I am teaming up with my good friend and former colleague, John Lee, to compare our experiences after 1 year into 2 different online master programs in data science/analytics.

We break this article down into 3 sections: 1) share a little bit about ourselves, 2) summarize 2 programs in 2 minutes, and 3) answer 10 questions about what we know now about our programs.

About Your Contestants

Starting school at the same time in the Fall of 2019, John enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley Master in Data Science (MIDS) program while I enrolled in Georgia Tech Online Master of Science in Analytics (OMSA) program.

To set the stage…

• We are both very similar in age (28–30) and stage of life (married to a spouse in different cities, no kids).
• We both shared similar career paths (previously as environmental engineer students in undergrad turned mechanical engineers in HVAC/energy efficiency). At some point, we were coworkers at two different organizations. We have about 6–7 years of working experience.
• We both study part-time on top of our day-job (not a data scientist).
• We both have little programming or data science experiences when starting the program.
• We both completed the majority of the foundational courses in our programs.

Why are these similarities relevant? This warrants some context about the biases from our experiences.

#education #uc-berkeley #data-science #graduate-school #georgia-tech