I recently just accepted my offer to Babson College, however, I was also offered admission from Bentley University at a very similar price. I plan on majoring in Business Analytics at Babson, but had I gone to Bentley, I would have done Data Analytics. My dream is working in a major-league baseball front office analytics department crunching the numbers, so I wanted a degree focused on analyzing data both in a financial sense (there is obviously lots of money involved in MLB, but I also need a “real-world” backup plan should my dream come up short) and a statistical sense (advanced baseball metrics, other real-world variables to be analyzed). I chose Babson because it seems to have a more robust reputation and my parents liked it more, but I am having serious second doubts that my career aspirations are not as entrepreneurial as Babson leans and that Bentley’s offer is more of what I am after. Can someone relieve my anxious doubts or should I quickly work to reverse my decision? Please be honest. I really need the help!
“Entrepreneurial thinking” is important to all business environments, so I prefer it to Bentley’s more “bean counting” approach.
Business analytics is the application of data analytics to business, so Babson’s program is more applied, and less general, but it appears that the application area is your area of interest.
As a computer person, I would like to see more of a computer emphasis in both programs, but Babson offers cross enrollment with Olin and Wellesley. In general, data sets are getting too large to analyze them without computer assistance. I might try to take the intro programming courses at one of those two schools, as described in the IT concentration, they will be more theoretical, which may or may not be your cup of tea. I like that there is the applied machine learning class at Babson, it was a pleasant surprise for a business school.
Babson also has a course in sports applications and a consulting course with industry sponsors that include the Red Sox
It’s a very good choice actually. Plus, you get some electives, and here are some of particular interest, from the Statistical Modelling concentration.
QTM 2622 Sports Application of Mathematics
QTM 3615 Time Series Analysis and Forecasting
If Business Analytics is not number-crunching enough for you, you can easily switch majors to Statistical Modelling or any other concentration, or (especially if you have AP credit) you can have two concentrations.