Pursuing MSc Data Science at CMI after engineering was a great decision for me
Hi! You probably landed here because hearing buzzwords like machine learning, artificial intelligence, Generative AI, etc., makes all sorts of hormones rush throughout your body. You might have watched the 3Blue1Brown YouTube playlist on deep learning (my favourite channel for math related stuff) and decided, this is it, this has to be my career now (like I did :P). Or perhaps you are about to or just completed your bachelors, be it BSc, BE/BTech, or your masters, or you have been working for a while and are now planning to pursue a career in data science. Or you’re just here for a refreshing read. In any case, I hope to do justice to your time 😊
In this article, I will mainly discuss the course, MSc Data Science at Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI), to help people decide if it suits their interests. I just graduated from this course in 2024, and my experience has been largely positive.
About the course
Unlike many other MSc courses, this is a placement-centric course and not generally recommended if you plan to do a PhD.
It is a 2-year course having mainly machine learning, statistics, and coding (mainly in Python and R) with a compulsory summer internship after the first year for 2-3 months, and finally, placements. Companies come to the campus to provide internships and placements.
You get plenty of electives to choose from so that you can take up the courses you are interested in.
Sooo…. How are the placements?
Let’s just jump right into what you are here for, shall we? Just admit it, you are here for the placements, right? Anyway, lately, the average placement package for this course has been around 18-21 LPA. It had been constantly increasing at a good rate over the past years, except for this year, when it slightly decreased. Apparently, the market conditions were not great this time, but hopefully things will be back to being good.
JP Morgan, American Express, Wells Fargo, etc., are among the companies that come and offer good packages. One can generally expect to get a data science-related role. You can have a look at the detailed placement statistics and trends for this course on their official website here.
Is this course for you?
People from all types of backgrounds, like I mentioned earlier, pursue this course. Most people are either BSc Math or BSc Stats, but it largely does not matter as long as you are genuinely interested. Well, I did Mechatronics Engineering (I know you have never heard of that), and I never felt disadvantaged in any way.
In my opinion, if you like math (not talking about pure math here) in general, mainly probability, or if you have an interest in statistics, you might like this course.
I would recommend reading about basic ML techniques like linear regression, decision trees, and what they are used for, and if that seems interesting to you, you might want to look further into this course.
How is the entrance test?
Unless the entrance exam difficulty level has changed over time, it is not considered to be very difficult. From what I remember, it consists mainly of school-level math and some probability.
Please note that the entrance test for MSc Data Science is different from the entrance test for their BSc courses and other MSc courses (Data Science entrance test is probably way easier :D)
The best way to prepare for the test, in my opinion, is to solve previous year question papers in a timed fashion and then revisit your mistakes. You get to know the type of questions asked, and you can practice the topics you are struggling with separately later. You can find them here.
Any pre-requisites?
I did engineering, did not know any statistics, but I had some basic ML and coding knowledge. Prior knowledge of either of them is completely unnecessary, as everything is taught from scratch.
But an important thing to remember is, internship hiring starts just 2 months into the course in mid-October (at least that was the case for my batch), so I would say it is better to have at least some very basic coding and ML knowledge until then to have an upper hand in the interviews.
The thing I recommend the most to anyone who asks me about preparation for internships/placements is doing a project. There are plenty of YouTube videos that will help you make your first basic data science-related project (and it is easier than you would imagine). I say this because during the interviews, the questions would generally go like, “Hi, please introduce yourself,” and then “Tell me about this project that you have done”. I had a good project, and that’s mainly all I talked about in my interviews.
Most companies that come to hire interns offer PPOs, which are very valuable (some good companies only hire full-time through PPOs here), so it is really important to be prepared for the internship hiring session.
But not to worry, everyone would either get an internship or get a project from AlgoLabs.
So, all in all, a basic project, some coding, and ML knowledge should put you in a good spot.
What do you learn in this course?
The structure of the course is really good in my opinion, with foundational topics like data structures, Python, statistics, SQL in the first semester, Machine learning, algorithms in the second semester, with more advanced courses like natural language processing (NLP), advanced machine learning, regression, etc. in the higher semesters. Many of these have hands-on activities for better learning. Courses are of good quality, not super easy, not super hard, and professors are quite approachable. You also get to do an industrial project (IP) if you wish to, which would give you some more industry experience.
You get to choose from a wide variety of electives in your third and fourth semesters. You can choose to take courses which are more on the machine learning side, or more statistics-based based if you like that, you could get more into finance, etc.
Personally, I was more interested in the machine learning side and hence chose electives like time series analysis, reinforcement learning, etc., which I find to be pretty cool. Some people choose electives that are the lightest so that they can chill all semester, now that is up to you XD.
Is it tough? How is the workload?
I would not consider the workload to be heavy, in fact, for me at least, it was quite light for the most part (except for my last semester because of the electives that I happened to choose), but some of my classmates could disagree and hence, it is always better to consider opinions of multiple people to get a more accurate representation of the truth (some basic statistics stuff in simple words, just for the sake of it). For reference, there are generally just 2 or maybe 3 lectures in a day. Sometimes it could even be 1 or 0.
I was already familiar with coding and some ML, so that could be a reason why, but most professors don’t bombard you with homework all the time (but very few do:/)
Some courses have a project might require a project that you might need to do (mostly a group project), which can be good to add to your resume. These could take some of your time, but are not generally super heavy either.
In the second year, you will have mostly electives only, and so if you find the workload to be high generally, you can always ask your seniors about it; they were once in your place and are always helpful.
Fees
The fee for this course is pretty high. It comes to a total of 10 lakhs now for the 2 years. But the college has several fee waiver brackets where you can, I think, get up to a 99% fee waiver based on your family income.
Stay
Unfortunately, Data Science students do not get hostel accommodation (at least most do not), so you will have to look for a PG/flat for rent nearby. This can be a headache, especially if you are looking for a rented flat, since many societies are against student/bachelor tenants.
My college experience
The first thing that I encountered when I joined CMI was a very bad PG. The PG owner gave me and my friends some trouble, but thankfully, we ran away from there soon. I think they stopped giving rooms to students after an issue that had taken place there. The other PG was good, a little expensive but quite comfortable. By the end of the year, we had to run away from that PG as well XD. Knowing Tamil could work in your favour sometimes.
College life is pretty chill. Many people stay up till night in college and chill/study. There are open discussion areas where you can just sit and peacefully do your work, which is quite cool. You get to see cute puppies on campus sometimes. There is one fest every semester, which is generally not huge since it is a small college (5.4-acre campus size), but fun. There are tournaments of TT, football, tug of war, etc., every year. The campus is pretty. Commute is generally not an issue for most places since shared autos will take you to college from almost anywhere. Going back home can be an issue sometimes, but the college also provides a shuttle service for different times of the day, the timings of which you may or may not find comfortable. Having a cycle or a 2-wheeler helps a lot. For food, there are tiffin service providers around, or you can cook your food. There are many places to eat around. Mess food is decent-good in my opinion, but again, many might disagree with me. But it is generally healthy. Most people here are Bengali; if you like that, good for you. Also, you will meet some great minds here!
I do not generally stay on campus for long, but there were times when I did, and those were some precious times.
I am extremely happy that I took up this course. I made some really close friends, really cool friends, had great conversations, and have made really good memories along the way. So, if you feel all of this is right for you, go ahead, you probably will not regret it!
