As her college graduation approached in the spring of 2022, Natalie Lobo wrestled with how to pursue a business career. A graduate business degree “would really set me up for success down the line,” she says, but the University of Wisconsin senior couldn’t imagine starting a career and then interrupting it to pursue an MBA. It was an internship the previous summer, helping to redesign the website of a medical device company in St. Paul, Minnesota, that led Lobo to settle on another plan.

“It was so interesting to see how impactful and actionable even Google analytics data could be to make really powerful decisions,” she says of the experience. So in June 2022, six weeks after commencement, Lobo entered a brand-new master’s program in business analytics at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. Over three terms that conclude this month, she and 51 other students are learning how to acquire and understand data and then use it to make business decisions.