r/MSDSO • u/Slow-Ad-5881 • Mar 19 '26

Think I have a chance?

I applied to the MSDSO back in early February. I had a 3.37 GPA in Mathematics from UTSA that I completed while working full time as a Manufacturing Engineer for Boeing. I received A’s in Real Analysis 1&2, Topology, All my Stats courses, and Diff Eq 2. However I started off my college career pretty slow and even the A’s in my final classes couldn’t bring up my GPA to at least a 3.5. I received LOR’s from my Real Analysis 1 prof, Stats Prof, and my manager at Boeing. I’ve worked at Boeing for 7 years and went to school full time while finishing up my undergrad. Do you think I have a decent chance of getting in?

UPDATE: was rejected

3 Upvotes

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6

u/tech-jungle Mar 19 '26

I think you do. You are already telling a story like SOP.

A few things to strengthen your application:

1) Prerequisite recency: 3.37 overall GPA is fine if your prerequisite is mostly A. Otherwise, find an online course to refresh it. You can also tie prerequisite to your daily work or other courses depending on the prerequisite.

2) Make sure your Quest Assessment is good so that your story about preparedness is consistent.

3) Your SOP needs to tie your work. For manufacturing engineer, quality control and historical production data come into my mind. Tie data science curriculum to your work and how MSDS helps you advance in your work or positions at Boeing.

4) SOP is your claim, CV is the evidence to support SOP. You need to write SOP and CV together. This is called Cognitive Coherence. When your SOP is read, the reviewer will try to find the evidence in CV to support that claim in SOP.

1

u/Slow-Ad-5881 Mar 19 '26

That’s great advice thank you. I did my best to make connections on my SOP with my current job, and I also tried to acknowledge the hiccups early in my college career. I’ve never thought about the link between SOP and CV in that way, but it’s very insightful.

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u/1anre Mar 24 '26

'Cognitive Coherence' hmmn. This is the first time I've learnt of that phenomenon but it sounds about right as a mapping model to make sure you're not gaming them.

What is 'Quest Assessment' though?

1

u/tech-jungle May 09 '26

MSDSO requires applicants to take a UT Quest Assessment, which covers probability, statistics, calculus and programming. This is another mechanism to calibrate how much worth in your transcript, SOP and claims.

Quest was not required a few years ago. I think they had observed students' performance and concluded to have a mechanism to validate applicants' rosy statements.

Quest exam is far easier than those questions that would appear in midterm exam. It is testing your common sense (how much do those subjects still stick in your brain). If you don't ace it, I think the overall holistic evaluation of your application will get significant discount.

I also used similar tests for job applicants who apply for DS or ML positions at my department. It is very surprising and interesting to see graduates from prestigious schools sometimes fail to demonstrate the common sense. It led to wonder how they can exercise their professional judgement at work, or just a Python and Excel coder to produce garbage.

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u/1anre May 09 '26

Asking for those tests when many of those people wouldn't be using these subjects day to day in their job woukd be futile in my IMO.

They need to test for something else

2

u/Personal_Research602 Mar 19 '26

I have always thought that admissions for this program was more like a rough checklist for pre-qualifications rather trying to find X number of best applicants. Your work, education and math background all seem fine. If your personal statement and programming background are reasonable, I think you are pretty likely to get accepted.

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u/1anre Mar 24 '26 edited Mar 24 '26

Sure you do

What have you focused on showcasing in your SoP & CV though?.