Duke MQM Student Blog
What Differentiates the Forensics Track?
As a student who just graduated from the Forensics track, I want to share a few insights to help you understand more about it
Published June 10, 2019
Since this blog was written, the Forensics track was redesigned and the track name was changed to Risk.
Maybe you are in the process of choosing a track in MQM and are considering Forensics. Or perhaps you have been admitted to the Forensics track but are not sure what to expect. As a student who just graduated from the Forensics track, I want to share a few insights to help you understand more about it.
Courses and Coding
The Forensics track offers a mix of business and technical courses. If you have no business or accounting background, don’t worry—you will learn about financial reporting, enterprise risk management, and financial statement fraud, which will be helpful for you to understand some business processes when you do data analytics in a business setting. If you have no coding background, this track is not too overwhelming compared to others and allows you to steadily build up your coding skills through core classes and extracurricular opportunities. You will learn coding in R in the Forensics track—the fraud analytics class is one example that teaches quite a lot.
Fraud Analytics
Data analytics is generally used to find patterns in the majority of the data points and excludes outliers. However, fraud analytics uses analytics to examine the outliers which are often ignored in other methods. Therefore, fraud analytics is a good complement to your overall analytics skill set.
Professors and Speakers
The professors bring a wealth of their own knowledge into the classroom and they also invite guest speakers to supplement the lessons in class. The professors’ rich industry connections allow them to bring in speakers who work in industries like banking and consulting and can provide insights on audit analytics, risk advisory, fraud analytics, and more. This is a very helpful way to learn about the industries’ trends related to forensic analytics and the types of work that the Forensics track can prepare you for.
The Capstone Project
The capstone project clients in the Forensics track are big-name companies. Our class worked with Credit Suisse, ABB, Fidelity, and others. The capstone projects allow you to apply your business and analytics skills comprehensively to a real-world problem. Additionally, your client will be a great connection to add to your professional network, creating a great overall learning experience.
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