Master of Analytics Program Admission Rates Falling To Single Digits 74
dcblogs (1096431) writes "The 75 students in the 2014 Master of Science in Analytics class at North Carolina State University received, in total, 246 job offers from 55 employers, valued at $22.5 million in salaries and bonuses, which is 24% higher than last year's combined offers. But the problem ahead is admissions. There may not be enough master's programs in analytics to meet demand. NC State has received nearly 800 applications for 85 seats. Its acceptance rate is now at 12.5%. Northwestern University's Master of Science in Analytics received 600 applications for 30 openings its September class. That's an acceptance rate of 6%"
Too funny (Score:5, Funny)
Drawing a wider conclusion about analytics programs from the figures from a mere handful of analytics programs.
That's too funny.
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+1
Twitter (Score:1)
I think they should have used Twitter hash tags. I'm doing the Python script right now and I'll have it up on Amazon's AWS and we'll get to the real truth!
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Computing the average of all salary offers is like computing the student population based on average nr of students who apply to the university rated against the number who actually attend.
Since 3/4th of students don't accept (because students apply to 4 or more universities on average), then the "student" population of NC University is not 34,000 as stared in its brochures but "actually" 8,500--if you're going to use the same sort of "reasoning" and "logic
Data analytics... what is it...? (Score:1)
I have BS in CS & Math. Still have no clue what is Data analytics. Is it statistical analysis of big data sets ?
Re: Data analytics... what is it...? (Score:2, Insightful)
To coninue. So if it is statistical analysis, why not hire statisticians ? I feel like Data Analytics is another made up science degree , similar to "cyber security", in which student that have no background in CS, write papers on cyber attacks.
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I have a Master's in Cyber Security and we can run metasploit and write papers on cyber attacks you insensitive clod!
Re: Data analytics... what is it...? (Score:5, Interesting)
To coninue. So if it is statistical analysis, why not hire statisticians ? I feel like Data Analytics is another made up science degree , similar to "cyber security", in which student that have no background in CS, write papers on cyber attacks.
Based on the purposes it seems to end up being put to, "Data Analytics" is the synonym for "I completed reasonably advanced studies in statistics and/or computer science and then I went into advertising" that you can say without feeling the strong urge to end your miserable life.
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Which is the same thing as being able to say of a "computer science" degree, "I completed reasonably advanced studies in mathematics, and then I went into code monkeying," without feeling the strong urge to end your miserable life.
Reductio ad absurdam is so passé, son.
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I didn't know anything about this sort of program until I had to do physical therapy along side a quant who graduated from a program at what would be my future employer. He's done work on both the logistics side of the house and financial engineering later along in his career.
So, I now work at a large state school in the midwest that offers an MQA (Masters of Quantitative Analysis) that's been around since the 1970s which is being rebranded as a 'Data Analytics' degree. It's (apparently) a demanding program
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Statisticians have this weird obsession with quantifying the uncertainty of their estimates. Data analytics is about answers, damnit!
Re:Data analytics... what is it...? (Score:5, Informative)
Or google, it would seem.
http://analytics.ncsu.edu/?pag... [ncsu.edu]
Looks like mostly stuff I'd expect a maths grad to already know[1]. Maybe not the specific applications, but it isn't that true of anything?
[1] ANOVA? I did that as a non-maths undergrad. With a slide rule, uphill in the snow.
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I have BS in CS & Math. Still have no clue what is Data analytics. Is it statistical analysis of big data sets ?
Short answer: Yes. Curriculum for the program is available here
http://analytics.ncsu.edu/?pag... [ncsu.edu]
I have a BS in Computer Science and a BS in Statistics - both from NC State. CSC students are terrible when it comes to analyzing data sets, but great when it comes to designing software. Statistics students are great at analyzing data sets, but terrible when it comes to designing software. You need a combination of both to handle large data sets. There are PhD students in either field that tackle data
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Perhaps this simple presentation will help clear it up:
Analytics According to Captain Kirk [sitelogicmarketing.com]
Need math degree for journalist too (Score:2, Informative)
30 is only, but exactly, 5% of 600. Not 6%
Is that sensationalism ?
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you can't possibly expect a journalist to get a single number right in an article?
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Obviously the writer is a disgruntled student who didn't get accepted for the course, who didn't realize his shit math skills were the reason he got denied.
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30 and 600 are suspiciously round. Maybe the 6% is based on the actual figures?
(Or, for those who are old enough, insert Pentium joke here)
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what is a master of science in analytics? (Score:2)
M.o.A.P. (Score:3)
Maybe they need to change it's name to something more exciting. Top World Analytical Tool. That would work better.
Analytics? (Score:2)
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You must be one of the 5% with a masters of analytics!
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Finding the applicants is not the problem, as you can see by looking at the number of applicants for the very few seats.
Unless totally unqualified people were applying .. but that still begrudges the question: why aren't these Nawth Ca''lina universities teaching what the students want?
Oh .. yeah .. sorry, I forgot. All that money going for Black Studies.
http://espn.go.com/college-spo... [go.com]
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01... [nytimes.com]
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TWDNMWYTID.
acceptance, not admission (Score:2)
QQ More (Score:4, Interesting)
Try Med School. You might have 100 or more applicants per seat.
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I've concluded for decades now that any shortage of med school students or graduates (and thus the number of doctors) is an artificial shortage, totally created by the medical profession itself. Wouldn't want to endanger those nice fat incomes, hmmmm?
http://healthland.time.com/201... [time.com]
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:assuming we mean engineering analytics. - no. (Score:1)
They're talking about training "Data scientists". The folks who, for example, look at Twitter hastags to find out who will the PResidential election. [huffingtonpost.com]; turned out the guy got it better than anyone - even the statisticians came in second.
Marketing people are wetting themselves over this type of shit so they can sell us more crap - there is a reason why our economy is 70%+ consumption and why more and more stores are demanding personal information. Not because they need it, but so that mind the data.
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They're talking about training "Data scientists". The folks who, for example, look at Twitter hastags to find out who will the PResidential election. [huffingtonpost.com]; turned out the guy got it better than anyone - even the statisticians came in second.
Would you be talking about them if they didn't?
How many projects like this were attempted but gave bad answers, and thus we don't talk about them?
The predictive power of something like this is far from proven.
Mislabeled? (Score:5, Informative)
Is that really 'admission' rates? I mean, technically, semantically, I guess you could call it admission rates because it's literally the number of people of people entering the program because there are so few seats.
But really, in the vernacular, 'admission rates' have to do with the filtering process of who is allowed to enter based on qualifications, not if there's a seat available. Saying there's a low admission rate to me implies that their standards are too high, overfiltering applicants so that too few people are participating in the programs.
I guess I would have titled this article entirely differently, citing a lack of CAPACITY, not a low admission rate.
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The summary and the numbers say this: "OH NOES! ADMISSION RATES ARE DROPPING!" They give this evidence: "Ten times as many people applied, but we only admitted the same number of people!" ... yeah, your demand for education in a field increased, but the supply of education opportunities didn't. This is okay as long as the supply of job opportunities also did not increase.
I still dislike the school-college-job career path we've created with this faulty ideal of universal vocational education. School
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College is a speculative market. When a job field is understaffed, demand increases. Salaries go up, and barriers to entry are minimal--know something about computers? YOU'RE HIRED, KID!
Work field entrants in this system will naturally seek to maximize their potential by selecting a career compatible with their self-perceived interests and abilities, but largely weighted toward profitability and stability. This is why we mock art students so hard: they dive right into art school with no career plan,
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Is it that common now that what specifically you get your degree in matters? Of my circle of friends from college, none of them are working in the field their degree would suggest. Now, they're still technical degrees for technical work, but that's a far as it goes. (Software dev with a physics phd, tech CEO with an environmental engineering degree, etc.)
Sure, your degree is important for landing that first job, but life rarely takes the path you imagined when in high school (and thank goodness for that!
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The point of contention is college students coming out into the field with no ability to get any job, and/or eventually getting something they're unsuited for.
Beyond that, it makes a sort of economic sense that time spent acquiring useless skills is time wasted, and that economic activity spent on this wasted time makes the world poorer. If you get a biology degree and become a programmer of physics simulators, you have (in most cases, unless biology becomes a significant personal hobby) wasted a great de
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I think the important thing one learns in college from any STEM degree is "the engineering mindset". The ability to approach complex problems analytically and solve them a piece at a time with the tools available. It doesn't much matter how you learn this (what major), as long as you develop the skill.
I do wish there were more professional career-oriented vocational training in college, to help those who actually go into the careers their major suggests, but for many reasons people go a different directio
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In high school, they taught us the "scientific method". They can certainly generally educate students to apply decomposition; in fact, the field of Project Management uses Work Breakdown Structures, which are defined by the PMBOK3e (also 5e, latest):
a deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the project team to accomplish the project objectives and create the required deliverables. It organizes and defines the total scope of the project. Each descending level represents an increasingly detailed definition of the project work. The WBS is decomposed into work packages. The deliverable orientation of the hierarchy includes both internal and external deliverables.
A work breakdown structure may look something like this [blogspot.com]. Notice the absence of verbs: all things must be on the WBS (the one shown is incomplete), all things are broken down to understandable and manageable deliverables. Project Scheduling further breaks
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"My GPA was damn near 16, while regular kids couldn't get above a 4.0"
And people wonder why nobody takes the grade-point metric seriously.
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"I still dislike the school-college-job career path we've created"
Well sure, but it does provide a handy way for clever congressmen to hand giant piles of money to teachers and their unions on an ongoing business, while SIMULTANEOUSLY looking great to voters because they're handing out "college money" to voters like candy.
It has NOTHING to do with education, or improving the workforce, or (laughably) the students.
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Actually, providing for education creates a consistently oversupplied workforce, leading to unemployment and a crop of cheap skilled labor for businesses to choose from. Imagine if there were 300,000 CEOs out there and 15,000 companies. You have 30,000 well-above-average CEOs, and about 150,000 that are average or better, and 250,000 who are workable. Just give them $80k/year, if they bitch then throw them out and get another cheap CEO. No multi-million-dollar salaries.
We get this sort of setup with
Tell students what classes will get them a job (Score:3)
This is never made that clear to students. Sure there's a notion that the liberal arts degrees aren't worth much. But then you look at the other classes and you don't really understand what the salaries are or how in demand those people are... Furthermore, the liberal arts programs always tell everyone how useful and valuable they are to your life and career and etc.
Here is an idea, what about a job future's market akin to the commodities future's market only with a longer time horizon. Commodities futures tend to project out months to a year in the future. But to be useful a job future's market would have to project out four to eight years.
You could have various companies agree to pay the university fees of new students in return for getting a reliable labor force. At the same time, it might be reasonable to build in a pay reduction upon being hired and an understanding that you'd work for that company for X years. Remember, these are the people that put you through school and gave you a job before you even knew what you were doing.
the alternative is continuing to saddle graduates with huge amounts of debt.
Um, Go Pack? (Score:2)
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I guess they use a different kind of math in analytics.
No, they use a different kind of math in journalism. You know, the same kind of math that says that a 10% increase in government spending is really a 10% spending cut because the government had said that it was going to increase spending by 22%.
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They said "single digits". Its pretty difficult to tell the difference between 5% and 6% when one counts with one's fingers.
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3 / 6 = 0.6 for very large values of 3.
College waitlist manipulation (Score:2)
Heard a story on NPR recently about colleges manipulating waitlists:
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/education/waitlisted-college-heres-why/ [marketplace.org]
Admission rates!!! ELITE ANALYTICS (Score:3)
http://time.com/43750/walmart-... [time.com]
We should hire some masters of analytics to explain to us that admission rates probably don't lead to the conclusions that you think they do.
Bubble inflating too fast? (Score:3)
Is it possible that we're just near the top of the Big Data bubble and that educational institutions haven't been able to bring specialized programs online fast enough?
It's starting to feel a little bit like 1999 again, just with different buzzwords:
- Social
- Big Data / Hadoop
- Cloud
- Internet of Things
In 1999, it was all just Web 1.0 and eyeballs. How far we've come :)