The course

The importance of Big Data grows year on year, with sectors including healthcare, manufacturing, retail, administration and others reliant on the insights that accurate data capture and analysis can provide. Study Data Science and Analytics with a Year in Industry at Royal Holloway, University of London and you’ll develop the practical skills needed to handle and analyse data in a wide variety of fields, preparing you for a rewarding career in Big Data.

This flexible programme gives you the chance to tailor your learning to your own strengths and interests, with a broad range of optional modules including Online Machine Learning, Methods of Bioinformatics and Microeconometrics providing academic scope and variety. You’ll be well-equipped to continue your studies at PhD level, which will place you in a strong position to pursue more advanced, research-based roles upon graduation.

Skills that you will acquire include the ability to:

• work with methods and techniques such as clustering, regression, support vector machines, boosting, decision trees, and neural networks
• work with structured, unstructured, and time-series data
• work with software packages such as MATLAB and R
• design data processing solutions for data-intensive analytics problems
• work with modern tools for massively distributed data processing, such as Hadoop and Pig, and Cloud Computing tools such as Amazon S3, EC2 and Elastic MapReduce
• design Extract-Transfer-Load (ETL) pipelines
• design Data Warehousing and Decision Support System (DSS) solutions
• work with highly-scalable data-storage solutions, such as MongoDB, Cassandra, HBase, and other NoSQL Data Stores
• work with data-intensive computing technologies, such as Hadoop MapReduce, Spark, Hive, and Pig
• work with Cloud Computing tools, such as Amazon S3, EC2 and Elastic MapReduce

Follow your passion for Data Science and Analytics at Royal Holloway and you’ll graduate with a desirable Masters degree from a highly regarded department, as well as transferable skillset that’s both in short supply and in high demand by employers. Our location near the M4 corridor - also known as ‘England’s Silicon Valley’ - means students can develop their skills and experience with a year in industry at some of the country's leading technology institutions.

Teaching & assessment

Assessment is carried out by a variety of methods including coursework, small group projects, and examinations, the proportions of which vary according to the nature of the modules. The placement is assessed as part of your degree (10% of the individual project).

Although the responsibility for finding a placement is ultimately with the student, our Careers and Employability Service will help you identify suitable opportunities, make applications and prepare for interviews.

Your future career

Demand for data scientists is buoyant, in the UK and worldwide, with salaries much higher than other IT professions and at least double the UK average full-time wage. Study Data Science and Analytics at Royal Holloway, University of London and you'll graduate with excellent employability prospects in a range of fields.

Our proximity to the M4 corridor also known as 'England’s Silicon Valley' - provides excellent networking opportunities with some of the country’s top technology institutions. We bring several companies to our campus throughout the year, both for fairs and for delivering advanced topics seminars, which are an excellent opportunity to learn about what they do and discuss possible placements or jobs.