The Graduate School of Management of St. Petersburg State University (GSOM SPbU) took part in the project of the scientific and technological program for gifted school children "Big Challenges", organized with the support of VTB Bank. The project participants will help the Business School to form a portrait of the applicant based on information from the GSOM SPbU social networks and build the admissions campaign in 2021 using big data technologies. The mentors of the project are Lyubov Ermolaeva and Daria Klishevich, lecturer of GSOM SPbU.

 

Young researchers analyzed the Business School Vkontakte group's applicants and studied the profiles of GSOM applicants and students. Using the developed algorithms, students classified future entrepreneurs and managers by interests and built four profiles of potential applicants, named smart, funny, art, business. Studied interests include music, publics, friends, artists, and more. Based on the analyzed information, the students presented their recommendations for each profile of the programs and thought out the tools for promotion in social networks.

 

“Universities always collect certain statistics on their applicants. Usually this is basic information: region, GPA, age, schools. A portrait of an applicant is needed to plan the admissions campaign,” sayis Lyubov Ermolaeva, project manager, lecturer at GSOM SPbU. “We want to reach even more promising high school students, and we are glad that the school children of the project will be able to help us with this.”

 

As a result of the joint work, GSOM SPbU will receive the necessary data for the effective promotion of programs, and students will be able to try to solve real practical problems.

 

The idea of ​​the project was born out of the master's thesis of a GSOM SPbU Business Analytics and Big Data program alumna Marina Talyanskaya. She offered to use information from the social networks of applicants to develop new approaches to advertising during the admissions campaign and became one of the project mentors. Six high school children from Ivanovo, Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk regions, Moscow and the Republic of Tatarstan worked on the problem. All of them are finalists of the All-Russian competition of design and research works "Big Challenges'' and already have experience in design activities.

 

The scientific and technological project program "Big Challenges" is being held for the fifth time. Its goal is to include gifted high school students in the work with innovative technologies. The 2020 program started on October 19. In total, about 230 schoolchildren from 43 regions will take part in it during the academic year. Tasks for the participants are set by more than 70 project partners — global Russian technology brands and leading research organizations competing in world markets.