OSU MS BAnDS Students Rank in Top 5 at National Competition
Wednesday, December 1, 2021
Media Contact: Bailey Stacy | Marketing and Communications, Coordinator | 405-744-2700 | bailey.stacy@okstate.edu
Oklahoma State University students Britton Firth, Conrad Harker, Shelby Moses and Weston Parker from the Spears School of Business master’s in business analytics program scored in the top five at the Humana-Mays Healthcare Analytics Case Competition, hosted by the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University on Nov. 11.
For the third year in a row, OSU students finished in the top 10 percent of the highly competitive event that allows master’s degree students to showcase analytical skills by solving real-world business problems utilizing healthcare data.
This year, more than 750 master’s level students competed virtually, representing 75 major universities in the U.S.
“Coming into this competition, my team and I knew it would be quite the commitment,” Harker said. “Luckily for us, the Business Analytics and Data Science program readily prepared us for what was to come. We spent multiple weekends, nights and any spare time we could to develop a competitive analysis for Humana.
“Being the first OSU team to make it into the finals of this competition meant a lot to us, as well as our cohort. We were able to show what our program has to offer at a national level and I am so thankful for all those who have supported us. I am particularly thankful for my teammates — Britton, Shelby and Weston, — they are amazing people and wonderful to work with.”
The team of OSU students analyzed data to determine a plan to reduce the public’s hesitancy about the COVID-19 vaccination. After receiving the data Sept. 15, the students had just a few weeks to analyze it and create a predictive model that would explain their analysis results.
“I am thankful for the time and energy that each of my team members dedicated to the case competition,” Firth said. “This project was a great opportunity to challenge myself and work with a large data set coming from a real business. I am proud of our work and our final project submission.”
The top five finalists in the competition were Georgia Tech, New York University, Boston University, OSU and University of Rochester.
“This is a very tough competition drawing teams from big name schools all over the U.S. and this is the third year that students from our program participated in the competition,” said Dr. Goutam Chakraborty, SAS Professor of Marketing Analytics and director of the MS in Business Analytics and Data Science program. “The last few years, our teams only made to the top 50. This is the first time we cracked the top five ranking and I am so very proud of each of the team members. They worked extremely hard to get the team to earn this coveted ranking.”
Visit the website to learn more about OSU’s MS BAnDS program.