Building career in Analytics through MS programs

Anyone looking to build a career in Analytics should check out MIS (Analytics), MS Data Science and MS Business Analytics programs.

Career in Analytics – Why you should not miss riding this trend?

In four years of Scholar Strategy, one trend that is so glaringly clear is the rise of interest in Analytics and Data Science programs. This stems from the growth of number of jobs in this field in big enterprises and small businesses alike. Be it a software giant, pharma company, a SAAS business, a food tech or ed-tech company, analytics underpins every industry and sector. Thanks to the massive data science teams at FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google) and their success, suddenly everyone wants to play the data game!

As large number of professionals pursue a career in analytics and many looking to switch over, competition is on the rise as well. Which means that it can be very tricky to navigate the quantitative job landscape as an entry-level graduate. Burtch Works Study reported that 86% of analytics professionals have at least a Master’s degree, and 18% have a Ph.D. No wonder, we at Scholar Strategy have seen an increasing number of applicants in MIS (Analytics), MS Data Science and MS Business Analytics programs. We already discussed the subtle differences between these in our previous post.

What is Predictive Analytics?

A new term that is becoming more ubiquitous is Predictive Analytics and a lot of jobs use it in their descriptions! It can be looked upon as a subset of Data Science which specifically deals with forecasting future business outcomes. It helps us predict what can happen based on the past events. As per adobe data blog, “for instance, your credit score is calculated using predictive analytics. Based on a predetermined predictive analytics model that includes data about how you have behaved in the past, your credit score predicts how creditworthy you are likely to be in the future.” Since a major application of data science in business is to predict and prepare for the future trends and customer behavior, predictive analytics is growing in demand.

Analytics has changed many industries, one of the major ones being Marketing. The way businesses attract customers and draw leads has changed significantly. In fact, the very way that businesses think of customer acquisition and focus on incoming vs outgoing interest, has grown because analytics makes it possible to measure the efficacies of different channels. This growth in data and ability to use it effectively for business decisions is one of the major transformations we have seen in past 5-6 years.

What does it mean for you and your career?

If you are looking to become a data analytics professional, you need to wade through the competitive waters to get a good analytics position. An advanced graduate degree can give you the differentiation and a good entry point in the market. But still, it takes effort and sagacity to get to a coveted analytics role in the market. To better understand this, we are holding a webinar on Studying and Recruiting in Analytics! Looking at the overwhelming response to our last Data Science webinar, we are focusing on providing more insider information by successful grads who are now working in the industry. And if you want to know what does it take to become an Analytics professional, do not miss it 🙂

Better late than never!

Sharing a blog post from Divya who will remain a very special student. I remember her as a soft-spoken but determined girl who I think can do anything she sets her heart upon. Good luck Divya, thanks for sharing this! It should help the candidates who are running late for their MS applications.

I am Divya and I am currently pursuing my Master’s in business analytics from W.P.Carey School of Business at Arizona State University Tempe. It is an intensive 9 month program and I started in Fall 2016 and looking forward to graduate in Summer 2017. Prior to doing my Master’s, I did my under graduation in Computer science and engineering from SRM university, Kathankulathur Chennai and worked as a Junior Research Analyst at McKinsey and Company in Chennai.

I gave my GRE and TOEFL exam during my final year during my under graduation and applied to a few universities for MS in Computer science. However, during that time I did not have any proper guidance and randomly applied to a few universities for ms in computer science based on my what friends did without proper profile evaluation and course evaluation. Though I got admitted into a few programs, upon talking to a lot of seniors figured out that they were not worth my profile and suggested me to properly evaluate my profile and shortlist universities and apply again next fall. At the same time, I got an offer to join McKinsey and company decided to take it up as I felt it would add a great value to my profile. After interning for the first 5 months I got an offer to join them full-time. After a lot of thinking and getting opinions from a lot of people, I decided to work with McKinsey and company for at least 2 years and gain experience and then apply for fall 2016 as it was a great opportunity to start my career in such a big firm. Though I was working with a different team, I was introduced to the field of analytics at McKinsey. I interacted with a lot of folks from the analytics and team and understood the nuisances of the field. That is when I decided to apply for analytics instead of computer science. Though I did not have any relevant experience related to analytics, I applied to business analytics as it involves computers (data mining, sql, python), statistics and exposure to how business work and highlighted my under grad in computer science and my business exposure at McKinsey as my relevant expertise for the course. Though I made this decision much before the fall admission season begun I was not able to spend time from August to December to apply since it was the peak work season and it was very hectic.

It was during January that I reached out to Nistha and took her help to shortlist universities , recreate my sop and lor and resume. Since gre score was valid for 5 years I didn’t retake it and applied with the old score. However I had to retake my toefl exam. Since it is a time-consuming process, by the time I completed all these process and submitted by application it was almost march. I was on the round 3 of application deadlines. Most of the applications were submitted on the last hour of the deadline. However, I am glad that I applied rather than postponing it again to next fall. Thanks to Nistha for motivating me and helping me out in the last minute. Without her, I don’t think I would have applied for this fall. Finally I got a few admits and out of them I shortlisted ASU as their course ranking was very good and it was just a 9 month program.

After having completed almost 50% of my program, I consider this decision as one of the best decision I have ever taken in my whole life. The educational experience is phenomenal and it has been a wonderful learning opportunity for me so far. Had I not taken this decision, I would have continued working and would not have moved out of my comfort zone. The amount of learning I inculcated in the last 5 months is much more than the amount of learning I had from my 4 years of under graduation. Hence I consider myself lucky to have not given up till the last minute. I urge all students who haven’t applied till now to stop worrying about being late and to start working on their applications as soon as possible. After all, it is always “better late than never”.