Becoming a Data Scientist at Indian Statistical Institute (ISI)

All the flagship Master's programs at ISI are essentially designed to be research oriented. Due to hiring spree in data science, these programs are very popular amongst the recruiters. You can easily get hired for a data science job, if you pursue these from ISI.

They are:

- Master of Statistics (M.Stat)
- Master of Science in Quantitative Economics (MSQE)
- Master of Mathematics (M.Math)
- M.Tech in Computer Science

There are other programs at ISI, which are more data science oriented. Let’s now discuss those programs as well.

- PGDBA (Post Graduate Diploma in Business Analytics)
PGDBA is the ideal competitor for IISc’s master’s program of management in business analytics. And in some way, it is much better than the IISc’s mgmt. program, because of the advantage that PGDBA has of three institutions, ISI, IIT and IIM. You will never get the advantage of ISI, IIT, and IIM in any other program as of now.

- MSQMS (Master of Science in Quality Management Science)
It is the two-year full time residential Post Graduate program offered jointly by ISI Bengaluru and ISI Hyderabad. The last semester is devoted solely for industrial internship. The course positions itself as a course which is meant to create data scientists. The placement is also very similar to other post graduate courses at ISI.

- M.Tech QROR
It is a very popular course of ISI Kolkata and specifically among engineers. This course is essentially about Statistical Quality Control, Reliability and Operations Research. If you want to know more about these terms, before data science was an established career, people in finance or people in operations research, were already doing data science. Hence, you can be sure that this course is also equally good, if you want to get into data science jobs. The internships or the final placements are pretty similar to what is offered to other ISI graduates.

- M.Tech in Blockchain and Crypto
ISI has recently started a two-year master’s program which is formally known as M.Tech in Cryptology and Security. If you go through the placement data, you will understand that as the flavour of ISI is in data science, most of the roles which are offered to M. Tech CrS students, are data science roles and that is going to change with the industry awareness for sure.

- PGDSMA
Post Graduate Diploma in Statistical Methods and Analytics is a one-year diploma course run by ISI North East Centre in Tezpur and ISI Chennai. This course is primarily designed to cater to jobs which has application of statistics and data analytics as their requirements. Placements are quite good, but not like the other master’s program of ISI, because PGDSMA is a 1 year post graduate diploma. 

ISI MSQE Job Profiles - Prospects after Masters in Quantitative Economics from Indian Statistical Institute

Are you curious about the job profiles that are offered at Indian Statistical Institute (ISI)?
If yes, you are on the right place. Here, I will introduce you to some of the potential job profiles offered to an ISI MSQE graduate.

Financial Risk
There are various investment banks and financial institutions which recruit various young minds for the financial risk roles.The CTC offered under this job profile depends on the company; It varies a lot from company to company.

The job profile offered under the financial risk role is the most relevant role for an MSQE student.

Insurance & Actuary
Though this job profile is not directly related to the MSQE curriculum, but it’s a perk of studying in ISI that companies do come in ISI for recruiting students from M.Stats for the field of Insurance & Actuary. So sometimes, they recruit students from MSQE as well. It will be prudent if you clear few actuarial papers to fulfil the eligibility criteria required by some companies in the field of Actuary & Insurance. It’s an undeniable fact that these jobs pay a lot.

Data Science & Analytics
Honestly speaking, there is a lot of buzz about Data Science, ML, AI, etc. Also there is a lot of confusion among youth about real definition of Data science and Machine Learning. Students remain confused that does data science has any relation to Computer science & Software Engineering.
So, as a result of these misconceptions, sometimes, there is expectations mismatch as well.
There are a lot of tech companies who come to Indian Statistical Institute for fulfilling their hiring needs related to Data Scientist and Data Analyst Profiles.

IIT v/s ISI v/s IIM
Many of you might wonder whether the roles offered in ISI MSQE is somewhat similar to the roles offered in Top IIMs and IITs? So in my opinion, the roles offered in ISI MSQE is between what an IITian could get and what an IIM graduate could get. What I am trying to say is that there are few roles which are offered to IITians, ISI MSQE students as well as IIM MBA graduates. But there are very few roles which is common in all the above three categories. Majority of roles offered to MBA graduates are quite irrelevant for MSQE graduates. Companies coming to IIMs mostly have more or less business outlook, sales outlook, marketing outlook and more like a manager outlook in their hiring. But companies coming to recruit ISI MSQE students search students for technical roles from the analytical perspective. But in spite of all these facts, there are many profiles for which an IIM and ISI graduate both can be recruited. It's not all about the curriculum, but the batch strength also matters a lot. Maximum strength of an ISI MSQE batch is approx. 30 but on an average there are around 300 students in each batch of IIM MBA program. So job profiles is also very diverse for IIM students.

In my opinion, out of all these job profiles discussed above, financial risk is the most relevant role for an ISI MSQE student. Apart from these profiles, you can also go for research, PhD, or public sector jobs after doing your masters in quantitative economics from Indian Statistical Institute (ISI).

 

ISI MSQE Question Paper Analysis - Raw DataSet

I took out around 1 month of time, in bits and pieces to piece together this analysis of MSQE previous year questions. Attaching the google sheets below:
Link to Google Sheets Document(Also attached below)


Kindly, use this with an idea that there are a lot of subjective judgements in this analysis. 
So, use your discretion.

MSQE Preparation Plan

This plan is made for 9 months. That being said you can shrink the plan depending upon your time availability, proportionately.

Go to Plan (PDF)


Indian Statistical Institute(ISI) has a stellar Quantitative Masters Program in Economics, popularly known as MSQE.In the above PDF, I have given a rough plan to clear the entrance exam for the same.
I secured AIR-7 in this exam(2018).
Book Suggestions:
Maths : https://amzn.to/3e4WyiA | https://amzn.to/3ab0jlg
Tomato (Test of Mathematics at the 10+2 Level ) : https://amzn.to/3ab0jlg
Statistics : https://amzn.to/31Zd7Jd (I'll be adding more books in future)
Econometrics (Statistics for ISI / DSE) : https://amzn.to/3i5fJK5 | https://amzn.to/2HvS4WE Microeconomics : https://amzn.to/2QpP2Vn
Macroeconomics : https://amzn.to/37w1kTM | https://amzn.to/30Tk7qy

PS : The WhatsApp group is no longer operational.

How I Got Admission in MSQE Program at Indian Statistical Institute

It all began in the month of December, 2014. After researching about various courses and career paths since I got into IIT, it took me roughly 7.5 years to decide that I want to do a Masters in Quantitative Economics(MSQE) from the Indian Statistical Institute. My first pointers for MSQE preparation came from a friend who has worked for UBS both as an I-Banker and as well as a Quant.  

January 2015

After gaining the information about preparatory books & coaching institutes, I was all set to start my MSQE Entrance Journey. The first thing I did was to read Varian (Check in Amazon from here) & Mankiw (Check in Amazon from here) like story books in 20-25 days; This was a vital part of my preparation as I am engineer so it was necessary to understand the turf of economics. I also enrolled myself in a coaching institute. 

February 2015

A lot was going on in my life and to add more to it, I wasn't learning much in the coaching institute, perhaps it was structured for economics undergraduates. 

March 2015

As, I had to commute for 1.5 hours one side from my home to the institute, plus the suboptimal coaching experience, I stopped going to coaching and started practising Snyder along with solving previous year question papers. 

April 2015

In no time the exams season started; didn't apply to IGIDR as I wanted to be in Delhi. ISI Delhi, DSE, JNU were my only bets. Sigh! 

May 2015 - July 2015

Whether the exams went great or not never occurred to me and when the results were announced, I couldn't qualify any of the three exams. 

August 2015

Started working again after a break of around 1 years and thought of MSQE preparation along with it.

Sept 2015 - April 2016

A lot of good stuff started happening in my life. I started working for a startup as their Video Lecturer and helped them in animation & stuff too. Needless to say, I could only prepare for MSQE half-heartedly in these months. 

May 2016 - July 2016

Missed IGIDR cutoff by just 0.6 marks. Yes, that's 0 point 6, less than 1!!!

Decided to STOP preparing for MSQE/Economics entrances!

Aug 2016 - Dec 2016

Started a data science project in my company - related to performance assessment analytics in studies as I was working in a coaching institute cum Edtech startup ; Also did a small gig as a data science faculty in a small management institute. 

Jan 2017

Got married!

Feb 2017 - June 2017

Switched jobs, as my Data Science project was not getting support of founders. This was not good for intellectual satisfaction. Decided to prepare for MSQE again!!!

June 2018

And after 1 year, I was inside Indian Statistical Institute giving interview. I messed it up completely. More on that some other time

2 July 2018

After almost 3.5 years, good news greeted me on the screen. I got an All India Rank 7 in ISI Kolkata MSQE Merit List. Dream Fulfilled! 

Also, you can watch the video format of this journey in my YouTube Channel below. Don't Forget to Like, Subscribe & Share!

This is a personal journey and you could be more interested in how to prepare for MSQE. So, here is my blog post about the "Essence of MSQE(Indian Statistical Institute) Entrance Exam"