The length of the program and costs. Given I had prior experience and education for data science and analytics, I thought a quick 2 semester Master's program would be ideal.
Course Curriculum :
Its great if you have some prior exposure to Data Analytics. The courses are well balanced between CS courses and Supply Chain courses. The program is hosted by the Business School, in partnership with the Information Science Dept., which teaches the CS courses.
Exams :
No hard grade or GPA requirements. Had to write 3 detailed answers to their standard admission questions - similar to a Statement of Purpose. GRE 327 (Verbal 163, Quant 167)
Placement :
The placements committee organizes job fairs, and almost every company in the Tempe-Phoenix area sends their recruiters to these fairs. There's also a good alumni network which you can leverage to get interviews.
Internship :
I had a capstone project with IBM for a Natural Language Processing (NLP) project in my second semester.
Fees :
For our (2018-19) batch, the course itself was ~65k USD, and room & board was roughly 12-15K USD for the year.
Scholarship :
Yes, I got the MSBA International Student Scholarship of 15,000 USD. It was part of the admission offer, without me applying for it.
Faculty :
Faculty for some of the Data Science courses and core Business Analytics courses are great, and well qualified. For some of the courses, its hit and miss. They are highly approachable, and are happy to help students if you ask for it. They also help in arranging the Capstone project with various companies, which is a great way to build some work experience in your second semester.
Campus Life :
Tempe is a huge college town within the Phoenix Metropolitan area. The facilities are world class, and there are a lot of events that one can attend to.
Hostel :
You can opt for the dorms or the rooms provided by the university, but most graduate students stayed in apartment complexes just outside the main campus. The rent and living costs are quite reasonable compared to the west coast or the East coast states.
