Penn State offers a unique Data Sciences bachelor's degree program that pulls in strengths from three colleges to help you learn the technical fundamentals of data sciences to develop the critical skills needed to manage and analyze large-scale unstructured data. You’ll take two years of common courses and then select from one of the three options below to explore in depth. These options include:
Applied Data Sciences option (offered by the College of Information Sciences and Technology)
“Every company needs people who speak the language of data. It’s exciting to be on the forefront of this growing field, and the College of IST does a great job of preparing you to be a data scientist in the real world.”
Finding Your Fit
Data Sciences might be the right program for you if:
you are curious about analyzing information to discover new insights
you want to apply data analytics to make strategic decisions
you want to understand how data can be used to visualize phenomena and predict different outcomes
you are interested in statistics, mathematics, and the social sciences, and want to combine these disciplines to understand what data is really telling us
Developing Your Skills
In the Data Sciences program, you will take hands-on courses to help you learn how to develop, apply, and validate machine learning solutions to extract actionable knowledge from large data sets. Teamwork, project management, and collaboration play vital roles in your IST experience. You will have opportunities to apply your newfound knowledge and skills through semester-long projects with your peers.
IST 230 – Language, Logic, and Discrete Mathematics
DS 310 – Machine Learning for Data Analytics
DS 320 – Data Integration
DS 330 – Visual Analytics for Data Sciences
DS 410 – Data Analytics at Scale
Application Focus Areas
Within the Data Sciences program, you’ll learn to apply data sciences concepts to a specific domain by choosing one of the application focus areas below or working with faculty and advisers to create your own:
Astronomy
Business Fundamentals
Economics
Food Science
Human-Centered Design and Development
Information and Cybersecurity Sciences
Nutrition
Psychology
Custom Focus
Discovering Your Path
At the College of IST, every undergraduate student is required to complete at least one internship before graduating. With more than 300 organizations actively recruiting students and a dedicated Career Solutions team, you’ll have the resources and opportunities to get your career off to a strong start.
Examples of the work done in past data sciences internships held by our students include:
developing machine learning software for signal analysis
analyzing data from a web-based conversational bot
leveraging predictive analysis tools and databases to enhance projects
building, validating, and deploying predictive models using machine learning technologies
developing code for data mining, statistical analysis and prediction systems that align with a company’s strategic goals
analyzing corporate data to identify market trends
Recent Graduate Positions
Examples of positions our graduates have recently accepted include:
Big Data Engineer
Business Intelligence Analyst
Data Scientist
Data Visualizer
Data Warehousing Analytics Consultant
Quantitative Analysts
Statistical Analyst
Systems Analyst
"With the explosion of big data, we are attempting to untangle, understand, and harness the power of the massive amount of information now available to us. Data Sciences provides us the framework to do this."
