I really enjoyed hearing about Alicia’s career path and advice for us last Friday! I thought her advice about grad school was most important for me because I am planning on going to grad school, but I’m deciding between something in business and something in computer engineering. I had no clue that most serious or prestigious grad programs will offer funding in STEM fields. Most importantly, I think her advice that grad programs should have statistics on outcomes for students is a very useful metric. I never thought about it in that way, but when looking for a grad program and not wanting to spend a ton of money, I will definitely look for those statistics. The other thing I found eye-opening was that data science is constantly evolving, so we will all have to keep learning. I’ve always had the mindset that learning is a school thing and that once grad school was over I wouldn’t have to learn any concrete skills, and her comment about data science made me see that my initial idea was not true.