Mixed Feelings on Going from Blue to Red

During this year I have been trying to get into graduate school. Around the 20th of May I received a rejection letter from BYU saying that I was not admitted for the MISM program. It was sort of depressing knowing that I wouldn't return to my Alma Mater. No more BYU... So, my chapter at BYU finally comes to a close.

However, on the flip side, on the 29th of May I received an acceptance email from the University of Utah for their MSIS program. I consider myself rather lucky since I heard they were only accepting around 15 students and there were 3 spos left by the time I had applied (at least that's what I was told). While I am excited I am going to graduate school, I am a bit sad of some changes. Examples of a few things are tuition will be a lot higher, I have a slim chance of being a TA again, and they won't accept my graduate credits from BYU (funny thing is they assured me it wasn't a "rivalry thing" for denying me transfer credit). Even so, there are some positives to this new program. Since the program is rather new, I will be contributing to a new program. Another good thing is it'll be good to have a change of campus. While I won't be too familiar with the U, it's probably for the best that I'm going to have some new surrounding.

So, now that I have had my undergraduate from BYU and I'll have my graduate from Utah...what does this make me? A traitor to BYU? A spy for BYU? A mixed-breed of the two colleges? I suppose only time will tell. For now, I'll keep a low profile and see where the chips fall. This will be an interesting year for me.

Project Outcomes

It's nearing the end of the semester and I was finishing up some of my projects. One project was from my Web Analytics class. Dr. Liddle gave us quite a bit of freedom in choosing a project suitable for the class. I decided to talk to the independent study and figure out a project that could benefit them.

Turns out, BYU Independent Study uses Google Analytics. While it is set up rather nice, they don't have anyone hired to help them interpret the data they have. Because of that, they don't know who to market to, how to increase traffic, or what trends are occuring. With this information, I decided to think of a project that I could do to help them interpret all the data they currently have.

After a few days of planning, I finally thought of something they could use. I decided to create a spreadsheet that would take the CSV formatted data from Google and compare weekly data with the overall average of the data. For example, if the metric they want to view is of Unique Visitors they can see a weekly basis of how many unique visitors they are indeed getting for each week.

Once I had this idea, the coding frenzy began. I spent about a good three days of coding and testing until I finally got it to work. Since the data from Google can be a CSV file I decided to use Excel and VBA to create a spreadsheet that would automatically upload the data to the sheet. I used conditional formatting to display the weekly trends. In the end, I had a pretty good program. The only other interesting thing was this program could potentially be used for other sites other than BYU Independent Study. One improvement that I could implement (if I had more time) would be to autogenerate graphs. For now, I am proud of the project I have made and I think it will be very useful to them.

http://ce.byu.edu/is/site/courses/index.cfm

Applications, Essays, and More Money Spent

For the most part my college career has been rather smooth sailing. Even so, my internship for the summer requires a grad program. Last year I wasn't thinking of applying to a grad program. Now, that this internship requires one I placed a lot of weight on getting in the MISM. Turns out the MISM requires the GMAT. A minimum of a 550. Well, I thought I could reach that after taking a prep course. I spent a lot of time outside of class studying for that exam. For those of you who really know me I have been preparing a lot for it, while also trying to balance classes.

Anyways, I finally took the exam this past Saturday. Sad to say, I did worse than the first time I took the exam. 500...So, 50 points shy of the minimum. Because of this, my plans of getting in BYU's MISM is sort of on-hold. I honestly don't feel like I can take it again. After all that preparation and no improvement...that's pretty bad.

Thus, I am once again filling out applications for other graduate programs. Hopefully it's not too late. One school I do have my eyes on is the U of U. So, if BYU doesn't want me, perhaps the rival school will. It would be interesting to see that. For now, I have a lot of essays to write and more applications to fill out. Hopefully one school will accept me. Curse the GMAT!!!

Thoughts on OWAC Finals

So, this past Friday I went to the OWAC finals. I was interested to see why the finalists were the finalists. What was interesting to see was I wanted to know why they chose the finalists since I never received any feedback on my own project.

The first group to go was .Convert. They were very professional in the way they presented and they did a really good job in their analysis. Yet, one thing that bothered me was that the ideas they had were really similar to what we had done. Sure their slides were way nicer, but the contect overall was similar. Our group did an analysis on the customer segments (loyal customers contributing to the most profits), and they did as well. Some of their recommendations were similar to ours as well.

At any rate, I was very disappointed in the second presentation. Not to criticize them (although they are from the "U" - rival school), but, they were terrible. They basically read from their slides, and all their information was from 27 days worth of data. Now, I have no idea how you could base recommendations or analyze how a company is doing with 27 days worth of data. Even so, it was sad to see them make it to the finals and have a really unimpressive presentation. It was not at all worth 4th place.

Yet, not to bash on the "U" too much, the other team representing them did a really good job. The last BYU team wasn't as crisp (presentation wise), but they too did a good job. But, they all weren't as great as .Convert. In my opinion they were solid preformers when presenting and they did a really good job on the analysis.

Well, even though my partner and I didn't make it to the finals (or even prelims), I was at least glad that our analysis wasn't too far off from what the finalists came up with. I guess I should try again if the opportunity arises. Either way, that's what I thought about the finals.

Omniture Competition - Thoughts for First Part

I had an entire weekend that was free...sort of. The only thing I worked on was the BYU Omniture Competition. I would say my first experience with this project was, overall, not bad. Definetely not great. The bad parts were with how slow SiteCatalyst was. I was really frustrated at times where SiteCatalyst told me that the "Data was not Available" or "You do not have access to this data." Also, the load time after each query took forever.

Contrastingly, the good parts were the extended time. Originally I would not have had the two weekends to work on it. Now, I know I only put in a good 19-20 hours, but they were crammed in to one weekend. Even so, that extra time was much needed, as the week before was quite crazy (tests, work...etc). Anyways, I think Bryan and I did well overall. We made our presentation simple. We split it up into three parts that we thought were key to explaining what's going on with Overstock.com.

Start of the Year!

Hello! This is the start of the year 2009. That means trying new things and learning more cool stuff (hopefully). Anyways, school has already started without me...yes, sadly. I am not in Provo just yet. Why you ask? Well, I am not skipping for the fun of it...or maybe I am ;) Actually, I am in Washington DC for more job interviews! Isn't that fun. Last semester I had taken a week off of school to visit California and Texas. Both were fun, and it was a nice break from school. Now, that I am in DC, I am having fun once again (not to mention an extended Winter Break). Not that job interviews are very exciting now (since this about the 10th one I've done this school year), but it's nice to go some place new, meet new people, and try new things.

Anyways, I was lucky to know that this semester I would be taking only 4 classes. 2 of them will be Information Systems based. Finally! Why I say finally is because I felt a bit deprived from last semester. Last semester I had general business classes. Not that they were bad or anything, it's just that I missed having some technical classes as well.

So, since I haven't been on campus thus far and I haven't even attended my classes, all I can say is what I hope to expect this year. For now, I am still very excited to have a Web Analytics class. I am excited because I want to learn more about this subject. Every semester I hear about Omniture and their Web Analytics competition. Each time I have neither competed in the competition, nor fully understood what Web Analytics entails. However, the subject still lingered on my mind. Because of this, I decided to sign up for the class. So, as for goals, I hope to gain enough knowledge about the subject. After doing so, I hope to learn more about the Web Analytics competition Omniture has and perhaps make an attempt to compete. For now, I am just beginning to scratch the surface of this subject.

I think I have written enough for this blog. Perhaps I will write about my other classes another time...