Looking for Advice: Quant Policy Master + International Student

[violagzy]

Hey guys, I am having ~1 yr before graduating my from current grad program and (May 2021) am looking for advice on further development thereafter. 

I major in linguistics/finance during undergrad (in a famous international uni) and now studying policy/data science in the US. I know these four fields can make some interesting combinations, e.g. studying unfairness in granting loans (Finance/Data/policy), or NLP applications in policy (Ling/Data). Still, I do find my study experience was too mixed so that I did not formally have a field of expertise. In my current major, I learn a lot of the state-of-the-art data skills, statistical analysis, ml (although I have learned many of the contents during undergrad), but I believe a traditional tech company (FLAG) would not consider a double major student in Data Science like me. 

I am an international student and my practical experience was predominately abroad, e.g. consulting intern, equity research intern, market research intern, and some RA work. I came straight from undergrad so I do not have any full time working experience so far. Here in the US I can only do some on-campus research work (in the first year) because of the visa requirement. Therefore, apart from major requirements, sponsorship is also a big concern of mine. 

I target myself at some quantitative researcher positions at NGOs in the US. and plan to use my three years OPT. I know with increasing competition, some ds students are also looking at positions in the non-profit sector. Still, i want to give it a try given my mixed background especially my policy experience. Also, I heard that working in NGOs has less concern for H1B sponsorship. 

SO---- do you guys think that my plan work? 

 

(It seems that I did not think twice before accepting the master offer. Actually, my initial plan was to do a 2020 summer intern and another part-time job (2021 spring) during my 2-year master study then find opportunities to transfer into fulltime after graduation. But our academic advisor only allows us to do one internship in the US using CPT(preferably in spring 2021) and we did not become aware of that before we came here. Also, our program had been more tech-oriented with courses from CS/DS dept but only until we get here, we were informed of a curriculum change and these courses were instead taught by our own policy school, which seems to be less solid in terms of hard skills. And the coronavirus.. A lot of unexpected things happens)