Preparing for the MSIS program

This site provides resources to help you prepare for entrance into the Masters of Information Systems (MSIS) graduate program. The topics presented here should be a review of prerequisite content you completed during your undergraduate degree. We have compiled these resources to help you shore up your understanding of these topics.

All content here is self-paced. As with any work, the more effort you put in, the greater your rewards will be. Our program has a high standard of excellence. We will provide you with the tools you need to succeed, but how well you prepare is up to you.

Prerequisite knowledge

You should have a general knowledge of information systems, as might be covered in any introductory course. The open textbook Information Systems for Business and Beyond (2019)¹ has a good high-level overview. The entire text is worth reading, but if you have limited time, focus your attention on the first five chapters.

Entering students should also have some experience in the following topic areas:

• Systems development

  • Computer programming
    • Control structures (conditionals & loops)
    • Object-orientation, polymorphism
  • Data modeling & SQL
    • Normalization (thru 3NF/BCNF)
    • Queries across tables
    • DML & DDL
  • Infrastructure
    • The Internet model (or OSI model)
  • Process & communication in IT
    • Agile software development
    • UML
    • Use case diagrams
    • Sequence diagrams
    • Process models
  • Prototyping (HTML/CSS)

• General Business

  • Accounting & financial modeling
    • Read a balance sheet, and explain the Accounting Equation (A = L + OE)
    • Generate an NPV and IRR
  • Statistics
    • Mean, standard deviation
    • Basic linear regression
  • Business presentations
    • SCQ
    • Minto framework
  • ERP
    • SAP
    • Major Concepts
    • Data Type
    • Logging and Undo
  • Business Activity Cycles
    • Procurement Cycle
    • Sales Cycle
    • Other Cycles
    • Practice Questions
  • IT Controls

You should also be able to use common software to support the concepts listed above. For example, in addition to strong knowledge of Microsoft Office (especially Excel and Powerpoint), you should be able to use Visio and Microsoft Project.

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1. Information Systems for Business and Beyond (2019), by David Bourgeois. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. This free textbook is used by many universities in their introduction to IS course. It’s easy to read, and you could finish several chapters in an afternoon. ↩