Minor in DS

Data Science Minor

Adding a Minor in Data Science from Boston University’s Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences (CDS) equips students across disciplines with essential skills in data analysis, computational thinking, and ethical decision-making. Whether you're majoring in economics, biology, psychology, or the humanities, the data science minor offers a flexible, high-impact way to enhance your academic and professional toolkit—preparing you to work with data in meaningful, informed ways. Our Minor in Data Science equips students from any major with a solid understanding of the key conceptual and methodological dimensions of data-driven discovery and innovation, and provides them with the basic skills necessary to apply this knowledge in various settings by assembling data analysis pipelines and developing information products.

With this preparation, students who minor in Data Science will be ready to leverage competencies and skills they acquire through the program to pursue careers in which they contribute to the synthesis of knowledge in a variety of fields and professions through extraction of insights from data and through the actionable use of those insights in a wide range of application domains.

Students who wish to pursue additional professional degree programs either in data science or in a data-science-driven disciplines - such as public health or business analytics - will benefit from earning the Data Science Minor.

Regardless of academic programs, there is wealth of opportunities for both STEM and non-STEM majors!

Non-STEM Majors
    • From marketing to journalism, and from sociology to philosophy – a Data Science minor exposes you to foundational skills such as programming, inferential analytics, and data visualization.
STEM Majors
    For those pursuing another STEM major, the minor allows students to gain deeper knowledge within a particular area of data science. For example, a Physics student minoring in Data Science would be highly competitive for jobs that require strong mathematical foundations as well as capacity for software or data engineering, applied machine learning, etc.


Requirements for the DS minor are intentionally flexible; however, it will be important for students pursuing the minor to think critically about a chosen pathway, being sure to recognize and prepare for any prerequisites in the advanced courses you are planning to take in the future.

Requirements for the Minor

 

For further information about requirements:

 

Curious about the minor? Email cds-advising@bu.edu or schedule a meeting with a CDS academic advisor!