My Western Ivey MSc Business Analytics Application Essay

Question 1: Explain to the Admissions Committee your decision to pursue the Ivey Business Analytics. Why are you an ideal candidate and how would the program help you achieve your goals.

I am an ideal candidate

Growing up in a country like Nigeria where multinational organizations such as PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler (popularly known as KPMG), Accenture, McKinsey, Shell, Chevron a are dominating Nigeria while domestic companies are barely thriving to be successful and carve a niche for themselves. This could be attributed to the fact that these international organizations have realized the importance of data and business analytics as a contributing factor towards growth and development while domestic companies are lagging behind in understanding and grasping the importance of data and business analytics and therefore have not embraced it.

In the course of obtaining my degree in Economics, I realized that all companies ranging from sole proprietorship to multinational organizations have to potential to become successful. Some of these companies fail to carry out research either in the process of starting up or expanding a business which leads to business failure. Mandatory research should be carried out to discover market trends, consumer demographics, and business competition among other factors in order to be able to predict and create successful business strategies. Business analysts are limited in supply while the demand for business analysts by organizations has exceeded its supply which led me to the decision to fulfill a business need by obtaining a master's in business analytics.

I am an ideal candidate for the Ivey Business Analytics program because I have been able to gain quantitative and qualitative knowledge through my degree in Economics about how business and economic decisions are based on several factors which requires data to be acquired and analyzed and factors could range from consumer loyalty, consumer spending patterns, product performance analysis for businesses and inflation rate, foreign exchange rate, minimum wage rate for an economy.

My short term career goal is to go into management consulting and help organizations understand the importance of business analytics and create a success, growth and sustainability strategy with the use of data and business analytics. The Ivey Masters in Business Analytics will be able to provide me with the knowledge, understanding and training involved with data and business analytics and fully equip me for the challenges of the business world which is why I chose the program. I especially look forward to the Ivey Analytics Lab because it provides a platform for real life and hands on experience regarding what business analytics entails in the business world. I also look forward to learning about big data analytics, programming and other courses which would be able to give me an edge in the labor market, help in the fulfillment of my short term career goal and also in the growth of my career. Finally, the Ivey Business Analytics program will be able to equip me as an individual with the ability to provide solutions to problems relating to data and business analytics.

Funmi, your first sentence doesn't make sense. What does growing up in Nigeria have to do with the success of the multinational corporations that have in your country? You need to rethink that sentence and either improve upon its content or lose it because it doesn't gel with the rest of the essay. Since you are applying for admission to a masters degree course, you need to focus less on your academic training and introduce the real world application of your Economics degree based upon your current profession and how it has hindered your progress or desire to increase the use of Big Data in improving the local business sector of Nigeria. That is the reason you wish to pursue this degree but I do not read very much regarding the professional justification for this on your part. You said you learned these information as part of your pursuit of your Economics degree. Does that mean you are not working at all in this field? In which case, you won't be a very good candidate for the MSc because it is a profession intensive 16 month course.

One of the main reasons, in my opinion that you should be interested in the Ivey degree should have something to do with "Hack the case" and the IAL placement assignment. Hack the Case gives you real world experience within 10 days of exposure to companies such as Deloitte while IAL's placement assignment will allow you to work legally in the country in order to help you gain applicable experience that you can take back with you for implementation in your home country. Refocus the latter part of the essay to explain how these programs can help you reach your career goals.

Thank you for your reply. The MSc is geared towards individuals with 0-2 years experience. I am currently in the process of obtaining a job most likely in a banking institution as there are limited jobs which is why I focused on my academics training. What do you suggest I do.