The Online Master of Science in Business Analytics: Turn Data Into Strategic Insights

William & Mary faculty designed our online master of science in business analytics program with a singular goal in mind: to give you an unmatched competitive advantage in the workplace. Our master’s program blends the technical rigor you expect from a graduate analytics program at a top-ranked university with the strategic business insights you need to communicate productively with stakeholders.

Our expert faculty are terminal degree holders who have worked in cybersecurity, information technology, telecommunications, healthcare, marketing, manufacturing, oil and gas and the Department of Defense. They weave the theme of business intelligence and analytics throughout the online program. You will learn about the value of big data and the ethics of working with algorithms as well as how to manage teams, communicate solutions and steer data-driven decision-making.

The concept of business intelligence and analytics is introduced prominently in our core course BUAD 5112 Competing Through Business Analytics. In this course, you will learn how to:

• Integrate analytics into business processes
• Visually convey insights from complex data sets in a straightforward, digestible way
• Identify the most difficult and time-consuming steps of business processes
• Create graphs with Python programs using the Matplotlib package
• Create an analytics presentation with graphs you have created
• Program two heuristic algorithms in Python
• Web scrape

This course, and the master’s program as a whole, will challenge you to synthesize your technical and strategic learnings so you can champion the importance of business analytics at any company.

William & Mary Online MSBA alumni can be found in high-ranking positions at top companies.³

Data Scientist
Booz Allen

Cloud Engineer
Amazon Web Services

Executive Director
JP Morgan Chase

Senior IT Analyst
Federal Reserve Bank

Senior Defense Machine Learning Engineer
Octo

Business Operations Analyst
Navy Federal Credit Union

William & Mary’s Online MSBA program is designed to maximize your computing and modeling skills while honing your ability to apply data science to strategic business planning and business decision making.

• The program curriculum was developed through careful evaluation of market trends and in consultation with employers, graduates, students and faculty, as well as our Business Analytics Advisory Board. The resulting courses ensure that you graduate with a tangible advantage in a high-demand field, where opportunities are growing across industries and around the globe.

The Online MSBA features:

• Prerequisites that emphasize coding through practical business applications, especially with R and Python
• Data visualization skills that are learned early in the program and applied and fine-tuned in later courses
• Emphasis on data warehousing, above and beyond database management
• Concentrated emphasis on big data technologies and cloud computing
• Focused instruction in software and languages such as Python, R, SQL, Alteryx, Tableau, Gurobi and AWS

These business analytics skills, which are often learned through real-world case studies, will guide you in asking the right questions, building the right models and using those models to perform the right analyses. The resulting insights, when appropriately interpreted and communicated, give you the means to transform business outcomes by telling the right story, in the right way.

The Online MSBA program incorporates business applications through case studies focused on real companies, problem sets or projects based on modern business challenges. Learn how to apply contemporary business analytics software to improve business outcomes.

Sample case studies include:

Zillow Business Application—How does Zillow make house value predictions using Zestimate? Learn how to build your own Zestimate models using machine learning or AI algorithms.

Tesla Deliveries and Inventory—With four gigafactories producing about 250,000 vehicles annually, Tesla adds approximately 1 million cars to the economy. As demand rapidly increases, you are needed to determine if supply can keep up.

Chipotle Avocado Price Predictions—Guacamole is one of Chipotle's best sellers. To optimize supply chain costs, the company wants you to develop a model to forecast the cost of avocados.

*Note: BUAD 512A and 512B are prerequisites for the remainder of the program. Students may be able to satisfy these prerequisites with courses from other sources, and they should inquire about their eligibility during the admission and onboarding process if they wish to do so.

Take a look at what’s ahead in the Online MSBA program—download our program details guide, your one-stop document for admissions requirements, courses and more.

Download the Guide