MBA Major in Business Analytics

The Business Analytics MBA major is designed to build deep competency in the skills needed to implement and oversee data-driven business decisions, including (i) collecting, managing and describing datasets, (ii) forming inferences and predictions from data, and (iii) making optimal and robust decisions. Business analytics makes extensive use of statistical analysis, and the applications of business analytics span all functional areas.

Business analytics has emerged in recent years as a powerful and required capability for firms in competitive markets. The quantity, quality and diversity of available data have never been greater, which has created new and significant opportunities for organizations to use data to improve their decisions with respect to both internal resources as well as external interactions with suppliers and customers.

Students choosing the Business Analytics MBA major are ideally suited for the growing set of careers broadly defined under the header of “data science” with responsibilities for managing and analyzing data. In addition, the major provides an excellent complement to students who choose to focus on one of the functional areas of business (e.g., accounting, finance, marketing, operations).

Requirements for the Major:

STAT Requirements: Students must also complete the required fixed core requirement in Statistics (STAT 6130, or STAT 6210 by placement). Waiving the STAT fixed core requirement entirely fulfills the Statistics fixed core requirement for this major.

OIDD Requirements: Students must complete OIDD 6120, and either OIDD 6110 or OIDD 6150.

Major Electives: In addition to the STAT and OIDD requirements above, students must complete 4 credit units from the set of approved courses listed below. Courses taken on a pass/fail basis cannot be counted toward the Business Analytics major. A maximum of 1 CU of an Independent Study Project (ISP) can count toward the Business Analytics major with advisor approval.
*OIDD 8990 – 1 CU may count towards the major, subject to advisor pre-approval

MBA Major Advisors:

Richard Waterman, Statistics Department

Sergei Savin, Operations, Information & Decisions Department

Approved Wharton coursework to count towards Business Analytics major:

Approved Wharton coursework to count towards Business Analytics major:
ACCT 7420 – Financial Reporting and Business Analysis
ACCT 7470 – Financial Statements & Disclosure Analysis

BEPP 7800 – Applied Data Analysis
BEPP 6130/BEPP 8930/BEPP 8970 – Business Analytics with Data for Non-Coders

FNCE 7050 – Investment Management
FNCE 7170 – Financial Derivatives
FNCE 7370 – Data Science for Finance
FNCE 7800 – Fin-Tech

HCMG 8570 – Healthcare Data & Analytics

LGST 6420 – Big Data, Big Responsibilities: The Law and Ethics of Business Analytics

MGMT 7930 – People Analytics

MKTG 7120 – Data and Analysis for Marketing Decisions
MKTG 7520 – Marketing Analytics (Students cannot count both MKTG 7520 and MKTG 8520 towards the major; they can only count ONE of the two courses)
MKTG 7540 – Pricing Policy
MKTG 7710 – Models for Marketing Strategy
MKTG 7760 – Applied Probability Models in Marketing
MKTG 8090 – Experiments for Business Decision Making
MKTG 8520 – Marketing Analytics (Students cannot count both MKTG 7520 and MKTG 8520 towards the major; they can only count ONE of the two courses)

OIDD 5250  – Thinking with Models: Business Analytics for Energy and Sustainability
OIDD 6360 – Scaling Operations
OIDD 6420 – Analytics for Services
OIDD 6430 – Analytics for Revenue Management
OIDD 6530 – Mathematical Modeling & its Applications in Finance
OIDD 6580 – Service Operations Management
OIDD 6590 – Advanced Topics: Operations Analytics/Supply Chain Analytics
OIDD 6620 – Enabling Technologies
OIDD 6630 – Databases for Analytics
OIDD 6670 – A.I., Business & Society
OIDD 8980 – Understanding Behavior with Big Data

STAT 7010 – Modern Data Mining
STAT 7050 – Statistical Computing with R
STAT 7100 – Data Collection and Acquisition: Strategies and Platforms
STAT 7110 – Forecasting Methods for Management
STAT 7220 – Predictive Analytics for Business
STAT 7230 – Applied Machine Learning in Business
STAT 7240 – Text Analytics
STAT 7250 – Sports and Gaming Analytics
STAT 7700 – Data Analytics and Statistical Computing
STAT 7770 – Intro to Python for Data Science
STAT 9740 – Modern Regression

Students may select at most 1 credit unit of courses from outside of Wharton.*

Approved Non-Wharton courses are as follows:

Penn Design

MUSA 5000 – Spatial Statistics and Data Analysis
MUSA 5090 – Geospatial Cloud Computing & Visualization
MUSA 5500 – Geospatial Data Science in Python

Penn Engineering

CIS 5190 – Intro to Machine Learning
CIS 5200 – Machine Learning
CIS 5450 – Big Data Analytics
CIS 5500 – Database and Information Systems
CIT 5900 – Prog Lang and Techniques
CIT 5910 – Introduction to Software Development
CIT 5930 – Intro to Computer Systems
CIT 5940 – Data Structures and Software Design
CIT 5950 – Algorithms and Computation

Penn Graduate School of Education

EDUC 5760 – Applied Research Methods to Inform Policy and Practice
EDUC 6683 – Survey Methods & Design
EDUC 7667 – Regression and Analysis of Variance
EDUC 7668 – Measurement Theory and Test Construction
EDUC 7677 – Structural Equations Modeling

Penn Social Policy & Practice

NPLD 7200 – Data Analysis for Social Impact