Graduate / The art of storytelling - Texas MSBA essay prompt [3]

Hi, following is my response the the essay question
Why is the Texas McCombs MS Business Analytics the next logical step for you?
How do you hope to develop, both personally and professionally, during this one-year program? (maximum 500 words):

I believe what truly makes us human is the art of storytelling.
Whether it is a whodunit that analytically investigates outliers in the data, an adventure that follows user journey or an epic that outlines the story of millions of customers and imparts invaluable lessons for businesses to learn from - data can tell beautiful stories and I intend to master this craft.

My interest in the field of analytics was kindled while I was pursuing my Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering at one of India's premier institutes, BITS Pilani. The curriculum gave me a solid quantitative foundation in the fields of Computer Programming, Linear Algebra, Statistics and Advanced Calculus. It was while working on my final year project at Unilever R&D, that I learnt how the fourth industrial revolution is changing age-old industries.

Determined to pursue the relatively new but promising field of analytics, I jumped headfirst and joined PhonePe (a fintech startup based in Bangalore). Undergoing a steep learning curve I worked on a plethora of projects - from predicting payment system downtimes to clustering models. Having acquired invaluable analytical skills in the short, but exciting span of 16 months, I got an opportunity to be a part of Disney (streaming) as a product analyst.

Providing data-driven insights directly to the leadership at this Fortune 100 company, I realized how data science will change storytelling forever. I worked on a model that displayed different thumbnails (for the same movie) to customers based on their affinity towards an actor, color or language among other factors. This improved the click-through significantly. Although this was nothing new in the field of data science, it was an epiphanic moment for me. My professional skill set had converged with my passion for storytelling.

This series of fortunate events has made me a very competent analyst. However, to achieve my goal of quantifying the science of storytelling, I needed a suitable program which would give me the theoretical background and the right opportunities. After extensive research, I was elated to find out how perfect the MS in Business Analytics degree at UT Austin was for me!

As correctly mentioned by Abhinaya Ananthakrishnan, class of '19, Data Analytics Manager at Meta, "The MSBA program teaches the students very well how to translate mathematical concepts into models that can, in turn, help solve real world problems." These lessons in the form of courses like Analytics for Unstructured Data will equip me with the techniques of sentiment analysis and help me understand user engagement using computer vision - a field I intend to pursue fervidly.

The invaluable opportunities that come with becoming a longhorn will help me further develop as a professional data scientist in the field of media and entertainment. The guidance I can receive from industry leaders in the advisory council, along with the learnings from the very diverse group of highly qualified students on campus is something that will help me in my journey to change the way stories are written and told.