BSc Data Science and Analytics (Including Foundation Year)

Data is the lifeblood of our society. From medicine to government offices, and market research to the environment, the collection and analysis of data is crucial to understanding how to improve, create and guide products and services across the globe.

Harvard Business Review recently described the job of Data Scientist as “the sexiest job of the 21st century”. Data science is about doing some detective work and carrying out the investigations needed to inform important decisions and to predict new trends. Technology is growing and evolving at an incredible speed, and both the rate of growth of data we generate and the devices we use to process it can only increase.

Our BSc Data Science and Analytics (including foundation year) is open to Home and EU students. It will be suitable for you if your academic qualifications do not yet meet our entrance requirements for the three-year version of this course and you want a programme that increases your subject knowledge as well as improves your English language and academic skills.

This four-year course includes a foundation year (Year Zero), followed by a further three years of study. During your Year Zero, you study four academic subjects relevant to your chosen course as well as a compulsory English language and academic skills module.

You are an Essex student from day one, a member of our global community based at the most internationally diverse campus university in the UK.

After successful completion of Year Zero in our Essex Pathways Department, you progress to complete your course with our Department of Mathematical Sciences.

At Essex, we help you to understand how utilising the speed and processing-power of computers can assist in using data to make better decisions. You discover the new methods and the smart, unusual questions needed to make sense of both structured and unstructured data.

Your course balances solid theory with practical application through exploring topics including:

• Mathematical skills
• Computer science and programming
• Statistics and operations research
• Artificial intelligence, databases and information retrieval
• Ethical issues around the use and processing of data
• Specialist skills in the areas of big data, data analytics and data science

A successful career in data science requires you to possess truly interdisciplinary knowledge, so we ensure that you graduate with a wide-ranging yet specialised set of skills in this area. You are taught mainly within our Department of Mathematical Sciences and our School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, but also benefit from input from our Essex Business School, and our Essex Pathways Department.

Data scientists are required in every sector, carrying out statistical analysis or mining data on social media, so our course can open the door to almost any industry, from health, to government, to publishing.