carolbells

@Sea Salt Most people do 3+3 in Year 1 and 2+2 in year 2 (that's what I'm doing). There are several people who do something like 4+3 in year 1 and then 3 in the following Fall to graduate a semester early but this isn't very common I'm still debating on doing the practicum since there's lots of classes that I really want to take and doing a practicum would take time off of them. I think practicums are helpful when you don't have an internship lined up or something but if you do, I wouldn't stress about doing the practicum unless you really want to. Practicums are conducted within the university, I don't think you'd work with outside companies on it.

1) So far I've mostly taken classes required for all DATS students including Stats, Machine Learning, and Big Data Analytics. Electives so far include databases, forecasting analysis, and probability models in marketing. Classes have been online this school year. Since classes are recorded many people don't show for the live lectures but classes sizes highly depend on the classes you're taking. I say average is about 30-50. So far the most interesting class is Probability Models in Marketing - it's one of the most popular classes in Wharton and the professor is a really good orator. 2) Depends on the particular class - the forecasting analysis class is in Wharton and pretty much everyone I knew who wanted to get into the class was able to get in. The probability models in marketing class is much harder to get into due to its popularity. They only allowed about 15 people outside of Wharton to get into the class. Usually it's not really a problem 3) There are company events that shared to all DATS students but from what I know, they aren't limited to only DATS students - anyone outside of the program can attend them as well. There's only about 50ish students in each year's cohort so we're a small bunch and it wouldn't make sense to only have programs for just us. There is the Data Science General Assembly, Wharton Analytics Fellows, Penn Data Science group, etc. that also allow students interested in DS to meet up. It's a bit hard to say how strong the community is due to the program being remote at the moment but I think it's pretty reasonable. 4) I personally got my internship on my own without anyone from Penn. I think most of my peers experienced the same. There are career fairs and stuff like that but ultimately the students are the ones who put in the effort to get the internships. I find that most of the companies at the career fairs are centered around the East Coast which I'm personally not interested in so I didn't pursue the pipelines that the school might have offered. Most of us found internships outside of Philly in places like Seattle, SF Bay Area, Boston, Chicago, etc. 5) I think everyone I know lives off campus - but usually only several blocks away. I don't know anyone who lives in Sansom place. Hope this helps!

Yes I'm currently attending UPenn and I'm really enjoying it so far. I mainly chose UPenn over NYU because I wasn't a fan of night classes and like the flexibility of UPenn's program. I'm able to take classes in Wharton and count them towards my degree, for instance. Despite UPenn being a newer program than NYU I found that all of my peers were able to get internships in data science, data engineering, ML engineering related roles for this summer, so employers definitely do not look down on it. I didn't get accepted to Columbia's program but I would have chosen UPenn's program even if I had gotten in since Columbia's cohort size is quite big, only lasts 1.5 years, and most of their classes are at night.

@bigcake Sorry for the late response - haven't gone on gradcafe in awhile GRE: 164 Q, 162 V, 4.0 Writing GPA: 3.9/4.0 BS in Computer Science Did several internships in consulting, a startup, and a FAANG company related to front end development and data science US citizen

@Bulmicoa Trump only banned green card processing, which doesn't affect international students

I'm guessing that anyone who hasn't heard back from Columbia by now and did not get a waitlist notification is rejected. Wonder why they haven't sent the rejections out yet.

I interviewed with them in early March and still haven't received any response yet. Not sure what to make of it.

@Applicant20 when did you get the notice?

Also, does anyone have an idea when more decisions for Columbia MS DS will come out? Still waiting for mine...

@happypanda521 no - in fact, it's probably better to take an offer now because it's harder to find a job

@david0217 My strategy would be to try to look NYU alums on Linkedin and see what they're up to now. That might help. When I did that I find that NYU alum seems to get more brand-name company jobs. I have also heard of @Guest123's note that Columbia seems to be a cash cow program. The fact that you have to put down such a large deposit and made a decision so quickly for Columbia raises red flags for me. NYU's only asking for a $250 deposit and gives you a month to decide. Edit: grammar

@indigo_squirrel_6 Depends on what you want to prioritize. If you want to graduate quickly with low tuition but potentially sacrifice getting a thorough data science education in multiple subjects, choose USF. Otherwise I'd choose NYU.

@david0217 I agree with ilovepenguins. Also, 7 days to make a decision?!? That's such a red flag to me.

@streamblazer Congrats! Mind if I ask when you got your interview request? In response to your question, I'm personally a bit skeptical of UC Berkeley's program given that it's only a year long. A quality program probably should be at least 3 semesters. However, alumni of UC Berkeley's program seem to go to good places, so it's not a poor program. I personally would choose Columbia out of the two options given though.

I saw some people getting acceptances to the columbia ds program on the results page. Can anyone here verify that decisions are being released?