ceroper

Thanks! This was really helpful and thorough! I've got a lot of thinking to do, but it's great to have your perspective, especially on the differences between the peer groups.

Hi folks, I've been accepted to the following programs: MS in Data Science from NYU MA in Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences at Columbia (want to pursue the data science concentration) MS in Computational Analytics and Public Policy at University of Chicago Master of Information Systems Management with a concentration in Business Intelligence and Data Analytics at Carnegie Mellon So exciting to have so many options! I think I've probably narrowed it down to Columbia and NYU, because those programs are most narrowly focused on the data analysis stuff I find most interesting, but feel free to persuade me otherwise! I worked at a marketing consulting firm in the analytics department for two years, and then I worked at GlobalGiving, a nonprofit crowdfunding platform for a year and a half. For undergrad, I studied Economics and Professional Writing at Carnegie Mellon University. I've taken some programming here and there, but doing business intelligence work using SQL and Excel has been by bread and butter, so any of these programs would stretch my technical skills. I'm not completely sure what I want to do when I graduate, but broadly speaking, I want to be a data scientist in the social impact space. I could see myself as a data scientist at a crowdfunding site and/or a number cruncher at an international institution like the UN (Global Pulse) or the World Bank. Which of these programs would get me where I want to go? If you can't compare, what could you say about any of these programs? I'm curious about the reputation and name recognition of each. If you graduated from any of these programs, how did you like your experience? For NYU and Columbia especially, these span multiple departments and are really flexible so I'm curious if it's hard to feel like you're part of a community, because everyone is so dispersed. These are also fairly short - Columbia's QMSS is only 10 classes and NYU's MS in Data Science is only 12 classes. Did you feel like the program stands alone and did you have enough time and classes to learn what you needed? Thanks for your thoughts!