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After receiving her Bachelors in Engineering in Electronics and Communication Engineering, current MS-DS Coursera student Garima Vardhan spent 11 years working in Product Lifecycle Management, before deciding to enroll in the program in May of 2021. Due to visa constraints, she has been unable to work in the US, but the program has allowed her to utilize this time to further her studies while balancing being a mom. Below, she shares insights into her experience and advice for prospective students. 

Can you tell me how the MS-DS on Coursera program fits into your life?
Well, it fits perfectly in my life! I have the flexibility of time as there is no strict deadline for the courses. In some sessions I am fine doing not a single course at all. I can do things according to my pace, which is the best part. Idea is to gain knowledge rather than doing assignments just for grades. I have a 5-year-old at home, so it's definitely not easy to follow deadlines. Also, there is No one-time fees, we can pay as we go. I am sure a lot of students who are currently not working, must be having great relief with this option.

What are your favorite parts of the program?
As I already mentioned about the flexibility of time and payment of fees, on top of that, we all get to learn from our fellow students. We have separate channels on Slack for each course in MSDS and many discussion forums on Coursera which cover a wide range of technical topics, that helps a lot. In fact, I have not attended a single Office hour session in this program till date. Every time I posted my doubts on slack it was answered by some of our fellow students. Nonetheless, we all have to abide by the honor code so we can just give hints and not clearly state the answers. As a part of this program, we also get access to many other courses which are relevant to Data Science, which are available on “���������� on Coursera”. That way we can brush up on many other topics side by side. I did some extra courses in R Programming and Python.

What do you hope to do with your MS-DS degree?
I hope to enter the vast field of Data Science after earning this MS degree. The knowledge and skills learned during this Master’s degree will be incredibly valuable in the upcoming job market. I am more interested in areas related to Deep Learning like Natural Language Processing and Speech Recognition.

Would you recommend this program to others?
Absolutely! I vouch for this all the time. Because I have seen many media reports on women being under-represented in the tech field. I think while striking a balance between the personal and professional life, they are busy representing themselves more somewhere else. They have more commitments so can hardly think of committing to a program which has strict deadlines. This will fit perfectly in their lives as well. Even people from non-science backgrounds can undertake this program. There are some basic courses on Linear Algebra and Calculus, once they finish them, they can start working on the core courses related to the Statistics and Data Structures pathway of this program.

What’s one tip you have for students who are starting this program?
This is an online program so the responsibility to do this genuinely lies with us, we must be 100% honest as far as honor code is concerned. Otherwise, we are not going to land anywhere with only a degree on paper and nothing in our head.