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If you want to apply for NYU Data Science PhD program:)

December 21, 2019

Data Science is definitely popular but also sometimes confusing for people who want to start the journey or at the beginning, especially when it comes to the choice of Master and PhD.

I summarized related questions I got from junior fellows along with my feedbacks. Hope it can be helpful for people with similar concerns!

  1. What made you decide to do a PhD?

Everyone can have a different set of personal reasons for their decision about PhD.

I would like to first share some basic conditions which I think you should meet, and they are also common reasons people have for this question:

You love research, maybe not only for your own ‘research’ project, but also for some other topics or phenomenons you run into in daily life. Sorry for my poor vocabulary, here I consider ‘research’ as a habit or characteristic, which stands for spontaneously and passinately investigating and summarizing observations or questions but not being satisfied with a general or shallow idea.

  1. How does that change your job prospects?

  2. What sort skills/tools do you have as a PhD that you would not have with just a Masters?
  3. What tools do you use most for your PhD? (stats, linear algebra, machine learning tools,….)

  4. Do you know what you want to do after you graduate? If yes, what?

  5. How do you feel about the workload in your PhD so far?

  6. Looking at the syllabus and core content, it seems that students will have everything but time to do research. Would you mind telling me how has it been a normal day for you?

  7. It’s possible to take all the electives (or a big part of them) from, say, Perception & Cognition program? (I’m quite interested in that path as well…).

  8. Did you take all from Data Science core?

  9. Concerning the fundings, are you receiving the fellowship?

  10. It is enough to live in NY?

  11. Can you do a 1 year of your research abroad?

  12. Or just summer internships?