November was a month of planning and preparing. It was perhaps the most hectic yet rewarding month so far. We were kept busy on all fronts, be it academics, job search, the practicum project or enjoying the last few weeks of fall before winter truly set in! 

Job Search 

Personally, November was the month I began prepping for interviews and shortlisting roles I found interesting. I had spent the first few months of the program exploring vastly different fields, and by November I had a good idea of what I wanted to do after graduation. The career services team organized quite a few networking events and coffee chats this month. My network on LinkedIn was also substantially larger by late November. One of the most memorable sessions was the Technical Interview Workshop hosted by Prof. Brian Keng. This session provided some great insights on what to expect and how to practice for technical interviews.  

Academics 

Now that we had settled back into attending in-person lectures, our courses started picking up steam with many assignments due each week. The month began with our very first pen-and-paper exam of the program for the RSM 8512 Midterm. In RSM 8411, we worked on two separate assignments using SQL and Tableau. We also had the opportunity to attend a very informative session on PowerBi with Dr. Yiming Xu.  

For future MMAs, this term will be the most useful when preparing for interviews. Each course covers the exact material you will be tested on, be it live coding in SQL or machine learning concepts, so pay attention! 

Case Competitions 

In addition to academics and interview prep, November also brought with it a lot of opportunities for activities outside the classroom. The Rotman Business Analytics Club (RBAC) held their second case competition of the year in partnership with SAS and Rogers. Participants had the opportunity to explore using the SAS Viya platform to model Customer Churn. This event was a great success with MMAs representing three of the five final teams. Outside of Rotman, I also had the opportunity to work on the UNB Data Analytics challenge and ultimately make it to the finals. Both these events helped me brush up on my presentation skills and work with some great people.  

The Practicum Project 

I was placed with Points for my practicum project. During November, we had numerous team meetings to get to know each other better and establish what we want to try out during the January Sprint. Our hosts at Points were gracious enough to provide us with sufficient information and data early on. This gave us a better idea about the expectations for the project and what we could reasonably accomplish over the next few months.  

The concepts we learned in class were also incredibly useful when it came to exploring and understanding the data. This practicum project gave us the opportunity to apply our coding and analytical skills on a large-scale, real-world dataset for the first time. 

Wrapping Up 

The end of November meant that our second term was rapidly coming to a close. We had the opportunity to work on the final projects with our intro term teams for one last time. The beginning of December also meant that it was winter, and we were almost halfway through the program. After such a busy month we were all looking forward to a relaxing winter break. However, we still had the final exams ahead of us. 

The Master of Management Analytics is designed to give students the advanced data management, analytics, and communication skills needed to become an analytics professional.