Is a graduate degree worth your time and money?

There's no denying that 'data scientist' is a hot job title to have right now and for good reason. It's a tremendously fun and challenging field to be in, and despite all of the infamous statements that surround it, data scientists are doing some pretty amazing things. So it's no surprise that many people are struggling to find out how to become data scientists. It takes a long time and a lot of training for becoming a data scientist. To achieve this, I decided to do a Masters in Data Science. Since Data Science is a new field of study I had to do some serious research about the best place to study Data Science. There are no institutions in India that provide a Master's degree in this field as it not well structured and still in its novice stage. Many of my colleagues suggested to do an online course as I don't have to discontinue my job in a reputed MNC company. But instinct forced me to take a break from my professional carrier and start from scratch to earn the title of Data Scientist. I finally decided to study abroad and fill the skill gap to achieve my dream. The only place where I want to study is silicon valley, which often called Mecca of the IT industry. University of the Pacific is the only university that is offering a two years master's degree in this field around the bay area. It is located in the heart of San Francisco which gives a lot of location advantage as a lot of Meetups and conferences happen quite frequently.

Even though I have an experience of 2 years as a software engineer, I don't have strong technical skills which are required for data science like data wrangling, drawing inferences from data and making models out of data. I did my under graduation in Mechanical and Automation Engineering which is quite relevant to the data science field. We need a lot of data to train the models on automation techniques and implement them in the real world. I felt Pacific's Data Science program will prepare me to achieve this and be the data scientist of tomorrow.

University of the Pacific's MS in Data Science program uses a hybrid approach that combines the convenience of online learning with hands-on experience in the classroom. Online sessions are taught on weekday evenings, and classroom sessions are taught on the weekends. All courses are conducted live, with your professors, including the online, interactive sessions. All lectures are recorded so that we can review them later, if necessary. The program culminates with the Capstone Project, which allows students to apply the knowledge they have gained by working with industry professionals to solve a real-world problem. We have a quite different approach of 1 and 2 credit courses than tradition 4 credit courses which helps to cover the vast data science field which includes subjects Frequentist Statistics, Bayesian Statistics, Machine Learning, Linear Algebra, Research Methods. Another interesting subject is Hot Topics, where we as a class discuss different aspects of Data Science. The discussions are not

limited to business applications of Data Science. We converse about subjects like Ethics, Data Science in Politics and Mind Mapping.

I can strongly say that I can put into practice my data science skills into practice upon my graduation from the University of the Pacific.