MSBA Applications | Turning Your Passions into an Edge for a Dream-School Offer? Business Analytics Applications in the US and Singapore

In this interview, we took a close look at Danny's study-abroad application experience and career planning. He shared his journey from transferring from National Chiayi University to National Central University, an exchange in Shanghai and a year of work experience along the way, to finally choosing a master's in business analytics at the University of Southern California (USC). Danny's story is full of challenges and growth, and he also shared the reasoning behind many of his decisions, which should be a real inspiration for younger students about to start their own study-abroad journey 🙌

Hi! I'm Danny. I graduated from National Central University's Department of Finance in 2022. I spent my first year at National Chiayi University, but the environment wasn't a good fit for me, so I transferred to NCU's finance department.

At NCU I was very involved in extracurriculars, especially making music and rapping. I joined the hip-hop club and organized and took part in many music events. These experiences helped me find my interests outside of class, and I released my own tracks. They not only enriched my life outside class but also let me meet many like-minded friends.

Why I decided to study abroad

In my second year at NCU, I started thinking about my future career and the idea of studying abroad took shape. It was confirmed when I went to Shanghai on exchange. As a big international city, Shanghai inspired me a lot and showed me broader career possibilities and more opportunities. That made me determined to go out and explore, keep broadening my horizons, and look at different industries and career options to open up possibilities for my future.

During my internship in Shanghai, I worked on business analytics and data analytics projects. These internships taught me a lot of professional knowledge, built up my skills and made my career direction clearer. They made me realize that if I wanted a bigger career breakthrough, studying abroad was the inevitable choice.

Applying and choosing schools

I applied to several schools in the US and Singapore at the same time, including USC, UIUC, BU, the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU). In the end, I chose USC's master's program in business analytics.

I think when choosing a master's program you should focus on the curriculum rather than the school. I had many reasons for choosing USC, but three main factors:

• Program length: USC's business analytics program runs 16 months, which is an advantage over programs that are only 10 to 12 months. A longer program not only gave me more time to adjust to a new environment but also more time to prepare for internships and job hunting.

• Career resources: USC's huge alumni network has close ties with industry, and the school also offers plenty of career resources, which should be a big help for students' careers after graduation.

• Curriculum and ranking: USC's business analytics program ranks near the top in the US, and the curriculum includes both theory and plenty of hands-on opportunities.

GRE and IELTS prep

I faced many challenges while preparing to study abroad. First was standardized test prep. Between the GMAT and GRE, I chose the GRE, studied at a prep school for two months, and finally got the score I wanted. Why the GRE? There are two reasons:

• In terms of difficulty, the GRE and GMAT are about the same.

• In terms of application requirements, many BA programs in engineering schools, such as Berkeley's MS Analytics and Columbia's MSBA, only consider the GRE and not GMAT scores, but I've never seen a program that refuses to look at the GRE. So taking the GRE without a doubt gives you more options.

So I'd say that if you want to apply for BA, I quite firmly recommend the GRE. IELTS or TOEFL is your own choice; basically you just need to clear the minimum. With an IELTS 7, most schools shouldn't block your application.

For the GRE I did take classes at a prep school, but I feel they helped me only to a fairly limited extent. It's more like "the master opens the door, but the practice is up to you". The biggest help the prep school gave me was resources; the key was still my own effort. And since I had already taken IELTS before I started preparing and my score was OK, I didn't prepare for it again.

Application documents

For application documents, the trend now is mostly essays, with only a few schools requiring an SOP and PS, so preparing your essays is very important. There are usually two ways to write them:

• Option 1: write a complete SOP first, then write your answers to each essay's questions based on it.

• Option 2: first sort every school's essay questions into categories, rank them by how often each type appears, then plan your answer for each type, and finally complete the essays.

I went with the second. Its advantage is that you can answer the questions more precisely, and by tweaking your answers you can reuse the content across several essays, which greatly improves efficiency while keeping the quality up.

On top of that, to make sure my documents were good, besides revising them over and over myself, I asked friends and professional writing consultants to review and edit them. I really did find and fix a lot of blind spots I hadn't seen or thought of before. After all, this is one of the most important parts of the application, so I strongly recommend getting professional editing to help polish this part.

Interview prep and process

To prepare for interviews, I collected lots of past interview questions from platforms like Xiaohongshu (RED) and Zhuimeng (追夢網). After that, it was much like how I prepared my essays: I prioritized questions by frequency, grouped similar ones into categories, and prepared consistent or similar answers for each category.

In the actual interviews, I found that US schools really value diversity. Interviews at universities abroad are quite different from those at Taiwanese universities. Besides professional and academic questions, they focus much more on your personality and extracurricular experience. I got the feeling their interviews weren't just to test students' abilities but also to get to know them from a more complete angle, and that let me be myself comfortably. For example, in my NUS interview, the interviewer's first question was "Do you want to talk about your music?" They had already watched my music on YouTube beforehand, and even skipped some of the quantitative and statistics questions that come up in interview reports, just to understand more deeply how I organized my music projects from zero to one, led a team and reached our goals. That unusual interview made a strong impression on me.

The biggest difficulty in the application process

I think the hardest part to overcome wasn't the difficulty of the tests themselves, writing the SOP or the interviews, but adapting and adjusting mentally, and I think that's also the most important part. First, preparing to apply abroad is not a path most people choose. Unlike the college entrance exam or grad school exams back in school, where you have comrades fighting alongside you, you usually face the tough application process alone. So while handling tests and documents, it's important to learn how to adjust your mindset and cope with loneliness. Second, there's the endless loop of anxiety about the unknown: not knowing when you'll finally escape the GRE grind, whether your school list is unrealistic, whether the version of you in your documents strays from what schools expect, and so on. None of these have a certain or standard answer. So the conclusion I drew from the process is that you should separate what's within your control from what isn't. For what you can control, plan ahead to make sure you get the result you want. For what you can't, like the things I mentioned above, set a stop-loss line and be ready to let go when it's time. Don't overthink it.

How my experience helped my application

On experience that strengthens an MSBA application, I'll talk about it from professional and non-professional angles:

• Professional: I think schools value these three professional abilities: a foundation in statistical analysis, fluency in programming languages, and practical work experience.

• Non-professional: this is your soft skills and personal traits, such as extracurriculars, unusual interests, and cross-language and cross-cultural experience.

One big realization I had while applying is that in professional skills there will always be people stronger than you, so you need to show the one-of-a-kind you from the non-professional side. That's how you stand out from the crowd and get seen and remembered.

Advice for younger students without a related background who want to apply for an MSBA

An MSBA is an interdisciplinary program in itself, so not having a related background isn't a problem. But if you want to aim for higher-ranked, more competitive schools, I think the most important thing is still impressive internship or work experience, such as working at a large multinational, doing data-analytics-related work, or startup experience. These are all things you can plan and prepare for step by step during college.

A few words for younger students with the same goal

💡 Be confident, you have to be confident. You're so much stronger than you think! 💡

As I said earlier, the most important thing in the application process is keeping a steady mindset. Instead of competing with others on what you don't have, focus on the strengths you already have and show them sincerely and confidently. Good results will follow naturally!

Danny's story shows how he thought through choosing schools and programs and preparing his applications, and we believe his reasoning can be a useful reference for anyone getting ready to apply abroad. His experience also shows how important it is for applicants to manage their mindset and discover their strengths. Only with a healthy mind will you have enough energy to face the challenges of documents, tests and interviews!

After reading this, do you understand MSBA applications better? Feel free to share any thoughts in the comments below 😀

If you have questions for Danny, feel free to message him on LinkedIn or Instagram!

👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hsuan-jen-ko-3228a21b9/

👉 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rennnnnn_____?igsh=ajltczZ0bnF5ZmRy