Deep Technical Expertise. Strategic Business Application.
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Deep Technical Expertise. Strategic Business Application.
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Technical Proficiency + AI Business Strategy: The Online Master of Science in Business Analytics

The future of business is being directed by data science, analytics and artificial intelligence. William & Mary’s Raymond A. Mason School of Business delivers an Online Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) program that equips ambitious professionals with the deep technical expertise and strategic business knowledge needed in our data-driven world. With courses dedicated to machine learning and artificial intelligence, you’ll also master the skills leaders need in a business world that’s been disrupted and accelerated by AI. As a “Public Ivy” institution, William & Mary combines academic precision with industry-relevant application, preparing you to transform complex data into strategic insights that drive business success.

When you enroll in our accelerated program, you’ll complete the Foundations in Business Analytics Certificate within just five months at no additional time or cost. This valuable credential immediately enhances your resume while you continue toward earning your full Master’s in Business Analytics online in as few as 16 months—a qualification that commands respect and opens doors to advanced career opportunities.

Online MSBA at a Glance

Why Choose William & Mary’s Online Master’s in Business Analytics?

William & Mary’s Online MSBA program delivers exceptional career impact through a unique combination of technical acumen, AI mastery and strategic business application. Our alumni experience remarkable career growth:1

78%
of MSBA alumni surveyed reported receiving or expected to receive a promotion within six months after graduation
32%
average salary increase reported after graduation
$125,488
average salary for alumni surveyed shortly after graduation

As Bloomberg’s #1 Business School for Learning2 and with Princeton Review’s #10 ranking for Best Business Professors,3 our Online MSBA places you among the elite. The program’s blend of technical depth and strategic focus ensures you’ll graduate with analytical capabilities and leadership skills employers demand.

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Master Advanced Analytics Skills That Employers Demand

The William & Mary Online MSBA program gives you an unmatched competitive advantage by developing expertise that spans technical proficiency and business leadership. Position yourself for success in high-growth analytics roles across industries with skills that rank among U.S. News & World Report’s Best Business Jobs list.

Our curriculum is designed to maximize your computing and modeling proficiency while honing your ability to apply data science to strategic business planning. You’ll master industry-standard tools and techniques, including:

  • Python and R programming for business applications
  • Machine learning and artificial intelligence implementation
  • Supervised and unsupervised learning
  • Deep learning and natural language processing
  • Data visualization and dashboard creation
  • SQL and advanced database management
  • Cloud computing and big data technologies
  • Optimization and prescriptive analytics

Prepare for high-growth analytics roles, including:

  • Operations Research Analysts: 23% growth4
  • Market Research Analysts: 8% growth5 and #6 in Best Business Jobs6
  • Management Analysts: 11% growth7 and #3 for Best Business Jobs6

The Online Master of Science in Business Analytics program goes beyond theoretical knowledge, teaching you to integrate analytics and AI into business processes, visually convey insights from complex data and champion the importance of data-driven decision-making at any organization.

“I was really drawn to the curriculum. When I was looking at other MSBA programs, William & Mary's was more technically rigorous than other programs while also maintaining a strong business focus. I wanted a program that would challenge me analytically, and to see how I would apply those skills into a real business setting. I also really like that the professors have extensive industry experience, and that was really important for me when taking classes.”
– Jordan Lewis, MSBA Candidate ’26
Jordan Lewis

A Curriculum Built for Data and Strategy Leaders

The Online MSBA program from William & Mary blends technical acumen with strategic business knowledge and AI mastery through a carefully crafted curriculum. Developed in consultation with employers, graduates and our Business Analytics Advisory Board, our program ensures you graduate with a tangible advantage in this high-demand field.

Our 32-credit curriculum consists of:

  • 2 prerequisite courses (8 credits)
  • 1 optional pre-program course worth 0 credits
  • 8 core courses (32 credits)

Prerequisite Courses (8 credits)*

BUAD 512A: Probability and Statistics with R (4 credits)

This course introduces the R programming language to teach statistical analysis within a business environment. The course covers basics of data management and wrangling in R, probability and probability distributions, and statistical techniques including statistical inference, hypothesis testing, analysis of variance and an introduction to regression analysis.

BUAD 512B: Business Modeling with Python (4 credits)

This course covers the use of the Python programming language in the context of modeling business problems. Particular attention is given to learning the power and flexibility of using Python in business settings commonly encountered. The mechanics, syntax and semantics of the language is emphasized. The course includes in-depth coverage of Python data types, control flow, functions, packages, data wrangling, data visualization and matrix manipulation.

Core MSBA Courses (32 credits)

BUAD 5112 Competing Through Business Analytics (4 credits)

This course will include a survey of the state-of-the-art in business analytics, exploring how companies use it for competitive advantage and identifying factors for successful strategic and operational support as business intelligence tools. Topics will include business metrics used for performance measurement and incentives, effective information communication, visualization, process improvement, the development and application of algorithms and ethical implications.

BUAD 5772 Database and Data Warehouses for Business Intelligence (4 credits)

This course covers fundamental topics related to developing and using databases and data warehouses to provide business intelligence (BI). The course includes: in-depth coverage of structured query language (SQL), stored programs and database design and implementation, data warehousing concepts, dimensional modeling (star schemas), the extraction/transformation/load (ETL) process and online analytical processing (OLAP)/ BI functionalities.

BUAD 5052 Decision Modeling (4 credits)

Decision modeling provides a framework on how to develop models that improve decision-making under uncertainty. Using a variety of statistical techniques, students will learn how to apply decision models within a variety of business contexts.

BUAD 5092: Optimization and Prescriptive Analytics (4 credits)

Optimization is a prescriptive analytics methodology designed to yield the best solution to a given problem. This applied optimization course will examine optimization through a business analytics lens. Students are exposed to the theory and application of optimization, including linear programming, nonlinear programming, discrete optimization, specialized networks and heuristics.

BUAD 5122: Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics (4 credits)

This course is designed to provide students with a deep understanding of the theory and practice of supervised and unsupervised learning, including regression, classification and clustering. An important part of this course is the use of statistical software, which is used extensively in labs and assignments.

BUAD 5132: Big Data and Cloud Computing Technologies (4 credits)

This course is designed to provide students with a deep understanding of big data and cloud computing. The data storage and retrieval techniques that have served the information processing industry for decades have proven inadequate in the face of the huge collections of data. This course will focus on applications of big data and cloud computing techniques that will be used to process large-scale data sets.

BUAD 5802: Artificial Intelligence Applications for Business (4 credits)

This course focuses on artificial intelligence (AI) applications in business, and covers implementations of contemporary AI techniques, such as deep learning, natural language processing and planning for solving business problems.

BUAD 5762 Business Analytics Capstone Project (4 credits)

This experiential-based practicum course will include a comprehensive business analytics project that students will complete in small work teams. The projects will be hosted by businesses, government, or non-profit organizations.

*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.

Master’s in Business Analytics Online Capstone Project

The capstone project is the culmination of your Online MS in Business Analytics experience, where you’ll work in small teams to solve real business challenges for actual organizations. These projects integrate the skills you’ve developed throughout the program:

  • Defining and framing complex business problems
  • Developing systematic approaches using analytics
  • Applying appropriate methodologies and quickly prototyping solutions
  • Generating innovative solutions and communicating them persuasively

Through this hands-on experience, you’ll demonstrate your ability to transform data into actionable insights that drive organizational success. Recent capstone projects have included machine learning implementations for healthcare providers, customer segmentation analyses for retailers and predictive models for financial institutions.

Two students working at a startup

Video Transcript

Guillermo Rodriguez-Abitia: Science, for starters, this is more general. You apply all these techniques, AI, machine learning, any neural networks models, whatever, to any problem, or any phenomenon, I should say. It doesn’t have to be a problem, right? So I want to study the movement of the... I don’t know, the waves in the ocean, or I want to see how the tides behave, or I want to see something in the stars or anything in the winds, any natural phenomenon, right? Or the growth of the cells. That is not business analytics, unless that’s your business. Am I making sense? So, science in general, what science wants to do is to explain a phenomenon. And once they have successfully explained the phenomenon and they have a model that explains it, then you apply the model to predict it, right? So you say, "Okay, I want to understand what determines my sales and what are the most important factors that affect sales," right? And I’m going to business right now. And then, "Okay, I want to predict sales based on the movement of these particular factors." That would be the limits to science. And I’m gonna be a little heretic here because that’s what they do.


They explain and they predict. In business analytics, we want to prescribe. So we have a problem. Not only we want to understand the problem, the typical descriptive analytics, but also I want to understand why it happened, right? Diagnostic analytics. Then I want to understand what’s gonna happen, predictive analytics, and move beyond and prescribe a solution for that. So if I do business and I analyze a problem in business, it’s because it is a problem and because I want a solution, which in science, not necessarily. I just want to understand the stars or the movement of the universe, right? In this case, no, I want a solution. So prescriptive analytics is a lot more into a particular applied context. And that would be for business analytics. We do everything we analyze is business situations, business problems, business data that makes sense to a decision maker in an organization. The rest of it is data science is the basis for what we do, but it’s not all we do. You have to understand the context too. So it’s not so much the tool, but it’s the impact that we analyze.

Data Science and Business Analytics

What separates data science from true business impact? In this thought-provoking video, Dr. Guillermo Rodriguez-Abitia breaks down a critical distinction that many professionals overlook: the difference between simply understanding data and using it to drive decisions.

Explore how business analytics goes beyond explanation and prediction to deliver actionable solutions, empowering organizations to solve real-world challenges. For anyone looking to elevate their strategic thinking and make data-driven decisions that matter, this is a perspective worth watching.

Guillermo Rodriguez-Abitia
“Technically speaking, we are very strong. Our students know Python and SQL, and how to apply them to build decision-making models. That's a highly sought after skill and you don’t see it taught this strongly in other programs.”
– Guillermo Rodriguez-Abitia, Ph.D., Faculty Director, Online MS in Business Analytics

Meet the Faculty Shaping AI Business Analytics Education

The strength of the Mason School of Business's leadership in AI lies in its faculty—scholars and practitioners who are actively shaping how artificial intelligence is understood and applied in business today. Rather than focusing solely on technical development, they equip leaders to think critically about AI’s role in strategy, decision-making, and organizational impact.

Two leading voices, Professors Rachel Chung and Monica Tremblay, bring complementary perspectives that define this approach.

Rachel Chung

Bridging Accessibility and Strategy in AI

Professor Rachel Chung, Ph.D., is widely recognized for making AI approachable and actionable for non-technical business professionals. “Everyone is talking about AI today, but few people truly understand what it is at a basic level,” Chung said. “I think it confuses a lot of people but it’s actually very easy. It’s just a math equation.”

At a time when many programs assume a background in coding or data science, her work focuses on closing the AI knowledge gap for business leaders. She emphasizes that executives don’t need to build AI systems—but they do need the fluency to lead teams that do.

Through her teaching and published work on AI fundamentals, Professor Chung helps students develop practical AI literacy: the ability to engage confidently with AI tools, critically evaluate outputs, and ask the right strategic questions in complex business environments. Her approach empowers professionals to integrate AI into decision-making without requiring deep technical expertise.

Monica Trembley

Advancing Ethical and Human-Centered AI

Monica Tremblay, Ph.D., Hays T. Watkins Distinguished Professor of Business, brings a complementary focus on the human and ethical dimensions of AI. A leading voice in responsible AI and organizational transformation, her work explores how technology intersects with human judgment, culture, and trust.

Her research, including efforts to improve predictive models in high-stakes sectors like the juvenile justice system, reflects a core belief: AI must be grounded in ethical responsibility and human expertise. As she notes, AI is not a standalone discipline, but a tool that enhances every aspect of business education.

In the classroom, Professor Tremblay is equally committed to accessibility. Her machine learning courses are intentionally designed to remove technical barriers, ensuring that students from all backgrounds can engage with AI concepts and contribute to data-driven problem-solving.

Video Transcript

Guillermo Rodriguez-Abitia: My background, originally from my undergrad degrees, is in engineering and science, so I'm a biochemist, or I was because I don't remember a thing now. But that's a different story. However, after that I got the opportunity to study a Master of Science in Information Systems, and I loved it. I loved it. I pretty much understood the idea that data is so important and how it affects organizations. And this is back then, when not everybody was aware of the importance of data and information in organizations. It was when organizations thought that having information systems and computing was a cost center rather than a strategic asset. So they did not see the value as good. It was very much based on efficiency, gaining efficiencies, control and avoiding errors. And it evolved incredibly to the point in which now we have data-driven organizations that cannot live without data and they cannot function at all without the data. So that's been exciting. That has been an exciting journey. So then I did become the director of the computer center in my university, and with that, I had the functions for development software for all the functions in the university and taking care of the data centers, basically.



Then I did apply for a Fulbright scholarship, and I was lucky enough to get it, and I came to the States to do my PhD and an MBA. So my PhD was in business administration with a major in Information Systems. And the rest is history. It evolved, right? So from information systems to business analytics, it's all about aiding decision-making and making business intelligence more effective. I started with technology transfer, that was my original interest. And then it evolved to many things that have to do with cross-cultural issues of information technology management, innovation and digital transformation. So I did... My latest research is based on that. Particularly, digital transformation is the one that I like the most. As a part of what we were saying, data in every part of the organization is how organizations have to be transformed in order to leverage technology, and take advantage of technology trends, and be resilient, and be adaptable and be competitive.

Meet the Online MSBA Faculty Director

What’s the difference between analyzing data and actually driving decisions? In this Meet the Faculty feature, Dr. Guillermo Rodriguez-Abitia challenges conventional thinking—revealing how business analytics goes beyond explaining and predicting to deliver real solutions.

Gain insight into how data, context, and decision-making come together to solve meaningful business problems, and why impact, not just tools, defines true analytics.

MSBA Online Program Career Growth

The Online Master of Science in Business Analytics program delivers exceptional career outcomes, with graduates launching successful careers across diverse industries and roles:

Data Scientist
at Booz Allen
Cloud Engineer
at Amazon Web Services
Executive Director
at JP Morgan Chase
Senior IT Analyst
at JP Morgan Chase
Senior Defense Machine Learning Engineer
at Octo
Business Operations Analyst
at Navy Federal Credit Union

With the skills you’ll develop in our Master’s in Business Analytics program, you’ll be qualified for high-demand roles including data scientist, analytics manager, business intelligence developer, data engineer and machine learning engineer.

Explore Careers

Foundations in Business Analytics Certificate

The Online Foundations in Business Analytics Certificate provides a strategic entry point to your analytics journey. Complete just three courses in five months to gain essential business analytics tools and skills that can immediately launch you into analytics-driven roles.

When enrolled in the William & Mary Online MSBA program, you’ll earn this certificate automatically within your first five months of study at no additional time or cost. This valuable credential enhances your resume and LinkedIn profile while you continue toward your full degree, giving you immediate leverage in the job market.

Explore the Certificate Program

The certificate consists of:

  • 12 credits
  • 3 courses
  • 2 programming languages
  • 100% online format

All credits earned in the certificate program seamlessly apply toward the full online business analytics master’s if you choose to continue your education.

Join a Diverse, Dynamic Learning Community at William & Mary

The William & Mary Online MSBA program brings together professionals from diverse backgrounds, creating a rich learning environment where you’ll gain insights not only from our expert faculty but also from peers with varied perspectives and experiences.

Take a look at the story told by our cohort demographics, and consider what you could learn not only from our Master of Science in Business Analytics program curriculum and faculty, but also from a diverse cohort of peers:1

37%
students of color
8 years
average work experience
35%
female
32
average age

This diversity creates invaluable networking opportunities and collaborative learning experiences that extend beyond the classroom. You’ll build connections with fellow analytics professionals while gaining exposure to different industry applications and approaches to data challenges.

More Than a Degree.
This Is Your Launchpad.

A William & Mary education is not just a degree but a unique connection to a tight-knit community of students, alumni, bold educators and driven, principled, connected leaders. Build your brand with a university known for breaking barriers, championing integrity and channeling academic grit since its inception.

The Raymond A. Mason School of Business imparts essential business knowledge and builds the dynamic mindset necessary to lead in today’s challenging and rapidly changing business environment. As an online graduate business student, you will:

✓ Graduate with the perspective to envision and enact positive change
✓ Access mentorship and experiential learning opportunities
✓ Receive personalized career support
✓ Build a lasting network to bolster your career for years to come

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Sources
  1. Based on a limited sample of self-reported data from alumni of William & Mary’s Online MSBA program from graduating cohorts between 2021 and 2025
  2. Retrieved on May 5, 2025, from bloomberg.com/business-schools/william-and-mary-mason 
  3. Retrieved on July 29, 2025, from princetonreview.com/business-school-rankings?rankings=best-professors
  4. Retrieved on May 5, 2025, from bls.gov/ooh/math/operations-research-analysts.htm 
  5. Retrieved on May 5, 2025, from bls.gov/ooh/business-and-financial/market-research-analysts.htm 
  6. Retrieved on May 5, 2025, from money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/best-business-jobs 
  7. Retrieved on May 5, 2025, from bls.gov/ooh/business-and-financial/management-analysts.htm