I graduated from Arizona State University with a Masters Degree on that day. It’s been 2 years since then. This is a retrospective analysis of what worked as planned and what didn’t.

And let me tell the current batch of 2020 graduates when I graduated on that day, I did not have any job offer in my hand. I was still applying for jobs all day. Remember, it’s will always be dark before the sun rises, but the sun will rise eventually and then there will be light.

My Retrospective Analysis:

Why I choose a Masters in Business Analytics?

• To learn further and get a credible educational qualification.

• To advance my career in this new promising field.

• To get an opportunity to practice my new skills in the innovative US industry.

What didn’t work:

• I graduated without any job offer in hand. It took me another month and a half to secure a job offer.

• My dream job was to become a Data Scientist, but my first job was that of a Financial Analyst.

What worked:

• In 2019, I started working as a Data Scientist at American Express.

Graduation was not the end, it was a new beginning. New success stories to be written from now. New opportunities to explore. Remember that struggle never ends, because that’s how you make progress. I believe I have accomplished what I wanted from this education, but it was not instant, it took a few years.

When I look back, I see that I have made quite a lot of progress in my career. Yes, there was a struggle even after graduation, and there will be a lot of struggle even tomorrow. Always remember to never lose hope, and keep giving your 100% to everything and every opportunity. In an independent survey conducted with the 2018 batch of MSBA Graduates, 54% said they are satisfied, and 37% answered may be satisfied with their career progression after graduation.

However, first, let’s understand what the wrong way is.

Career Fairs: Attending a career fair and delivering a 30-second elevator pitch to a recruiter just like every other person is not networking. This can be the first step in some cases, but it’s not over there. Also, it’s rare for Recruiters to be someone’s boosters (The minority group of people who love their job and want to help people). Also, Career Fairs are too chaotic to be productive by any means. Those long queues and that big stack of resumes!

Networking events/Meetups: Simply attending the meetups is not enough. There is more to it. However, attending meetups is a good start. Many people genuinely come here to expand their network. You can find people that want to help you.

LinkedIn: Simply adding someone to your LinkedIn network is not networking.

Who are your networks?

Everyone. I repeat, EVERYONE.

Everyone you know is your network. Even, everyone around you who is observing you is your network.

How to use your network?

Expand your network.

• Networking Events/Meetups: Attending a networking event can be a good start. On meetup.com you can find several meetups for your profession. Attend those meetups, meet new people. Moreover, don’t directly cut to the chase on the first meet. Be genuinely interested in them, in what they do, their interests. Please have a good and healthy communication/discussions with them. Learn things from them, take help from them.

• Volunteering: Attend events as a volunteer, do things for free. Help people for free. This is a very effective way of getting free tickets for any event/conference and also helps you to connect with many professionals.

Let your network know you.

Your network is only as strong as they know you. So let your network know you personally. Let your network know what you are good at, what you specialize in and if you are an expert/master in something. Let all the people around you know how professional you are.

Start a blog, write an article on medium.com, be active on LinkedIn/Twitter, you need a dynamic personality at the center of your network.

Strengthen your network.

Make them like you. This can be tough. You have to be a good person for this. People like to work with people who are genuine and good at heart. Helping people goes a long way to strengthen a relationship. If your network is strong, they will come to you when they have a problem, because they know whom to consult. Moreover, remember each of their problems is your opportunity, to strengthen your relationship.

Nurture it well.

Great things can’t be done in a day. It needs time. Keep expanding your network and strengthening it. This is the time where you need to practice patience. So basically you have to be professional in your way. Networking is just that. Be kind to people, and they will value you. Help people and they will help you back.

Congratulations on your MSBA program admit. You have made it till here, now only nine months of intensive program experience and then you will come out as Data Science Professionals. Yes you heard it right, it is intense, but with proper time management skills, you can pull it off.

So many of you must be thinking, about preparing for the program before joining here, and that’s a great idea. So I will be sharing a few resources for you to read or learn, that would be helpful for you in the long run. But, let me tell you this is all optional, officially the program doesn’t require you to come prepared with everything. You start the course from the basics, so no need to panic if you can’t prepare in advance.

• Book “Analyzing the Analyzer”: Before joining the program, it is crucial to understand the post-degree opportunities available to Data Science Professionals. This book will help you understand the plethora of skill sets to build as per your desired profile. Book Link

• Decide on a career path, be it Business Intelligence Engineer, Data Analyst, Data Scientist or Business Consultant. Then check out the job descriptions for similar roles on LinkedIn Jobs and Indeed.com. It would give you a rough idea of what skills to built up during the program.

• Get some basic idea of Machine Learning Algorithms. This course on Coursera is presented by Andrew Ng and to my knowledge is the best course on machine learning. The course is not free, so you can either pay for it or start the free 1st month and try to go as far as you can in one month. Completing the course is not compulsory, six weeks of content should be enough to get a good idea of the concepts. Alternatively, the video lectures are available on Youtube for free at this link. However, you won’t have access to the quizzes and the programming assignments on Youtube.

• Book “Freakonomics” -Levitt and Dubner: As Data Science professionals, it is important to interpret data in a meaningful way, test the hypothesis, and convey the results in a simple format. And this book showcases this perfectly. I found this book very interesting because of the deep analysis of the authors. The authors have wonderful data storytelling skills, which automatically gives you the motivation to keep reading the book until it’s over. Must read for future Data Scientists. “Super freakonomics” is a follow-up book of this series and equally enjoyable.

• Learn programming skills in Python and/or R. Datacamp has some excellent courses in their free tier, so do check them out.

• Follow Active Data Science professionals on LinkedIn. Some suggestions from my end:

Vin Vashishta | Randy Lao | Eric Weber | Favio Vázquez | Mike Tamir | Andriy Burkov

I hope this does help you in some ways.

Best of luck.

So now you must be getting ready with packing stuff and getting ready for the experience. Check out this comprehensive list of essential things to do that will help you.

Book flight tickets:

• The early you book the flight tickets, the cheaper it will be.

• Usually you get connections from LA or Philadelphia or NY to Phoenix, so in this case, your immigration will happen at the source of entry to the USA, which is LA/Philadelphia/NY in this case.

• Another option is a direct flight from London to Phoenix. London is a global hub connected with almost all countries.

• You can also take advantage of the Abu Dhabi immigration check, which is an excellent facility started by the US gov.

• It will be good if you could avoid the busy airport JFK. Immigration lines are quite long in there.

• Also, do check how many check-in bags are allowed, two should be sufficient for all the stuff you need.

Pre Book housing at Tempe:

• Tempe provides a lot of options for budget student housing. Some popular ones are 1255 Apartments, Omnia on 8th, University Pointe, Dorsey Place, University Park, Tempe Terrace, La Crescenta, Renue on Orange, Desert Palms, Agave, etc.

• Premium housing apartments are Nexa, Vertex, 922 Place and Blvd1900.

• Almost all of them can be booked online with a deposit hold, and then you pay the deposit and rent in person when you arrive here.

• The approximate cost of living should come to around $600-$700 per room per month when you take a 2bed2bath apartment. Groceries should be less than $100 per person per month.

Arrange your finances:

• Have your loan approved and be ready for international money transfer as well. Fees can be paid via Flywire service.

• The total fee is payable in six installments, on the 25th of August, September, October, January, February, and March. After the due date, you will still be allowed around 20 days wherein no penalty will be charged to your account, but a hold will be created. For international students, each installment is about $9.5k. (This was for the year 2017-18)

• The deposit paid to ASU to confirm your admission will be credited to your account in October.

• Getting a FOREX card is a good idea. You can transfer money at par in Chase Bank (Not sure about other banks) counter. So moving your monthly expenses via FOREX card is a good option.

What to pack?

Check out this detailed list on the ISA website.

CHECKLIST

The Kitchen list especially caters to Indian Cooking needs.

In addition to the list, I would recommend:

• 14 sets of undergarments, so you can do laundry every alternate week.

• Clothes from India can shrink if not of good quality. Better quality shirts are available here; you even get some for free during the events. (P.S: I have ten shirts in my wardrobe, which I collected for free from various events and career fairs, all are good quality)

• Suits, I would recommend 2 (Super recommended if you are joining the business school), One standard black suit, and the other can be a three-piece suit(I prefer a darker shade of blue).

• Do carry some warm clothes, the night temperature in December/January can go as low as 3-degree Celsius.

• Sunglasses and sunscreen lotion are very very important.

This course starts with the necessary programming skills in Python and then building a Recommendation system. Then come to Text Mining and Network Analysis using Python. There are 5 assignments to be submitted in Python code. Towards the end of the course, Big Data Technologies like Hadoop, Kafka, and AWS is taught in brief, with some exercises in AWS as well.

Tools covered: Python, AWS, Hadoop, Kafka

SCM 519: Analytical Decision Modeling II

Using simulation techniques to perform Decision Modelling when there is uncertainty. At the end of the course, there is a team-based case to be solved, an open-ended simulation problem that requires a lot of excel skills.

Tools covered: @Risk and Precision Tree (both are Excel plug-ins)

CIS/SCM 593: Applied Project

A team-based capstone project to implement the skills learned through the course to real-world corporate problems. This course is a Semester-long activity.

MKT 591: Marketing Analytics

The course starts off with basics in the R programming language. Then moves to Marketing concepts and applying different types of analytical methods to Marketing related problems. The course ends with a team-based project where you can choose your dataset and apply the concepts learned in the class.

Tools covered: R, Rstudio

CIS 515: Business Analytics Strategy

A typical business school subject with a focus on case studies to understand the implication of Data Analytics. We learn about Ethics, Privacy and the importance of Soft Skills in the corporate business setting. The class encourages discussion-based learning. The class project includes a venture pitch for an idea that involves Data Analytics.

Tools covered: IBM Watson Analytics

The exam was at 6 in the evening. The exam was similar to the Assignment patterns. 3 hours, 30 questions, open book, open notes, coding in R and submitting the code as well. The last exam, and then the journey will be finally complete.

Skateboard group:

One of the skills I learned here includes Skateboarding. It’s not that easy by the way. Something to try and learn.

And It’s a Wrap!

The 9-month Master’s program has finally completed.

Almost all the teams had their Capstone presentations this week, either onsite or on-campus. Also, the Marketing Project Presentation and the Business Venture presentation were in this week. So this was an action-packed week with back to back presentations in all the classes.

MSBA Games:

It’s almost time for graduation and folks are busy planning for after graduation events and parties. One such includes a Sports Tournament.

Capstone Presentation:

Finally, after surpassing all the hurdles, I along with my team completed the Capstone Presentation. It was a good experience with real-world scenarios where we could apply concepts related to Analytics.

Beta Gamma Sigma:

Every year, top-ranking students get an opportunity to be a part of the prestigious Beta Gamma Sigma Society. Congratulations to this year’s candidates. Your hard work and dedication have paid off.

Exit session:

Well, we got to know that our access to Sun Devils Fitness Center will end on graduation day. 🙁 Apart from that just the regular things. Thankfully McCord access will be there for the next 90 days.

27th April: Curriculum review

This is the only time the Faculty will carefully observe the student feedback regarding the curriculum and the overall course structure. The Co-Chairs for the MSBA program and Chair of Information Systems Department were present at this session. Surprisingly, only 6 students volunteered to give feedback. Students provided their view on what went wrong in the session or what could be done better next time. I hope it was a constructive session for the Faculty, and some necessary changes are established for the next batch of students. Strong feedback was given especially to one subject, and now let’s see what changes are done in that aspect.

Graduation Ceremony:

There are 3 different Convocation ceremonies held.

• International Graduate Convocation: Applicable to only International Students. (5th May)

• ASU Graduate Convocation: ASU wide graduate programs convocation (7th May)

• W.P.Carey Graduate Convocation: W.P.Carey Master’s Students Convocation (10th May) ->This is the most important one

For one last time this spring, a general career fair from 02:00 PM to 04:00 PM at Memorial Union, and again I didn’t have many hopes from this one either. Most companies were looking for sales and marketing executives. However, my room-mate Samarth (also from MSBA) got two interviews scheduled for next day for the position of Business Analyst role and some SCM role.

CIS515 Venture Presentation:

The Business Analytics Strategy class has no final exam. Instead, 25% of the final grade depends on a presentation. A venture pitch, for an idea that embraces analytics in its core, and you have to implement some of the concepts learned in class.

Two weeks to go:

Only two weeks are pending now. Time flies so fast. Many people are getting interviews, and some are getting jobs as well. It’s high time to get immersed in job hunting. Meanwhile I am questioning myself, do I attend the career fairs for the goodies or the job opportunities.

Walmart’s Supply Chain team was on campus for recruitment opportunities for a Supply Chain Specialist. They gave a presentation with many key facts on Walmart, and at the end, there was a short online quiz to win prices. Almost 80% of my answers were random guesses, and surprisingly I won 2nd price in this. I received $20 worth of Dominos Pizza Gift Card.

CIS515 Class discussion:

We had a class discussion on data privacy concerns created by Facebook, and how it impacts analytics. The objective of the CIS515 class is mainly to understand the business implications of Analytics, related to use case, data concerns, data management, legal issues, and much more.

April 12th: Graduation celebration

W.P.Carey organized the Graduation Celebration near the BAC building. There was a massive promotion for a free insulated water bottle, on filling the program survey. The event started at noon, and there was an enormous queue, almost 20 minutes in line to enter the event. And the water bottle was worth it. An insulated W.P.Carey Alumni branded 40oz water bottle with a lifetime warranty. By the time, I entered, the food was over, but still, freebies were available.

DHL internship offers:

Many students (between 10 and 20) received the DHL 11 month internship offer this week. I knew a few students who do not have much work experience and still cracked the interview. So definitely inexperience is not a barrier for success. Surprisingly, these internship programs were first showcased in the Career Fairs, and then only people who visited the DHL booth received the application email. They also requested a 1-minute video to be submitted as part of the application process, and then followed by one interview round. So Career Fairs are useful!

Final Few days

Four report submissions, three presentations, two quizzes and 1 Final Exam in the next three weeks, and then we are ready. Ready to set sail with flying colors, with a masters degree in our hand, and eager to change the world.

It’s April now, and almost time to present the deliverable. The good thing is that this time, all students got corporate projects. Many teams are working on Intel projects as well. Many teams are putting in more efforts to get their projects on track and to meet the delivery deadline.

5th April: Data Science Meetup @ Amazon Office, Tempe

Dan Petro (ASU MS Computer Science Alumni) presented a session on his work on an AI designed to play the legacy game “Super Smash Bros: Melee.” It was a great achievement for him as his AI player was able to beat many pro players in this game. He explained the design of the AI, what challenges he faced and how he overcame them. It was a fun coding project he completed in his free time, that is after the time he gets from his full-time job as a Senior Security Associate.

Job Reporting:

By now, I have heard some students getting job offers. Most American citizens get multiple job offers, as they don’t have to face work authorization issues. So a very few of the F-1 students have received job offers. There are a total of 180 students, so it’s difficult to report actual progress.

6th April: CIS515 Guest Session: Intel Supply Chain using Analytics

The presenter from Intel talked about how they implement Analytics in their supply chain. He also described some issues that they faced in bringing about the change using analytics. Overall it was a very insightful session.

CIS515 Business Analytics Strategy

This class had some excellent sessions till now. We discussed on how analytics is changing the landscape of the businesses. We learned how companies are leveraging Analytics, and which opportunities are opening for students with such specialized skillset in Analytics.

This class has take-home quizzes, where we have to read HBR cases to prepare for the quiz. These cases cover a wide range of application of Analytics in the industry. Also in the final week, as a team, we have to prepare a pitch for an innovative idea which leverages Analytics.

MKT591 Marketing Analytics

In each class, we learn some new marketing concept and ways of implementing it in R. It’s usually Linear regression, that have been covered till now. The quizzes are take home and require a lot of R programming skills.

Phoenix Heat is back!

Daytime is getting longer from now. I think I need to switch to full sleeve shirts to avoid tanning. Noon Temperatures reach 33 degree Celsius. However, nights are at around 15 to 20 degree Celsius.

Sun Devil Rewards

Sun Devils Rewards App provides points for playing games, reading/sharing ASU news and much more. These points can then be redeemed for a reward of your choice. I redeemed an ASU Starbucks ceramic tumbler after collecting points for a few months.

30th April: CIS515 Guest Lecture: Google

The google employee presented this session via web cast from Google office in California. He described how Google is using analytics to have an edge over all its domains. We also had a Q&A session where we mostly talked about data privacy concerns.

I participated in the Cisco Circular Economy Challenge where we were given an open-ended Circular Economy Challenge, and in 1 week, we were supposed to present a case for a pilot project. I was on a team of some super talented people. Me along with an ASU 2nd year MBA, a MS in Build Environment student from ASU Design School, and one Ph.D. candidate from Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in ASU and one of my peers in MSBA formed a team.

The final competition day was an all-day event where we presented in the morning in front of the panel of judges. By noon, all the presentations were done, and results for top three finalists were out. Sadly, we didn’t make it to the final round. The Top 3 finalists presented again in front of all the audience. Every participant got a CISCO backpack at the end of the event.

It was a great learning experience for presenting a case. I learned a lot from my team-mates, like how to use critical thinking to form an argument using 360 degrees perspective of the subject.

Graduation Shopping:

Graduation is now almost a month away, and it’s time for some shopping. The whole gown and cap basic set costs around $100, just to wear it for a day. A discounted price is offered only during the Bookstore Grad fair which is a 3-day shopping festival in the ASU bookstore.

ASU MS-BA Employment report:

The Career Services at W.P.Carey School collected data on alumni jobs and based on that they published an Employment Statistics of the 2017 batch. Some notable statistics are as follows:

• 17.39%(20 students) of the total students received a job offer before graduation, out of which 10 students received sponsorship.

• On a cumulative basis, 60% of the students found a job within three months of graduation, and 80% within six months of graduation.

• The peak time of receiving job offers is May to July.

• 52.63% students reported their source of the job as Internet job search.

• Median salary is $70k, and max salary is $120k.

• 25% of the job offers are in Analytics Consulting domain which constitutes IT/Tech consulting, Management & Strategy and Process Management.

And so we have reached the final quarter of the program. Time flies so fast. Now only two classes and one capstone project to go, and then we will earn the masters degree.

CIS515 Business Analytics Strategy

This class is about how to implement the skills that we have learned till now into a streamlined strategy for an organization. This class is a business course with some focus on Analytics. We use Harvard cases for in-class discussion and some other HBS readings.

MKT591 Marketing Analytics

This class focuses on applying Analytical techniques in the Marketing domain. R is used extensively in this course and also covered from the basics.

15th March:

There are a lot of events happening in McCord Hall, and usually, there is a lot of food left after the event. This time, it was time to grab a plate. When life gives you free food, grab the whole goddamn plate.

16th March: Lingli’s birthday celebration

A get-together event to celebrate Lingli’s birthday, with some Chinese food and Indian food.

17th March: ASU Holi

Indian Student Association (ISA) organized a ‘Holi’ event on PV lawns( Next to ASU bridge on University Drive). It was open to all (not just ASU), and also Lunch was provided. Water was not allowed, only colors. The color was provided at the event.

Live DJ playing Bollywood music. Veg Biryani and Chicken Biryani from Amravati Catering was delicious.

I, Abhishek and Pooja registered for Devil’s Detour to Universal Studios in LA. We left at midnight on Monday 5th March and returned the next midnight. This tour was organized by ASU and is very cheap, compared to the cost of tickets and travel. It was the best use of the spring break time.

Harry Potter world, Transformers, The Mummy, Simpsons, and much more. The Harry Potter ride is the best one. We were able to complete all the rides and shows, as we were running through the park from one end to another.

8th March: Finally an on-campus job

I got an on-campus job as a grader for the CIS undergrad class. So it allows me to work 12 hours every week until my graduation date. So around two months of work, with good pay. One of the best ways to get a job is to keep applying on the job portal, and I wasn’t applying as much as others were applying. Hence I got this opportunity quite late.

Since my Capstone project client outside of Arizona, we only have telephonic meetings. So for the Interim Project presentation was done in front of the Project Mentor only. Just a 15-minute presentation for showcasing the progress and path ahead. Some teams had onsite project presentations as well if the client requested it.

2nd March: Decision Modeling Final

Exam 3 of Decision modeling and then we are free for the Spring break. The exam pattern of this subject is also a bit different, for multiple-choice questions, you can give a second answer as well. That means, if your 1st option is correct, you get 4 marks, and if your 2nd option is correct, you score 1 mark. So you have about a 50% chance of getting some marks in every question even when you don’t know the answer.

Gililland Middle School

This time, we went ahead and demonstrated Morse code patterns on Raspberry Pi to Middle school students. I wrote the code for the generation of Morse code design using 2 LEDs. The blinking pattern of LED’s is used to identify dot and dash patterns. The code is available on my git hub repository.

Link to Morse code GitHub repository: https://github.com/thinkcache/RPi_MorseCode

Ira Fulton Engineering College hosted its career fair at Memorial Union (The building adjacent to McCord Hall) from 19 to 20th February. While most companies were looking for software developers, some were looking for Data Scientists and BI developers as well. There was also a massive queue for each company. Surprisingly, this career fair was better managed than the W.P.Carey Career Fairs. There were proper queue management and even appropriate indicators on each company desk, indicating if the employer had a history of visa sponsorships.

I got into the smallest queue which was for the Choice Hotels, and after 20 minutes, finally, I got to talk to the employer. Through the discussion, I learned that there are no current openings in the Data Science domain for a full-time position and new opportunities are expected by the end of March. So basically I was advised to apply online. Usually, this is the response most people receive in any Career Fairs.

Most other companies had a queue over an hour, so I just decided to skip the event.

In the evening, Prodigy Finance had a networking mixer at La Bocca Pizzeria on Mill Avenue. The associates wanted to understand their customers (college students). There were pizza, bruschetta and a lot of other things along with a lot of networking as well. One of the associates was from the London office and the other from the New York office.

21st February: The Cold Wave

There seems to be an off seasonal cold wave hitting the Phoenix Area. It’s again chilling, especially at night. Its colder here in Phoenix, compared to Boston, New York, and Chicago, at least for today.

Next Week is the Finals Week for the 3rd Quarter, so we have two exams for two subjects. But Data Mining Quiz 3 is optional because of the best 2 out of 3 Quizzes pattern. I had a good score in the earlier quizzes, so I decided to skip the last quiz. So I just had one exam in the Finals Week. Cheers !!

Last Fall, the campus-wide Career Fair was full of Marketing and Sales Job opportunities for the undergrads. So I didn’t have any high hopes for this career fair either. Our MSBA Career Coach shared a list of companies who had openings related to Business Analytics. Most of those companies didn’t send their technical recruiter and most of the companies just ask to apply online. Some promising companies were looking for Business Intelligence roles as well, and also took resumes. I got one interview slot directly at the Career Fair, but later when I checked, it looked more like an undergrad position that they were looking for.

This week the weather was different, it even rained for a whole day this week, very rare in Phoenix Area. I was lucky I carried a raincoat with me that day (Thanks to the weather forecast, that I checked in the morning). Lockers inside McCord Hall are allocated on a lottery basis every semester, and this semester I wasn’t fortunate to get a locker, so I kept my suit in my friend’s locker.

13th February: Authentic Chinese Dinner

Finally, I got the chance to have some authentic Chinese Noodles thanks to Lingli. She made delicious noodles and some veggie starter which I don’t know what it was but it tasted good. Also, she taught how to use chopsticks, a vital skill to eat Chinese food.

16th February: Gililland Middle School RaspberryPi session

I got invited by Murong and her team to join the Inition Education Solution (an ASU’s change-maker initiative) to help them with the RaspberryPi session, due to my previous experience in using RaspberryPi. It was a session with the coding club of the school. They were around 6th-8th Grade students in the club, and in the 1st session, we taught them the basic setup.

17th February: Guest Lecture IoT and BigData

As part of the Decision Modeling 2 class, we had a session on IoT and Big data with hands-on in clustering techniques by Raghav Jandhyala, Director of Supply Chain Product Management at SAP. He gave insights on how IoT and Big Data are changing the business landscape.

Also to mention, Decision Modeling 2 class teaching is complete now, and we have a final exam on 3rd March. Now only a case submission is pending, which is a team assigned activity. The case is a Modeling case with real data and an open-ended problem. And also takes a very long time and some excellent excel skills to complete the case.

SoDA (Software Developers Association) organized a Google Lightning Talk, where 3 Googlers were on campus to talk about their experience at Google. They gave some excellent insights on Google. Like they mentioned that Google spends on average 5x more time on reading the code than on writing it, to ensure it is readable (most important) and bug-free. Everyone also received a $50 google cloud credit for free. It was a great networking event for software developers.

We waited until the very end, and still, all their pizza was not yet finished, so the organizers were asking all participants to take home as much pizza as they want. We took three boxes of pizza with us, out of which we gave one box to a homeless guy and the other two we ate it the next day.

7th February: Walmart Networking Mixer

Again, another SoDA event, where Walmart showcased its new online application process, which is supposed to be super comfortable and friendly. You just upload the resume on the link and mentioned which field you are interested in. Walmart has a Data Science team, but the employees at the event were from the Software Development Team, so there was not much value in networking with them.

OPT Information sessions are organized by ISSC (International Students and Scholars Center) every semester. It’s almost February and time to start the procedure for OPT work authorization (Applicable to international students only). First, the application goes to ISSC (International Students and Scholars Center) which takes around 10-14 days for the processing of new I-20. The whole procedure is online. Then we have to parcel a bunch of documents and copies to USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) which takes around 90 days.

Applicable Fees:

• ISSC :$100

• USCIS :$410

The tricky part is to choose a date for the start of OPT. You have to choose a date within two months of the degree completion date. And then the EAD (employment authorization document) card is valid for one year only from that date. The degree completion date is 7th May 2018. Once the OPT starts, it is compulsory to find employment within three months to maintain valid F1 status.

STEM OPT application procedure is different which also includes some action points from your employer. So for standard OPT (12 months OPT), you do not need an employer, but for STEM OPT(24 months extension) you will need an employer.

I missed both the career fairs as I was not well !! So I just received the feedback from the other folks, that the Career Fair was just like the previous one, A lot of hopes and expectations, but nothing regarding opportunities. Companies usually only inform you to apply online.

Medical treatment is costly in the USA, but as students, we have the Aetna Student Insurance. I went to the ASU Health Services, where I had to wait for over an hour to see a doctor. There is usually a long queue, unless you come in the early morning. After a thorough check-up, the Doctor gave me a pipe that was releasing fumes, and I was supposed to inhale the fumes deep into my lungs. Turns out that I was suffering from Bronchitis. After an hour at the doctor’s clinic, I was informed that my prescription had been sent to CVS Pharmacy. The way it works here, the Doctor sends the prescription directly to the pharmacy of your choice, and you can go to the Pharmacy to collect your medicines. Total cost breakdown, Doctor’s visit is $15 and medicines $6, thanks to the Aetna Medical Insurance. Within 12 hours of the visit, I was almost in OK condition, ready to jump around again.

27th January: IoT Phoenix Dev Conference

IoT hands-on Workshops and IoT practitioner speakers were the prime attractions for the day. I attended one workshop and received an ESP32 dev board that had onboard Wifi and Bluetooth. Meanwhile, Abhishek attended several other workshops and received DayDreamVR set, RaspberryPi 3 kit and some more IoT developer hardware. The student ticket was $23 only and the value of the freebies was much above that. Thanks to sponsors like Google Developers, Go Daddy and many more.