Upskilling in the field of Data Science and Business Analytics can surely benefit your career and help you power ahead. Read further to learn about Prasad Anil Deshpande’s journey with Great Learning’s PGP Data Science and Business Analytics Course in his own words.
I am working as a senior IT professional with more than 20 years of rich work experience in the IT field. I have an excellent academic background, and I was keen to pursue Post Graduation immediately after completing my engineering at a premier engineering institute in India long back. But I never knew that my dream of pursuing and successfully completing Post Graduation would come true after two decades!
While I was looking for a suitable PG Program, I was very keen to pursue a subject that is application-oriented, relevant in the IT industry. At the same, it’s exciting and challenging. Since I have major experience in Software Quality Assurance in the IT field and I am a Certified Six Sigma Black Belt, the domain of Data Science and Business Analytics was a great option for my PG Program. After a good amount of research and feedback from my friends working in the Data Science domain, I made up my mind to pursue a PG program in Data Science and Business Analytics from Great Learning, designed for working professionals.
When I joined PGP-DSBA at Great Learning in early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic situation was evolving across the world, and the option of classroom-based learning was ruled out. Great Learning then offered an online PG Program for which there was an initial apprehension in my mind about its effectiveness, but it was duly overcome by Great Learning through their time-tested, perhaps best-in-class online learning platform (Olympus) used for end to end execution of the course.
I found the quality of mentored learning sessions as top-notch for various course topics. But what I found very useful was the rigor of periodic Graded Quiz and individual Project assignments, which Great Learning brings in. I had to put myself into a habit of spending good quality time (up to an hour) every day from a busy work schedule to make sure that I finish the course videos and hands-on exercises before mentored learning sessions planned over weekends and I complete Graded Quiz and Project assignments always on time.
I was privileged to have a very good Mentor who could explain difficult concepts in a simple manner and resolve all the queries quite well. I cherish the memories of great learning sessions and discussions with mentors throughout the program. Another unique aspect of the Great Learning PG Program is the role of Program Manager. The Program Manager’s support was quite good and timely, which made my journey of PGP-DSBA quite smooth. The Capstone project at the end of PGP-DSBA provided me an opportunity to work on a near real-life business problem and a large messy dataset.
While I always stood in the Top 3 in Leaderboard, it’s the reflection in terms of the learning and on the feedback received for the assignments that were an important motivating factor for me to stay on course. And what I have learned during this PG Program is certainly useful to apply in my area of work, where every decision is data-driven! With new-age Machine Learning techniques and concepts learned so well, I feel far more confident to apply them successfully and harness higher business value out of the great learning I have had!
My advice to all those who have just started on an analytics journey is to approach PGP-DSBA as a good learning platform. Make sure to have notes from every course video and mentored learning session, which proves to be handy later. Spend some quality time every day for learning, practicing, and keep making progress on course videos so that you are always on time to finish the assignments (Due to this good habit, I could submit my Capstone Project Final Report one day before the scheduled date). And keep exploring the learning material provided by Great Learning, interact with your fellow batch-mates, and have meaningful conversations with your Mentor, which will help you to constantly enrich your knowledge.
For more such success stories, watch this space!
