• Spring 2025 Extended Priority Deadline: November 21, 2024
• Spring 2025 Regular Deadline: December 5, 2024

Please note there is no application fee for graduate applications submitted by the Priority Deadline.

The MS in Data Science online degree program helps students earn the credentials and acquire the skills needed to enter or advance in the fast-growing field of data science. Ranked by Fortune magazine as one of the best online master's programs in the nation, the MS in Data Science offers foundational knowledge and hands-on programming competencies, resulting in project-based work samples that are in great market demand.

The program’s learning objectives and demanding, hands-on courses are designed around employer needs. Throughout their time in the program, students build portfolios of increasingly complex projects using popular programming languages such as R and Python, which mirror the current experience and demands of the workplace. Students build predictive and prescriptive models, practice giving presentations, and review each other’s work in a convenient online setting, ensuring that they are equipped with the expertise most valued in today’s marketplace. The MS in Data Science program culminates with a capstone project that represents highly sophisticated, but practical, solutions to address real world problems.

The program covers a broad range of disciplines:  

• Probability and statistics: descriptive statistics, sampling techniques, discrete probability models, sampling, statistical distributions, correlation, and null hypothesis testing 
• Applied math: matrix manipulation, linear equations, and loss functions 
• Programming: creating, testing and optimizing regression, classification, and Bayesian models using R and Python 
• Data acquisition and management: acquiring/importing data frames; cleaning, normalizing, and manipulating data via SQL 
• Critical thinking and communication: framing real-world phenomena as quantitative representations and explaining results in simple, clear, and cogent language 

Additionally, the program’s faculty comprises committed and engaged technology practitioners who are experts in their fields.  They invest time in building courses on the use of open source best-practice tools that satisfy high employer demands for quality programming and the use of advanced techniques.

Career Prospects

The MS in Data Science program prepares graduates for a variety of technical and managerial positions in such fields as machine learning, artificial intelligence, business intelligence, data governance, and market research.