MSc in Business Administration and Data Science

Customise your programme

During the programme, you have various opportunities to create your own academic profile.

Electives
On the 3rd semester, you can choose to study courses of your specific interest. CBS offers a large number of electives within a wide range of topics. You can also choose to take electives at other Danish universities. The electives you choose have to be relevant for your programme.

See the current selection of CBS electives on Single courses and electives - Master

Minor
On the 3rd semester, you can also choose to study a so-called minor. A minor is a package of electives within a specific academic area. Typically, it consists of 3 courses. By taking a minor, you strengthen your competences within a specific area of interest, and you can use it to qualify for specific jobs or industries. 

See the current selection of CBS electives on Minors - Master

Exchange
Many students choose to go on exchange on their 3rd semester; usually at one of CBS’ more than 300 partner universities. When you go on exchange through CBS, you do not have to pay for the teaching at the foreign university (with a few exceptions), and you can bring your SU (student grant). 

Find a list of all CBS partner universities here

Academic internship
You can choose to replace some of your electives with a so-called academic internship. The academic internship consists of an internship period at a company, which is then completed with a project report. You can do the internship at a company in Denmark or abroad.

When doing an internship you get the opportunity to relate theory to practice and reflect on the academic training you receive at CBS in a practical setting. Therefore, the project report and work assignments during your internship have to be relevant to your study programme.

Master's thesis
Your 2nd year is completed with a master's thesis. You choose the topic you want to write about, which allows you to focus on a specific topic of your interest. Typically, you write your master's thesis with a fellow student. 

What to consider

Studying in English
If you do not have bachelor’s degree taught in English, we recommend that you read more about what to consider before applying for an English taught programme. 

See Studying in English on Student Life

Study environment
Student life at CBS
Studying at CBS is much more than just preparing for and going to classes.

At CBS, there are more than 23,000 students with different backgrounds and nationalities. Teamwork is an essential part of studying at CBS both in classes and in extracurricular activities. 

With more than 100 student organisations, you also have plenty of opportunities to engage and connect with students across programmes and classes. 

Learn more about the vibrant student life at CBS, the student organisations, and the international environment on Student life

For internationals
If you are an international student, we have gathered a lot of information about what it is like to be an international student at CBS and how you can prepare for life in Denmark.

Read more on For internationals 

Teaching and exams

Teaching 
All courses will be designed in the blended learning format, and will use a mix of lectures and exercises with mandatory assignments throughout the courses.

Cand.Merc.Data Science’s core technical faculty will be drawn from the Centre for Business Data Analytics, and the Departments of Digitalization and Economics. Core Business faculty will be drawn from the Departments of Innovation, Strategic Management and Globalization, Management Politics and Philosophy and Law.

The new MSc programme will be supported by the purpose-built and student-dedicated CBS Business Data Analytics Cluster , which will feature a state-of-the-art hybrid architecture comprising an on-premises cluster of 40 compute nodes, large memory and very large storage paired with cloud servers to support dynamic scaling on demand for class exercises, exam projects and master theses. 

Read more about Teaching and working methods on Student life

Exams
Read about Exams and exams types on Student life

Time consumption
You should know that it is demanding to study in a graduate programme, and both the curriculum and workload is  significantly higher than at bachelor level. 

If you are studying on a full-time graduate programme, you should expect spending approximately 37 hours on average on your studies each week. The workload will vary during the year.

The time leading up to assignment submissions and exams can be hectic, and you can easily work more than 40 hours a week in this period. Preparing for oral exams can be especially time consuming, because you have to be able to explain and discuss the covered concepts and theories and learn things by heart.

Read more about Time consumption on Student Life

Student job
Most programmes are quite flexible in terms of combining studies with a student job. Most students work a maximum of 15 hours a week in order to have sufficient time for their studies.

Studying in Denmark - for internationals
If this is your first time studying in Denmark, you may find teaching and exam formats, the grading scale and the academic calendar very different from what you are used to.

Read about everything you need to know as an international student studying at CBS on For internationals > Academic information  

Career

What gets you the job?
A candidate who has completed MSc in Business Administration and Data Science will be able to accomplish a variety of skills in the domain of business data analytics, using knowledge and insights into practices within business data analytics, with a combination of data science, business, and public policy fields.

The programs interdisciplinary focus entails that the candidate will be able to develop and communicate scientifically-rooted solutions, based on scientific techniques and methods within the data analytics, business and legal subjects. Attention has been focused particularly on the candidates mastering the methods, techniques and processes with a high scientific level within design, development, adoption, implementation, evaluation and exploitation of data science for business IT and economics.

As a graduate of this concentration, the candidate will have the ability to apply data mining and machine learning algorithms, methods, techniques, and tools to analyze, describe, and solve complex and interdisciplinary challenges by application of theories and frameworks, within both internal and external business data pipelines for organizations.

After completing this program, the candidate will be able to perform specialist functions that requires knowledge and skills from the highest international research in data science and business issues, with an ability to box-in complex problems and take forward actions using data-driven decision making to support organizational strategies. The candidates will be able facilitate and integrate data-driven decision making into organizational practices by acquiring, producing, and using new knowledge with data science and within new domain areas.

Competence profile
In the competence profile you can read more about the purpose of the programme and the competencies you achieve in the programme:

Competence profile for MSc Data Science