Hello everyone! It excites me to represent Pakistan at the University of Surrey and to be provided a platform to communicate with you who are the future of the university. To start with, I came to this lovely Guildford town two months ago to commence my postgraduate in Business Analytics. Born and brought up in Karachi, where I did my undergrad from Institute of Business Administration, I had always aimed to pursue my higher education, particularly in the UK. Shortlisting university for a degree takes a toll on decision making as we must find the right mix of courses of a reputable university, with a bearable fee. Similar factors were my target for choosing the University of Surrey but deciding to come here was not hard for me. After my research and the already famous name of this institution, eased my decision making. I believed that getting a graduate degree from the prestigious Surrey Business School, due to its well-designed Business Analytics program, will equip me with the necessary skills and knowledge required to build a successful career in my chosen field of business and data analytics. I knew that studying at Surrey will grant me an opportunity to become a part of a research institution with an excellent reputation and global ranking and the chance to study in a challenging environment.

I would like to further talk about my program. Many of us know what we want to do and where to do it from and it becomes confusing to choose from both a varied list of options and limited choices. Students have a lot of options in Pakistan for degrees in management, economics or related or fields in sciences or medicine. There are options in data science as well but after my research, I found that there are very limited or no programs in Business Analytics. In a situation like this, a student can become confused or even frustrated with limited choices. But in a global environment, the options are numerous for this program. But even among thousands of choices, the reason why I am emphasizing on this and why I chose my course over at Surrey, is because the university has researched well into the industry requirements of the analytics field and designed the course structure for optimal student learning and their future benefits in the job market. But it’s not just my program. After discussion with peers and faculty, the other courses in the mix are also well-designed catering both to the needs of students and the industry. At the least, these are the motives for pursuing masters for most of us, and I hope to give you further insight of how it is around here.