Major in Data Science
At Merrimack College, a data scientist has an appetite for looking at the world through a different lens. You might be a number cruncher, a trend observer, or a pattern finder.
LinkedIn Ranks Data Scientist Number One Most Promising Job in 2019
What is Data Science?
Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract knowledge and insights from data in various forms. The world of data science crosses many industries, from creating better dating apps, to helping policymakers develop recommendations to curing cancer. Majoring in data science will prepare you to be technically proficient to compile and synthesize data in both scientific and creative ways.
Why Study Data Science?
As a data scientist, you’ll become part of a booming industry where your knowledge of deep learning, programming skills and data processing provides a range of job opportunities. Studying data science provides a number of important benefits, including:
- Job security: Data will build the future digital economy. By 2021 the demand for data scientists and data engineers is expected to grow by 29%.
- Career mobility: Data scientists and data analysts are needed everywhere and will find their skills in demand across many different industries such as health care, professional sports, retail, accounting, business, finance and entertainment. They also do more than just analyze raw data and data sets. Data scientists also study business problems, sharpen their decision-making skills and examine business intelligence – all areas transferable to different career paths.
- Future proof: A strong technical and analytical foundation today will ensure that data scientists will get to build the future and become leaders in their field tomorrow.
What You’ll Learn
Using data science tools, you’ll build your knowledge in a number of areas, including:
- Computational and statistical thinking
- Mathematical foundations
- Application of computation
- Model building and assessment
- Data curation and management
- Data analysis and data visualization
- Knowledge transference – communication and responsibility
As a data science major, you will develop the competitive skills you need to enter the thriving data science job market. You’ll investigate machine learning and artificial intelligence and learn how to analyze big data, unstructured data and data analytics.
Why Merrimack
- You’ll major in a degree designed specifically by data scientists and industry experts and managed by a corporate advisory board.
- You’ll get hands-on experience digging into large amounts of data and examining programming languages and machine learning algorithms.
- 100% of data science majors participate in at least one internship, co-op, fieldwork or practicum.
- Our undergraduate program draws from the strengths of our Master of Science in Data Science.
- With flexible program options, you can choose our traditional four-year bachelor’s program or pursue a bachelor’s to master’s path in five years.
Data Science Jobs
Data scientists are hired by a wide range of companies. You’ll find data scientists working at companies like Netflix, Uber and Microsoft where their technical skillsets in data mining, data collection and statistical analysis are highly desirable. Career options are boundless: data analyst, business analyst and data manager are a few of the many different positions available in the data science field.
- In 2020, the number of available data science and analytics jobs is predicted to grow by 364,000 openings to 2,720,000. (IBM)
- According to Payscale.com (2017), a data scientist’s median salary is $91,000.
