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I'm going to be applying for college soon and some of my choices have a data science undergrad. I've taken some online courses on introductory data analysis and have been doing kaggle projects for awhile, so I know it's something I enjoy. The only questions I have are:

  1. How relevant is the curriculum? (For example, the UCSD data science major)

  2. How reliable is the degree in the upcoming future? (Would I be able to easily get a job like if I had a CS BS)

  3. Am I better off doing CS and minoring in stats or something else?

I am also planning on getting either a masters or PhD in DS/ML. I don't know if it would better to get a lower level understanding of computers like I would probably get in a CS curriculum and then just focus on data science in grad school.

Thanks!

Ethan Shapiro
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This is a bit opinion based, but here are my thoughts:

How relevant is the curriculum? (For example, the UCSD data science major)

Since most DS majors have been developed the past 2-3 years they tend to be well structured and curated. Their subjects are usually a mix of some theoretical background (e.g. stats, linear algebra), some basic programming courses (usually python or R) and some ML topics at a near state-of-the-art level.

However, some face organization issues due to them operating only for a couple of years.

How reliable is the degree in the upcoming future? (Would I be able to easily get a job like if I had a CS BS)

No one can tell, but the trend seems to be that DS will be adopted universally by tech companies in the future. From what I can tell you'll have no problem at all finding a well paying job right out of college.

Am I better off doing CS and minoring in stats or something else?

Personally, I think no. DS at the moment is very undermanned in the labor market and demand is rising like crazy. To fill this demand there will be a lot of former programmers with a heavy CS background and years of experience making the transition. This, however, will change when people with DS degrees flood the market and I don't think it will be as easy in the future for CS to shift to DS, as it is now...

  • Thank you for the response! I've been skeptical about applying as a DS major, because I thought it might be too niche and if those jobs do get filled I would be SOL. I'm graduating in 5 years, so do you still think those jobs will be in high demand? – Ethan Shapiro Aug 04 '19 at 23:13