Business Intelligence and Analytics (N14C37) -Group Coursework
Mr Dane Wallace is Student Recruitment Manager at Nottingham University Business School. Mr Wallace has to handle and analyse student applications for all MSc courses in the school (around 15 courses in total) in order to predict student numbers and income for the coming year. He receives applications throughout the academic year, in the range of over 7000 per year. If an applicant does not meet the admissions requirements of the course the application is rejected. Otherwise the offer can be: unconditional or conditional (subject to applicant obtaining the admission requirements). Some applications are lapsed if the applicant does not respond to the offer in time. Applicants can have a fee status of Home, European and Overseas. However, fees status is usually presented in reports in two groups: HEU (Home/European) and OS (Overseas). They all have to pay a reservation fee of £1000 in order to accept their offer (if they do not pay within four weeks, the offer is lapsed). Applicants who satisfy the admissions requirements and are given an offer and may accept it, but the School is not sure how many students who have accepted their offers will actually enrol that year. The acceptance rate is defined as the percentage of offers that are accepted by applicants. The conversion rate is defined as either the percentage of applicants who are offered a place and decide to enrol in their MSc study, or the percentage of all the applicants who enrol as students.
You are given four files in Excel format, which contain different types of data about applicants for the past four academic years:
1. Personal data about applicants, which include nationality, fee status, etc.
2. Financial data related to application, (if an offer has been accepted, at least £1,000
has been paid)
3. Time data which contains relevant dates including the date of application, date of
offer, date of acceptance, etc. Application period is August 2016 – August, 2017.
Your task is to provide a report to Mr Wallace which will contain the following components:
1 Calculation of the acceptance and conversion rates for the given academic years based on the historical data you are given. This should be calculated both overall and per course. The report should also show the change of acceptance/conversion rate throughout the application period. Using these results, you should also predict the total number of enrolled students for the academic year 2017/18 – this should be done as a total number and broken down by course, and by fee status.
2. Analysis of the distribution of applications across nationalities. This should be calculated both overall and per course: Applications come from a large number of countries. Show graphically the distribution of applications across countries. The School especially monitors applications from China and India, as the majority of applications come from these countries, and also from the UK, Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand, USA, Pakistan, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia. Identify patterns in the number of applications from these countries over the application period (for example, identify any particular time periods where certain applicants/nationalities apply). This report will serve the School’s Executive Board, External Relations, Student Services and Timetabling.
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Once the group project starts, you will have an opportunity to ask questions about the recruitment process that you find relevant to your project.
Use a data mining/statistical analysis which you find appropriate to assist Mr Wallace in his recruitment analysis task. You should use R package in your data analysis. Use any data/attributes from the files you are given that you may find useful. Also, provide graphical presentations of your results.
Glossary
Conversion rate ‘nationality’
ROW
‘offer’
Conditional offer Unconditional offer Lapsed
Withdrawn reasons)
‘reply’
Firmly Accepted course!
Deferral Requested
Assessment
The percentage of applicants / offer-holders who become students Countries with less than 10 applicants have been set as ROW (rest of world)
Applicant must meet certain conditions (e.g. IELTS; achieve 2:1)
Applicant has met all conditions of offer
Applicant did not complete application requirements in time (e.g. pay res. fee) App has been withdrawn by either the university or the applicant (many
Applicant has paid the reservation fee – most likely to matriculate onto Applicant wishes to defer their start date to the next academic year
The mark of the group project contributes 30% to the total mark for this module. It will assess two components of the group project: the report and the presentation.
1. The report should contain maximum 3000 words and will contribute 90% of the mark for the group project. Please note that in your report the reference list does not count towards the word count. The report should describe what you have done, including the way R has been used to load and transform the data. It should also describe analysis done on the data, and what that analysis revealed. You should describe any difficulties encountered in the process. Describe as much as possible the technical work you have done, backed up by the rationale of why you did it that way.
When: The deadline for submitting your report is Monday, 14th May, 2018, 3pm.
2. You will give a presentation of data analysis and your results to Mr Dane Wallace and to module convenor. This will contribute 10% of the mark for your group project. More details about the duration of the presentation will be given on the lecture.
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When: The presentation is scheduled on Thursday, 10th May, 2018, 11:00-13:00pm in JC-Amen- B12.
Assessment Criteria
Your report will be assessed according to the following criteria:
- The degree to which an appropriate data analysis has been carried out, the relevance of the obtained results for the given recruitment task and the discussion of the results.
- The school has acceptance and conversion rate for the 2107-2018 academic year, which will be used to evaluate the accuracy of your prediction for the task 1.
- The degree to which you have informed your analysis by the material presented on the lectures and also by wider reading. Your arguments should be supported with appropriate citations.
- The logic, clarity and structure of your report.
Your presentation will be assessed according to the following criteria:
- The relevance of the obtained results for the given recruitment task and the quality of the graphical presentation.
- The clarity of your presentation. Instructions for submission of coursework
You need to submit an electronic copy of your coursework (both group and individual), and a hardcopy to any Student Service Centre. See your Student Handbook for further details of this process. Five marks will be deducted for each working day (or part thereof) if coursework is submitted after the official deadline date without an extension having been obtained. Except in exceptional circumstances, late submission penalties will apply automatically. Extenuating Circumstances claims must be submitted before the coursework deadline. If you need a deadline extension, complete the form available from
www.nottingham.ac.uk/studentservices/services/extenuating-circumstances.aspx
and hand it in to any Student Service Centre.
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