This is an exciting time for the UBC MDS program, with the second cohort starting their journey in just a few days. We are thrilled about the strength and diversity of our incoming class. Here are some facts about the incoming cohort:
- 43 new students.
- 21 domestic, 22 international.
- 20 women and 23 men (47% women, 53% men).
- a variety of academic backgrounds, from psychology to civil engineering to a current UBC medical student who is taking a year out to pursue MDS.
- previous degrees from UBC, other Canadian universities, the U.S., China, Colombia, France, India, South Africa, Turkey, and Vietnam (see map below).
- eight students have another advanced degree prior to MDS.
- about half the class completed their Bachelor’s degree in 2015 or earlier, with 9 students having just graduated in 2017.
We were extremely impressed with the applicant pool. These incoming students were chosen from a pool of over 500 applications, which were reviewed in the late spring. The application process for the 2018-2019 cohort is expected to open in late 2017. (For any prospective students reading this, you may be interested in our advice for applying to the MDS program.)
Also, an update on our first cohort: the first MDS cohort graduated at the end of June, 2017 (19 students). Many of our graduates are already settled into positions at Amazon, Microsoft, and a range of other companies and government organizations. Most of our graduates have (so far) remained in the Vancouver area and the class already had its first mini-reunion last week. We intend to release more information about the employment outcomes of our graduates as we collect more data.
On behalf of the MDS team, we’re looking forward to another exciting year of data science!
Mike Gelbart is a Teaching Fellow in the MDS program and a Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at UBC. Map by Giulio Valentino Dalla Riva.