Nadika Sharma

Author: Nadika Sharma

Graduate Schools : Technology and Data Science

For those interested in Technology and Data Science, graduate school can be a valuable path to consider. Whether your focus is on Computer Science, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, or Cybersecurity, there are several main degree programs worth exploring: the Master of Science (MS), the Master of Engineering (MEng), and, in some cases, specialized professional master’s programs like the Master of Data Science (MDS). Each of these degrees can be further specialized depending on your area of interest. For example, an MS can focus on Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, or Software Engineering, while an MEng may concentrate on areas like Cybersecurity Engineering or Systems Engineering.

When applying to graduate school in technology and data science, several key factors can significantly influence your decision and the success of your application. Here are some important things to consider:

1. Curriculum and Program Focus

Strengths and specializations vary among graduate programs. Examine whether the program’s focus—whether it be cybersecurity policy, data engineering applications for real-world use, or artificial intelligence research—aligns with your professional objectives. Make sure the courses, projects, or lab work in the curriculum align with your interests and the skills you wish to acquire by carefully reviewing it.

2. Program Structure and Flexibility

Graduate programs are offered in online, hybrid, full-time, and part-time schedules. Think about what works best for both your personal and work lives. An online or part-time program might be more appropriate if you have other obligations or are employed. Furthermore, although some programs offer greater freedom in terms of course selection and pacing, others are designed around cohorts.

3. Location and Possibilities for Networking

Your graduation experience may be significantly impacted by the university’s location. Think about the local tech scene in your city or area. Are there any startups, tech hubs, or related businesses that you could intern or work in? Being close to conferences, meetups, and industry networks can improve your chances of learning and landing a job.

4. Requirements and Deadlines for Applications

There are deadlines and requirements unique to each program. Make sure you are aware of these well in advance. Certain programs may emphasize job experience or particular prerequisite courses, while others may call for standardized tests such as the GRE. Get your application materials ready in advance, including a strong personal statement, letters of recommendation, and any portfolio pieces or test results that may be needed.

5. The Alumni Network and Career Services

Examine the career assistance offered by the program and the quality of the alumni network. Strong career services can offer important resources including interview training, resume critiques, and employer connections. Throughout your career, a strong community of alumni can provide insight, employment prospects, and mentorship.

Paragon One and the Extern Program

Through its flagship Externship program, The Edge by Extern, or widely known as Paragon One is an innovative platform that provides real-world employment experiences. An externship is a flexible, remote work experience program that links students with businesses in a range of sectors, made possible by Paragon One. This program aims to close the knowledge gap between professional and academic settings by giving students practical skills and insights that they may use for their future jobs.

Opportunities Offered by Paragon One’s Extern Program:

  1.  Diverse Industry Access: Students have access to externships in a multitude of industries, including marketing, finance, technology, and business. Students can explore several professional options and discover their areas of interest thanks to this variety.
  1.  Real-World Experience: Students obtain practical experience, which is frequently necessary in the job market, by working on significant projects from businesses. Building a résumé and improving a student’s employability both depend heavily on this experience.
  1.  Networking: Professional networking and mentoring possibilities might arise from students’ interactions with professionals and industry experts. These relationships are very important since they can affect career advice and future employment opportunities.
  1.  Skill Development: The externships are intended to assist students in acquiring critical professional skills including project management, communication, and specialized technical knowledge pertinent to their field of choice.
  1. Flexibility: Students with demanding academic schedules who yet want to obtain professional experience can attend the program since it offers a flexible timetable that can be adjusted to fit around school obligations.
  1. Project-Based Learning: The assignments and projects that are given during the externship are designed to resemble real-world duties. By ensuring that students can apply theoretical information in real-world situations, this project-based learning approach improves their comprehension and competency.
  1. Tailored Experiences: Through the use of its platform, Paragon One frequently connects students with externships that complement their academic backgrounds and individual professional ambitions, resulting in a tailored learning and development opportunity.
  2. Development of Soft Skills: Externs acquire soft skills like problem-solving, teamwork, and leadership in addition to technical talents. These abilities are essential for long-term job success and are widely sought for in any professional situation.

To sum up, the Extern program offered by Paragon One is an advantageous endeavor for students who aim to supplement their academic pursuits with hands-on, real-world corporate exposure. Students who take part in this program not only get valuable experience and skills, but they also put themselves in a great position for success in their future employment. Paragon One offers a helpful stepping stone into the working world for students hoping to maximize their academic careers. You can explore their opportunities here. 

Business Analysts: Roles and Responsibilities

A business analyst is a specialist who uses data analysis to assist companies improve their software, services, products, and procedures. These experts’ main goals are to recognize company requirements and resolve business issues. They serve as a liaison between IT teams and stakeholders, promoting mutual understanding and communication. Depending on the sector, a business analyst’s responsibilities might vary greatly, but generally speaking, they include setting project scope, setting priorities, and making sure that the solutions being used really address the goals of the company. In order to guarantee that investments in change provide favorable returns, business advisers are essential in helping organizations navigate technological advancements, process enhancements, and strategic adjustments. These experts collaborate with internal stakeholders to identify needs and highlight any problems that could be hurting a company’s bottom line. Here are some of the roles and responsibilities of a business analyst:

  •  Data Analysis: Business Analysts continuously examine data in an effort to find problems that might have unintended consequences. 
  • Tech Research: Successful business analysts research technology advancements to modernize systems and processes
  • Presenting Findings: Business analysts have meetings with appropriate stakeholders to communicate findings and provide presentations that highlight their findings.
  • Developing Projects: A large portion of the work performed by business analysts is classified as special projects. Similarly, they are in charge of coming up with projects that assist companies in overcoming the difficulties of the contemporary corporate environment. 
  • Change Management: Since a business analyst is really a change agent, they must manage the changes they make as they go. They must be skilled in change management, which entails testing new or modified procedures and monitoring the effects of the changes once they are put into place inside your company, in order to accomplish this without creating confusion.

These are some of the skills required to be a business Analyst:

  • Analytical thinking: Business Analysts are expected to have exceptional analytical abilities since their jobs demand them to look at and solve difficult issues, identify patterns, and find relevant significance in huge raw data.
  • Strong Communication and Socialization skills: A Business analyst role requires a person with good people skills and strong communication abilities, since part of their tasks and responsibilities involve gathering requirements from numerous stakeholders. Strong interpersonal skills are also essential, as they facilitate the development of stronger bonds between your hired business analysts and management as well as enable them to work with many teams with ease.
  • Technical Skills: Business analysts must have exceptional technical abilities and use the newest data analysis tools since modern firms need modern solutions. The ones that are knowledgeable with PowerBI and SAS as well as a variety of computer languages are more likely to be successful business analysts. 

Careers with Entrepreneurship Major

Multidisciplinary skills from an entrepreneurship major can help you land business, marketing, and sales positions in an organization. Before starting their own business, many people with degrees in entrepreneurship work for well-established organizations that support their professional objectives. This gives them the opportunity to raise money or obtain practical entrepreneurial experience. An entrepreneur, at its most basic, starts a firm from a profitable concept or item. Entrepreneurs pinpoint a social issue, create a remedy, and raise the funds required to transform their concept into a profitable company.

A degree in entrepreneurship can lead to the following positions:

  1. Advertising, Promotions and Marketing Manager

Managers of advertising work closely with sales representatives to create and oversee campaigns that spark interest in a good or service. Marketing managers are responsible for managing various facets of business operations, such as brand positioning, content management, and market research. In order to optimize earnings for their employers, they also monitor market trends. The responsibilities of an advertising manager and a promotions manager may coincide as both positions’ main goal is to persuade clients to follow instructions and purchase goods or subscribe to a service.

  1. Sales Manager

Sales managers set sales targets, allocate sales quotas, and assess the viability of new product launches for their companies. Periodically, they report on their progress to the leadership team after analyzing sales data. Junior sales representatives are usually hired, trained, and supervised by sales managers. Whether a sales manager works in a business-to-business or business-to-consumer paradigm, their field of choice is frequently determined by their areas of interest and skill.

  1. Management Analyst

Increasing organizational efficiency is a priority for management analysts and consultants. They do a thorough operational assessment for the client, locate any bottlenecks, and make recommendations on how to increase output and revenue. To guarantee long-term success, management consultants also follow up with customers on a regular basis. Although a sizable portion of management analysts opt to operate on a contract basis with different clients, the majority of these specialists are employed inside.

  1. Market Research Analysts

Market research analysts gather, examine, and present information about competitors, consumer behavior, and general business circumstances. To obtain insightful information about the market, they employ a variety of techniques, such as focus groups, surveys, questionnaires, customer interviews, third-party reviews, and competition analysis. These experts can predict market trends, assess the effectiveness of current marketing tactics, and suggest improved promotion plans that will increase sales and consumer happiness based on their study.

  1. Financial Analysts

Financial analysts assist businesses and individuals in choosing profitable investments. By analyzing the company’s financial records, researching market trends, and weighing the risks of particular stocks and bonds, financial analysts can forecast business outcomes. Financial analysts are engaged by IT firms as well as the banking and insurance industries.

  1. Operations Manager

Operations managers are in charge of all everyday tasks related to the manufacture and distribution of goods. To guarantee effective workflow, they make personnel schedules, operational budgets, and resource allocations to the relevant departments. They guarantee that tasks are finished on schedule and within predetermined budgets.

Comparing Data Analyst vs Data Scientist

The degree of proficiency in using data is what separates a data scientist from a data analyst. A data scientist needs to have greater experience with sophisticated programming methods and computer equipment than the other. A data scientist should also be more skilled in creating algorithms and data models. For a data analyst, the profile is primarily exploratory in contrast to an experimental work profile of a data scientist.

Having a better understanding of the many ways that organizations use data can also help to clarify the functions that they play:

  1. Descriptive Analytics –  This category of analytical solutions addresses the What and Why aspects of business problems. By recognizing patterns, trends, and anomalies in previous data, they offer insights that can be put into practice. Descriptive analytics can be used, for instance, to determine how customer involvement has changed over time and the factors that have contributed to that shift.
  2. Predictive Analytics – This class of solutions uses historical data trends and machine learning algorithms to predict the future. Predictive analytics is used, for instance, to determine the likelihood of cross-selling a product to a customer based on their prior engagement.

Data Analysts are more focused towards descriptive analysis by addressing the theoretical parts of the business, along with some predictive analysis but as a whole, predictive analysis is mastered by Data Scientists who need to play more with data and coding to predict the outcomes. 

Now, let’s dive deeper into how the project life cycle of a data analyst differs from that of a data scientist. 

Data Analyst

  1. Data Extraction 
  2. Data Cleaning and Preparation – Tidy up the data and carry out data manipulation in order to create useful results and visualizations.
  3. Data Exploration – Exploration of reasons behind trends observed in the business.
  4. Data Visualization and Reporting- An analyst creates user-friendly dashboards and management reports with business commentary, which they then distribute to the relevant parties. For this, a number of self-serving business intelligence technologies, such Tableau and Power BI, are frequently employed.

Data Scientist

  1. Data Extraction
  2. Data Cleaning
  3. Feature Engineering – The practice of using cleansed data to build variables predicted to have a stronger predictive power on the desired outcome is known as feature engineering. For instance, BMI can be included as an extra input to a predictive model in addition to height and weight to determine a person’s chance of developing diabetes. In this case, weight and height are used to calculate BMI, an engineered feature.
  4. Model development using AI/ML techniques – A machine-learning system is fed the data to generate predictions. 
  5. Model Testing – Here, data scientists check for whether the model they produced are accurate or not. When the results are not satisfactory, the scientist goes back to the model’s parameters and adjusts them to get the desired outcome.
  6. Productionalizing the Model – Build model pipelines that are ready for production. This makes it possible to integrate with the data flow seamlessly. They next concentrate on formalizing the code and putting it into the production environment as a last step.

Salaries for Data Analysts typically range from $80,000 to $135,000 whereas for Data Scientists, they range from $95,000 to $160,000 on average. 

While they handle data differently, data scientists and analysts share the commonality of working with large amounts of data. Some of the most important factors that set them apart are the amount of data they work with and how much programming they do. A data scientist is likely to receive a better income, but there are more demands and obligations in this position. To help you select which method of dealing with data you prefer, you might wish to initially try one or two courses from each path if you’re still not sure which one to take.