Hi everyone, my name is Jennifer.

I am a MSDS cohort 13 student and today I'm here with Rushil.

And today we're going to learn a little bit more about her.

Her experience here in the program, as well as her journey as a data scientist.

So, Rushil, how was your experience before doing MSDS? What were you doing?

I was working in a startup which aligned with my goals because I wanted to do a PhD in biomedical.

And then I was curious that, you know, what's behind these models, how is the maths working?

I came across this amazing program at USF, and that's how I decided to pursue my master's in data science at USF.

Awesome. Yeah.

And why USF instead of other schools for your master's program?

There were two things. They had this practicum, the nine month long practicum program, which really gets you ready for the real world problems.

And the other main thing was that it is in the Bay Area and the Bay Area is a hub of all the big tech, small tech, startups and everything.

So yeah, these two were the main factors in selecting USF.

What classes in the program helped you gain your business acumen skills?

I think the communication class where we were taught how to present our project in a compact way under a minute or two, and also the machine learning classes where we learned what task, what models are appropriate to use.

Has having a data science degree and a masters of that, has it helped open some doors for you in your career?

Definitely.

It has just not prepared me for data science roles, but it has honed me overall for any role I want to get into, be it machine learning, be it AI solutions architect, be it LLM, because the basics have been so well taught here that I can just build anything I want to build.

At your job as a data scientist, what is your day to day look like?

I work as a data scientist at Facteus.

We get a lot of data from credit unions, banks, retailers, groceries.

I’m working on predicting the income levels of our shoppers.

And these features will help our clients to better understand their consumers.

And then they can have personalized marketing campaigns to target the right audience for their products.

The alumni are so willing to help you.

Alumni network is so strong here.

They’ll help you with the mock interviews.

They help you review your resume and they even put a referral for you.

And our alumni are working everywhere in the Bay Area from FANG to startups.

They are even co-founders of tech startups.

So yeah, it's a great community we have.