Well, I have submitted the official form, so I am officially dropping out of the Big Data Master’s program at SFU. It seems kind of ironic that the girl who was featured in the promotional video for this year’s cohort is now leaving the program halfway through. I wanted to write this post to explain why.

I am not leaving because I’m not doing well.
I had a sweet co-op job lined up at IBM (that I found myself. Yay networking!) and an A- average from last term’s courses (including an A+ in Machine Learning!). So let’s just get that out of the way.

I have milked the program for all it’s worth to me.
This master’s program is front-loaded with courses; 6 out of the 7 required courses are completed in the first 8 months of the program. The latter half of the program consists of only a co-op term and one additional course. For me, the one course that I will leave incomplete is a course in algorithms, the equivalent of which I have already taken during my undergrad. The co-op is not extremely relevant since I have extensive past co-op and full-time work experience. So really, there is nothing more that this program can give me that I cannot get myself, other than a shiny piece of paper.

I already have proven co-op experience in data science.
During my undergrad, I completed 5 co-op terms (a total of 20 months of experience). My final co-op job was an 8-month stint at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, applying machine learning techniques to somatic mutation data in order to subtype cancer patients. It was this position that first got me interested in data science. I spent 8 months learning about different algorithms and techniques, reading and applying ideas from academic papers and writing code that worked on a distributed system.

OMG this program is expensive.
The fee structure for this program in a strange way compared to what I’m used to. During my undergrad, in addition to our tuition we paid a set co-op fee (~$600) during our study terms when we were taking classes and applying for jobs. In this program, we pay a set fee per term (~$7000) for 4 terms. This includes our co-op term. To me, this is equivalent to paying a ridiculous sum for the privilege of working. This tuition fee is also set regardless of the number of courses you’re taking. So in the last term, where you’re only required to take one course, you are paying $7000 for this privilege. I have already paid 2 semesters’ worth of tuition, and while I am grateful for the knowledge and experience I have gained from these semesters, I already feel like I have overpaid.

I’m really happy with my decision to withdraw from this program. I’m excited to find a full-time position and start doing real-world work in data science.