Ms Data Science @ Royal Holloway Watch

(Original post by Laxhill)
The department has pretty poor ties with industry at the undergraduate level. But then you can't expect undergrads to be anything more than lay programmers, which is why they tend to get programming placements in less well known companies. At the postgraduate level the ties are, from what I've heard, much better. There is active cooperation between our academics and industry on various projects. Many of our PhD students are sponsored by various companies to conduct targeted research for them.

Since this is the first year the MSc's will be run I cannot comment on what the industry ties will be. In all probability you will have to, with the help of the department, individually apply to placements. If you end up not getting one, the department will organise one for you. I doubt many of the placements themselves will be exclusive to RHUL students. In short, what I'm trying to say is this: as a Masters student you most probably won't be actively collaborating on targeted research with a certain company; instead, you will have to find your own placement by, for example, applying for a year in industry with Google (to which anyone can apply). All of the above holds for any other department too by the way.

The real question you should therefore be asking is how good the department is in data science. That's an easy one. We're amazing at it ! All boasts aside, we have some excellent professors in the field that have started, and importantly contributed to, many a topic in machine learning. We're a theory-heavy department so expect to get your fair share of bookish maths from our crazy professors . However, the MSc you've applied to is mostly applied in nature so don't worry, it'll definitely be more applied than theoretical!

The building itself isn't exactly an architectural wonder, but the campus is very nice. The beer in the local pubs is very good too.