UNISA-BSc General worth it?

[Ceekay@]

Good day,

I was registered for BSc Maths and Information system and I changed to BSc General majoring in Decision sciences (Quantitative Modelling) and Information systems because I am a financial adviser and I see value in business modules, which most BSc grads lack.

I did pure maths in 2nd year, Linear Algebra, Multi-variable Calculus, DE's, Descrete Maths and Real analysis.

I find DSC (Quantitative modelling) and IS less challenging and I am starting to worry.
Will I get accepted in Hons degree or is my qualification useless because it feels like I am the only one doing it.
Never heard of someone doing BSc General at Unisa and where they ended.

Please advice, I am on my second year, i can still change before registrations next year 2020.

 

[cguy]

One question is whether the data modeling is helping to set you up for a data science position. This is definitely hot at the moment. Is there a focus on machine learning, or is it all that old Diff Eq based modeling and/or linear programming, etc.?

Quantitative finance is a great career, although everyone I know doing it has a strong postgrad in Stats/Maths/CS/Engineering/Physics, and picks up the relevant skill set on the way. People often don’t do the vocationally specific courses since they’re often seen as watered down. (Eg, rather do a BSc in CS+Maths than a Bsc in CS Game Dev).

Strong programming is a must for everyone - it’s the only way to actually access or analyze the data and build models effectively.

Looking it up online, I see that DSC1520 is a really basic course. I expect that things would only get interesting in later years.

 

[Ceekay@]

Cguy, thank you very much for your response.

To answer your question, it is very practical and its business related compared to pure maths, optimization skills are good in data science I guess.
My focus is data science and Wits hasBSc(Hons) in Big Data analytics (I am eyeing for it). https://www.wits.ac.za/course-finder/postgraduate/science/big-data-analytics/

I am enrolling with explore data science academy to do a data Science program using (Python, R and SAS), it has 97% placement rate, which is good as I will have data science hands on experience.

Information systems has basic programming and I do java with Coursera online.
My current BSc is mainly Linear and non linear programming, Stats, Financial maths and simulation.

I hope I will get into hons program in data science, finance or computing