I do some part-time consulting for my friends (both at my institution and elsewhere) as a second set of eyes on their grad school applications and in coaching them to stay on track to get into their program of choice. One friend of mine, who attends Arizona State University, is looking to apply to Harvard’s new S.M. in Data Science program in the Paulson School. Typically, I can find some sort of info on program admissions data for various programs. But, given that this is a new degree program, they’ve yet to admit anyone - ever - and it simply isn’t out there. Does anyone here have an idea of the basic profile the Admissions committee is looking for, particularly in terms of GPA and GRE score? I’m more of a humanities guy, not really all that knowledgeable on STEM.
@hoosierguy - My nephew just completed Cal Berkeley’s Masters of Information and Data Science Degree. https://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/programs/mids It’s web based, but the degree just says Cal Berkeley. He loved the program. There’s some good general information you can access through the above link.
The website says: that you need "A high level of quantitative ability. This should be demonstrated by at least one of the following qualifications:
Scores in the top 15 percent in the Quantitative section of either the GRE or GMAT
Five years of technical work experience
Significant work experience that demonstrates your quantitative abilities
I don’t know anything about my nephew’s test scores or undergraduate grades. He graduated from a good public university in the Midwest in Operations Management and had six years of solid technical work experience before he applied.
Many grad programs, even established ones, don’t have any specific GPA or GRE requirements; often the GPA and GRE scores that are acceptable are going to vary with the student’s other profile features. A 3.2 GPA may not be OK for a student straight from undergrad but might be fine for someone who’s been working in tech for 5 years at a big company and done some data science tasks, for example. I’d say for master’s degrees I’d assume they’re looking for a minimum GPA of around 3.2-3.3.
They do say what they are looking for in quantitative facility:
Whenever programs list basic qualifications I always assume that actually competitive candidates will exceed them, so I would wager that the initially most successful candidates will be those with strong quantitative backgrounds - probably at least the equivalent of a minor in math or stats - plus an intermediate understanding of computer science/programming (like data structures and algorithms plus knowing a programming language, and likely Python or Java or C++ will be stronger than R).