So I am where I am today through this journey that I will just tell you about. I graduated from the University of Utah in 2011 with undergraduate degree in Political Science. I always knew that I wanted to be on the quantitative side of things, but I quickly realized, with my degree and lack of experience, I wasn't going to get some of the roles that I was interested in. I slowly progressed through the workforce in data entry onto simple analysis and data transformation, working with databases, through interface testing and the like. And while doing that, I was taking school part time to get second specialized degree in economics so that I could have a little bit more on the quantitative experience and training. After that, I was still applying to analyst positions that were more advanced in the analyst positions. And not getting as much attention or responses as I would have liked to at that point in my life so i decided to resign from that position and decided to attend this program full time, hoping that I can accelerate my career after I'm done with school.

So some of the specializations that were available were data visualization, database warehousing and design and big data and data science and statistics and predictive analytics. Among my favorites were data mining and data visualization. Because I feel like these are most tailored to what I wanted to get into after I am done with my degree. On average, I would say that you spend about twenty hours total If you're doing a full time program, both inside and outside of class, although the workload does vary, and sometimes it's up to about thirty hours a week, especially when you're getting into an exam time.

So I was prompted to choose this program because I am very familiar with the University of Utah. I've known people to graduate from the MSIS program. Although, I always knew that I wanted to get more into the Data Science side of things, the analytic side of things. So I was excited when I saw that there was a program for analytic specifically. I was interested in the program because I knew the coursework would be rigorous and I felt like it accelerates my career. I didn't necessarily consider that many other programs, because the field is so new. I knew I wanted to stay in Utah and have my career in Utah. So for now, I wanted to choose a program that was close to home and I think that I was able to do that.