Hi all, I'm a Modeling Analyst at a smaller fintech company, and my OPT is expiring soon without luck with the H1b lottery, so I'll have to attend a master's program. I got accepted to an AI master's program at Northwestern (MSAI) and a data science program at Duke (MIDS), and I'm not sure which one to choose now. On the one hand, I want to get into AI and perhaps get a job as an AI/ML Engineer or a Research Scientist. But, on the other hand, I feel like a master's in AI probably won't prepare me enough for those kinds of jobs and I'll end up looking for DS/DA jobs anyway, so I might as well go to the better-regarded DS master's program at Duke. Oh, and Duke is a two-year program with a 50% scholarship, and the Northwestern MSAI is a 15-month program that's more expensive. TC: 105k --- I know :( YOE: 3 Any advice would be very appreciated, and many thanks in advance! #data #dataanalytics #datascience #masters #AI #artificialintelligence #advice #machinelearning #engineering
Most of these are next to worthless in helping you get roles in these fields.
Welp, does feel like that's the case... I have to get one to stay in the States though, so might have to choose the less bad of the two :(
Dang 50% scholarship sounds good. How did you get that?
Decent undergrad stats + decent essay probably helped haha, though still got rejected from most of my top picks 🥲
You will need phd for AI researcher/engineer mostly. so ill go for DS
Mostly, researchers have PhDs. Study whatever is interesting to you. If you get a job you will be able to pay a loan back for your studies.
I'm pretty interested in AI so want to go that route, but I'll still need a good job to support my interest though. It feels like Masters in AI is worse than even a DS degree in terms of a job hunt bc it's so new
What you can do within AI is quite broad. You can do MLops, ML engineering, Applied AI, SWE, Research, Data Science, etc. Also within AI, there are different major topics: CV, ML core, NLP, Robotics/control, … If you want to study and squeeze the biggest chances of choosing most of these roles and topics, you better do a PhD, imho. Both degrees feel pretty similar for job hunt. I would say that gaining experience is what will make the difference. See which if the two will allow you to acquire it. In particular with Machine Learning and more specifically with Deep Learning.