classes, Cutshall said. This may give the illusion that I-Core is not a difficult program and that students should have no worries, but there’s a reason for the high passing rate, he said.
“The reason why there are no worries is because we’ve had two years to screen out,” Cutshall said. “We do have a room full of highly talented people. It’s kinda like in medical school. There are great doctors, but they’re all doctors.”
Cutshall said the first four semesters for Kelley students are generally spent taking the necessary prerequisite courses for I-Core. These basic math, economics, accounting and computer classes are what determine whether a student is ready to take on I-Core.
Although Cutshall said he agrees I-Core is purposefully difficult, he said he thinks students exaggerate the stigma too much. However, he said he doesn’t think the stigma surrounding the program is bad, but that it prepares students to take the semester seriously.
Erin Harvath, a sophomore in Kelley, said she doesn’t think that I-Core is going to be as difficult as the stigma surrounding it makes it out to be.
“It is definitely intimidating to hear how often older students complain about its difficulty level,” said Harvath, “It will no doubt be a challenge, but aren’t most college courses challenging?”
