I am currently working as a Senior Software Engineer in Test at Accenture, Mumbai. Read further to learn about my journey with Great Learning’s PGP Data Science and Business Analytics Course in my own words.
I was planning for my Master’s education in the USA before coming to know about the PG DSBA program of Great Learning. Since we were in the midst of the COVID situation in 2020, I was searching for a program that would help me gain knowledge about Data Science and transition into that field. The reason for planning for my masters was to transition into the analytics domain.
The biggest professional challenge before joining the program was that I was looking for an opportunity for changing my role, I did not have the necessary skills to move into analytics. I was desperate and looking for opportunities that would help me make the transition.
I was searching for courses in India that would provide quality education similar to that of acquiring a master’s degree in the USA without having to leave my job. I thought of an online course that would help me in gaining the necessary skills and knowledge. Only apprehension was that, will the course really help me with gaining these skills since it was totally online and also the costs were a little high. Investing that much money in an online course at that time was a little daunting. As the course progressed over time, any doubts I had regarding the quality of the program that was 100% online were resolved. Through various tests, assignments, classroom connections, and extra study material I was able to increase my knowledge considerably.
Mentored learning sessions are very important since we get to ask the doubts that we have during the study of video lectures. Especially the case studies that were conducted at every session cleared all technical doubts. Sessions during the capstone project were also really beneficial since we get to discuss how everyone approaches a problem and then we can analyze the question and come up with our own solution for the same. The quality of mentoring sessions was very good every time. The mentors have always discussed and explained all the issues that we get during self-study, so they have helped with helping us understand any little technical details as well as helped us understand the business perspective for every case study
With these newly achieved skill sets I am trying to solve various case studies from kaggle, also trying to find out a way in which these skills can be applied in my existing role. I am trying to change my role from a testing professional into analytics and these skills are helping me to become that day by day.
My advice would be to learn every day even the smallest concept, set aside some time of the day to go through these concepts. If someone gets stuck on a particular topic one can always do some more research on it. I have used this approach for every assignment which we have been asked to complete at the end of each topic. By doing this you get a more clear solution and knowledge of the concept. Similarly, learn one technique at a time/one problem at a time. And focus on practical applications and not just theory.
