Introduction to UC San Diego MSBA
The UC San Diego Business Analytics program stands at the forefront of cutting-edge education in the rapidly evolving field of data analytics and business intelligence. Rooted in a vibrant academic environment and fueled by innovation, the program offers a dynamic platform for aspiring professionals and data enthusiasts to delve deep into the realm of big data, statistical modeling, and data-driven decision-making.
UC San Diego’s esteemed faculty and researchers provide an unparalleled learning experience, blending theoretical knowledge with practical applications, ensuring that students are well-equipped to tackle real-world business challenges. With a curriculum tailored to the demands of modern industries, the program not only imparts essential technical skills but also fosters critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication abilities. Graduates emerge with a comprehensive understanding of data analytics, poised to make a significant impact in diverse sectors, ranging from finance and healthcare to marketing and technology.
3.44
Mean GPA
3
Semesters
$100K
Avg. Cost of Study
33
Weeks Duration
$100K
Avg. Salary
Why Study MSBA at UC San Diego?
32
QS Top MSBA
Choosing the UC San Diego Business Analytics program is an investment in a transformative educational journey that opens doors to a myriad of career opportunities. In an era where data drives strategic decision-making across industries, businesses are actively seeking professionals who can translate data into actionable insights.
This program provides an immersive and comprehensive learning experience, equipping students with advanced analytics tools and techniques. Studying at UC San Diego means access to a rich intellectual community, cutting-edge research facilities, and a network of industry connections that extend far beyond the classroom.
Students not only engage with expert faculty but also collaborate with peers from diverse backgrounds, fostering a stimulating environment for learning and innovation. Moreover, the program’s focus on practical application through real-world projects and internships ensures that graduates are not just well-versed in theory but also adept at addressing practical business challenges.
By choosing UC San Diego Business Analytics, students embark on a transformative academic journey that empowers them to become leaders in the data-driven future of business.
UC San Diego MSBA Program Costs + Living Expenses
$71,712
Avg. Cost of Tuition
+
$29,000
Avg. Living Cost
Avg. Cost of Study
The estimated fees and cost of attendance for the UC San Diego Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) program for both California residents and non-California residents are detailed as follows. The total cost of attendance for the program is $96,007 for both resident types. This cost includes tuition and fees for the Summer 2022 (5 weeks) and the Academic Year (33 weeks), which amount to $71,712. It also covers housing and meals, which are estimated at $20,948, personal expenses at $1,824, and transportation expenses at $1,523. Additionally, the UC San Diego Health Insurance Fee of $4,607 is included in the cost of attendance.
It’s important to note that the Cost of Attendance does not include the Document fee of $100. However, it does include a $150 annual Rady Student Activity fee and the UC Student Health Insurance Plan (SHIP) fee of $4,005, which can be opted out of. Non-California resident and international students are not charged a Non-Resident Supplemental Tuition cost. They may be considered for Federal Direct Loans only and will have a one-time International Student Visa Administration fee of $100.
The program’s tuition is based on a per-credit unit cost of $1,295, with the academic year requiring 50 credit units for completion. It’s worth noting that living expenses can vary based on factors such as on-campus or off-campus living and the presence of dependents. Additional information about housing options can be found on the UC San Diego Off-Campus Housing Services website. Please keep in mind that the listed cost of attendance represents an average estimate of student expenses.
Employment Prospects : UC San Diego MSBA
Employed within 6 months of graduation
Avg. Salary
Most Sought-after Jobs
Data Scientist
Data Analyst
Product Analyst
Graduates of the UC San Diego Business Analytics program are highly sought after across diverse industries, owing to their proficiency in data analysis and strategic decision-making. Here’s how the program opens doors to promising career paths in various sectors:
Technology: UC San Diego Business Analytics alumni find themselves in high demand within the technology sector. They are well-equipped to lead and manage engineering teams, develop innovative products and services, and solve complex technical challenges. Tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon actively recruit graduates from the program to drive technological innovation.
Finance: The finance industry recognizes the valuable skills possessed by UC San Diego Business Analytics graduates. Their expertise in data analysis and financial projection makes them indispensable for roles involving portfolio management and financial decision-making. Prominent financial institutions like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JP Morgan Chase are eager to employ these skilled professionals.
Consulting: Graduates of the Business Analytics program are well-suited for careers in consulting, where they excel in solving intricate business problems. Consulting firms such as McKinsey & Company, Bain & Company, and Boston Consulting Group actively seek UC San Diego Business Analytics alumni to provide valuable insights and solutions to their clients.
Healthcare: The healthcare industry benefits significantly from the data-driven skills of UC San Diego Business Analytics graduates. They play a vital role in improving healthcare delivery, developing innovative medical devices, and efficiently managing healthcare organizations. Leading healthcare companies, including Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and Abbott Laboratories, value the contributions of these professionals.
Energy: In the energy sector, UC San Diego Business Analytics graduates tackle the challenges of energy production, distribution, and innovation. They are instrumental in developing new energy technologies and efficiently managing energy companies. Renowned energy corporations such as Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and Shell actively recruit graduates from the program to address complex energy issues.
Sustainability: Sustainability-focused companies also recognize the expertise of UC San Diego Business Analytics graduates in addressing sustainability challenges, developing eco-friendly technologies, and managing sustainable businesses. Companies like Tesla, Beyond Meat, and General Electric value the role these professionals play in advancing sustainability goals.
The program’s graduates can expect an impressive average salary of $130,000 per year, showcasing the high demand and market value of their skills. However, it’s important to note that salary levels may vary depending on factors such as the chosen industry, level of experience, and specific job title. In summary, the UC San Diego Business Analytics program equips graduates with the skills and knowledge needed to excel in a wide range of industries, offering promising career opportunities and competitive earning potential.
Eligibility Criteria for UC San Diego MSBA
Academic Qualifications:
Successful applicants to the Rady MSBA program will have either:
- An undergraduate degree in a quantitative discipline such as mathematics, economics, statistics, physics, engineering, or computer science,
– or – - Relevant work experience, a strong quantitative foundation, a curiosity about data and how it can solve business problems, and familiarity with the use of quantitative information in the workplace.
Students with a non-quantitative undergraduate degree and less than five years of work experience will be considered on an exceptional basis if:
- Their work experience is in the area of business analytics or marketing research
– or – - They have developed a strong quantitative background through additional coursework or relevant work experience.
- Their work experience is in the area of business analytics or marketing research
Documents required : UC San Diego MSBA
- Online Application: Students have to submit an online application form at the official website.
- Application Fee: Students need to submit their application fees.
- Transcripts: Upload a PDF or Word document of your transcripts directly into the online application, or you can have your academic records sent to us from the institutions at which you studied.
- Resume/CV: Add your resume.
- Statement of Purpose: Reasons or intentions for pursuing studies in this program, including a description of prior experience.
- 3 Letters of Recommendation: Two letters of recommendation are required; Recommendations must be submitted online.
- Official GRE Test Scores: Students have to submit their GRE Test Scores.
- ELP Scores: Students have to submit their English language proficiency scores like IELTS, TOEFL, or other test scores.
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Scholarships Available : UC San Diego MSBA
Scholarships Administered by UC San Diego
Entering First-Year SCHOLARSHIPS
Learn about scholarships that are administered by UC San Diego for high school seniors and entering first-year students.
Entering Transfer StudentsSCHOLARSHIPS
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Continuing UndergraduatesSCHOLARSHIPS
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Enrolled Transfer StudentsSCHOLARSHIPS
Learn about scholarships that are administered by UC San Diego for currently enrolled transfer students.
Undergraduate Research Scholarships (URS) – SummerSCHOLARSHIPS
Find information about UC San Diego’s Undergraduate Research Scholarships (URS) program. Several different scholarships are available across multiple research areas.
Study AbroadSCHOLARSHIPS
Learn about scholarships for study abroad and exchange programs.
Hope Scholars Program for former foster youth (formerly Guardian Scholars)SCHOLARSHIPS
The Hope Scholars Program supports former foster youth by awarding scholarships up to $5,000 per academic year to eligible UC San Diego undergraduate students.
Middle Class ScholarshipSCHOLARSHIPS
Learn about the Middle Class Scholarship offered by UC San Diego.
National Competitive ScholarshipsSCHOLARSHIPS
Review the list of national competitive scholarships and see which scholarships you may qualify for.
Outside Agency ScholarshipsSCHOLARSHIPS
Check to see if you qualify for scholarships offered by private agencies.
ROTC FundsOUTSIDE RESOURCES
Learn how to pay your bill using ROTC funds.
The San Diego FoundationSCHOLARSHIPS
Opportunities are available for San Diego County residents pursuing a higher education locally and nationally.
Private and Foundation ScholarshipsSCHOLARSHIPS
Noncitizen students may be eligible to apply for many private scholarships, depending on the eligibility requirements set forth in the application, and any donor restrictions or donor intent.
Specializations & Electives Offered
Elective Courses:
MGTA 402 – Data-Driven Communications (2)
This project-based course explores and develops applied communication skills needed for analytical professions to make the business case. Students work individually and in teams to develop persuasive messaging to communicate complex technical information and business insights to, and between, technical experts and business decision-makers.
MGTA 414 – Web Data Analytics (2)
This course focuses on collecting, drawing inference, and making business decisions based on data. It will cover tools — Python, APIs, and NLP — to collect, manipulate, and analyze data from the web and other sources, with the objective of making students data savvy and comfortable with deriving insights from real-world, large datasets. Students will be exposed to the power of clickstream analysis and the possibilities that can be unleashed from industry applications of web data analytics.
MGTA 415 – Analyzing Unstructured Data (4)
Unstructured data such as text, images and video are routinely collected by companies and other organizations. The complex nature and scale of data such as this requires specialized analytics frameworks. In this course we discuss and use tools that empower decision makers to extract actionable
MGTA 456 – Supply Chain Analytics (4)
This course focuses on improving the performance of production and service operations, as well as supply chains, through the combination of data and analytical tools including statistics, forecasting, and optimization. Students will learn to employ analytics in capacity and distribution facility planning and contracting; how to determine data collection requirements for dynamic management of inventory levels; and how to improve revenue management under demand learning. Prerequisites: MGTA 451, MGTA 452, MGTA 453, and restricted to master’s of business analytics students or with department and instructor approval.
MGTA 457 – Business Intelligence Systems (2)
In this course we will cover the principles of designing and building dashboards and data visualizations. We will leverage Tableau’s library of resources to demonstrate best practices for data visualization and data storytelling.
MGTA 458 – Experiments in Firms (4)
Students will learn to design and run experiments to guide policy and business decisions. They will learn to distinguish between a correlation and a causal effect and also to critically evaluate causal claims based on nonexperimental data. Prerequisites: MGTA 451, MGTA 452, MGTA 453, and restricted to master’s of business analytics students or with department and instructor approval.
MGTA 459 – Managerial Judgment and Decision-Making (4)
Decision making is difficult with scarce resources, inexact information, and conflicting stakeholder agendas (i.e., most of the time). Students will use advanced behavioral research to gain a competitive advantage, by improving their decisions and their understanding of how others decide. Prerequisites: MGTA 451, MGTA 452, MGTA 453, and restricted to master’s of business analytics students or with department and instructor approval.
MGTA 460 – Business Analytics Project Management (2)
Many projects fail to produce valuable results, are over budget, or not finished on time. This course will teach students how to set and manage goals and expectations of the team and of the executive sponsors for business analytics projects. Prerequisites: MGTA 451, MGTA 452, MGTA 453, and restricted to master’s of business analytics students or with department and instructor approval.
MGTA 461 (CSE 258) – Web Mining and Recommender Systems (4)
This course is devoted to current methods for recommender systems, data mining, and predictive analytics. No previous background in machine learning is required, but all participants should be comfortable with programming (all example code will be in Python), and with basic optimization and linear algebra.
For additional information see: https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/classes/fa19/cse258-a/
MGTA 462A – Big Data Technology & Business Application (2)
Analyzing large-scale and complex data is an integral part of many business applications today. This course is designed to provide students with the skills of handling large volumes of data through database systems. The students will learn fundamental operations like data cleaning and the extract-transform-load (ETL) process that collects data from external sources into a database, advanced levels of SQL to perform complex queries as well as in-database analytics, and principles of data warehouse design for enterprise-level data analytics.
MGTA 462B – Big Data Technology & Business Application (2)
Analyzing large-scale and complex data is an integral part of many business applications today. This course is designed to provide students with skills and knowledge to perform analytics at scale. Students will learn the steps in the analytics process used to gather, prepare, process, and evaluate data. Skills and technologies to perform scalable analytics on big data using distributed computing and cloud-based tools will be the focus of the course. Hands-on experience will be provided with the Spark distributed platform and AWS cloud-based analytics. Through assignments and a project, students will apply the tools and techniques they learn in the course to leverage big data.
MGTA 463 – Fraud Analytics (4)
In this course you will learn everything you need to know to build statistical/machine learning models to find fraud in data events. We will cover the basics of building fraud models: understanding the problem dynamics, modes of fraud, data analysis and preparation, building expert variables/features, different algorithm choices, and measurements of model goodness. There will be five homework problems and two group projects, with group sizes typically four to six people. We will talk through in detail several examples of fraud problems and solutions, including tax fraud, application identity fraud, healthcare claims fraud, and credit card payment fraud. We will cover the topic of statistical modeling with a drill-down into all steps to building machine learning models. There will be a high-level discussion of a wide variety of statistical modeling methods, including linear/logistic regressions, clustering, neural nets, trees, SVM, random forests, deep learning, boosting and bagging. The overall fraud solution emphasis will be on creating expert variables/features which are the key to building successful fraud algorithms. For each of the two projects the teams will build the fraud algorithms and prepare a presentation and a proper business report, which can then be useful tools for future job interviews. Students are expected to have good backgrounds in math and statistics, and a working ability in any modern programming language that can interact with open source machine learning algorithms, such as R or Python.
MGTA 479 – Pricing Analytics (4)
This class covers the key drivers for making data-driven pricing decisions. Price setting is one of the most crucial of all tactical marketing decisions. It involves a detailed understanding of both supply-side (e.g. costs) and demand-side factors (e.g., consumer willingness to pay). In this course, we will approach the pricing decision as an intersection of economic, strategic, and behavioral considerations. We will cover the data required and analytical techniques to make optimal pricing decisions. We will cover tools and techniques for primary (e.g., survey) data as well as for secondary data (e.g., POS scanner data). The course will consist of lectures, where we will discuss the theory of pricing, and in-class labs, where we use data to determine the appropriate price to charge. The class will be heavily analytical and a good working knowledge of R, an understanding of regressions, and predictive modeling are required.
FAQs About UC San Diego MSBA
How is UC San Diego MSBA different from MBA?
Both Business Analytics and Data Science students learn similar tools and concepts, develop skills in machine learning and statistics, and work with structured and unstructured data. The key difference lies in the application domain.
Business Analytics students apply these skills to solve real-world business problems, starting from a business need and using data science principles like statistics, machine learning, and optimization to guide company actions. Our graduates are “Business Data Scientists”.
In contrast, a Data Science Master’s program emphasizes the mathematical and theoretical underpinnings of these methods, focusing on the modeling mechanics and potential applications across a wide range of domains.
What is the Capstone Project?
The capstone project is the culminating experience in the program where you will apply your experience and new skills to a real world business problem posed by an outside or campus organization.
Is a dual degree allowed?
Rady does not currently offer dual-degree programs.
Are three-year degrees accepted?
The FT MSBA program accepts applicants with a 3-year undergraduate degree. Equivalency to a 4-year degree will be evaluated by the UC San Diego Graduate Division Admissions team if nominated for admission to the program.