Congratulations to all those who are graduating this semester! We reached out to a few of our Statistics graduates to reminisce on their time at Illinois, and to see what wisdom they had to pass on to their peers.
Shannon Ooi is a transfer student who joined us at Illinois in Fall of ‘21. She is a double major in statistics and economics, as well as a statistics student ambassador.
What was your favorite part about your time at UIUC?
“I was only on campus for a short time, but it helped me to participate in so many different things! I’m sort of an introvert, and these activities helped me make lots of good friends during my senior year. After coming here, I grew a lot of interest and love towards statistics, and being a student ambassador helped me express this love while helping other students.”
What are your plans for post-grad?
“I’m open to a lot of options right now, but what I'm really passionate about is becoming a researcher. I’m also open to becoming a professor so that I can teach others. I’m also interested in data science, so I wouldn’t mind being a data analyst.”
What advice would you give to underclassmen at UIUC?
“My biggest piece of advice is to explore. Statistics, for example, is a big area of study. Try out a little bit of everything while you’re young, and you might be surprised at what you enjoy studying most. But most importantly, work hard, play hard!”
Michael Garbus is an out-of-state student graduating with a bachelor's in statistics.
What was your favorite part about your time at UIUC?
“I was able to be a course assistant in two classes, STAT 400 and also STAT 430. It was a very exciting and unique opportunity that I got. (…) If I had to pick one class that gave me the most real-world sort of training, it would be James Balamuta’s STAT 430 class.”
What are your plans for post-grad?
“I’m going to be a software developer for Amazon. I ended up applying to over 100 places, and I got 5 callbacks. I did some training online and eventually got the Amazon position. At first, I was really anxious, because I felt like I was betraying my major since I wasn’t going to be doing a lot of stats stuff. But once I arrived there, a lot of my team had stats master’s and just also liked programming. The company has these machine learning competitions using real data from Amazon to solve practical problems.”
What advice would you give to underclassmen at UIUC?
“If you’re a freshman or sophomore, you could look at job applications and start to train yourself in the skills that they list before you have to start applying. Another piece of advice is that when you’re applying to jobs and internships, do not get discouraged. So many of my peers have applied to hundreds and hundreds of places, submitting something like 150 is probably the median. You don’t need to worry about that though. My last piece of advice is that if you are ever struggling, find a grad student! Like, one of the only reasons I was able to succeed so well was because I reached out to some grad students and we were able to bounce ideas off each other. The same is true for advising. Our department has some of the friendliest and most knowledgeable advisors in the business.”
Anushree Pimpalkar graduated in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering. She worked in data science and analytics for about 4 years before starting her master’s here at Illinois.
What was your favorite part about your time at UIUC?
“I really love the campus. I like that there are a lot of places to hang out or study. There is everything here that you would need to succeed as a student. No matter what your goals or interests are, this is a place where you can find something to do.
What are your plans for post-grad?
“I’ll be a data scientist in Seattle for Chewy, and I’m very excited! I look forward to applying all the skills I learned here at UIUC.”
What advice would you give to underclassmen at UIUC?
“Statistics can be challenging. You have to be on top of your coursework, network with your peers, and most importantly stay up to date. Data Science is a constantly evolving field, so it’s good to stay informed on what’s new in the industry. It’s important to plan ahead, but also have fun along the way.”
Abhinav Ankur earned his bachelor’s from Lovely Professional University in 2016. After working as a data scientist at Verizon for a few years, he began his master’s here at Illinois.
What was your favorite part about your time at UIUC?
“I led UIUC in a global AI challenge from Amazon. It was a group of 10 students, and we were supposed to create a bot that the user could connect to by talking, and then the bot would do those tasks it was told. If you wanted to make a coffee but you were out of something, the bot would order it from Amazon. Or if you told it to make an omelet and it dropped an egg, it would be able to wipe it up. That’s one thing I did here that was a really great time.”
What are your plans for post-grad?
“I’m going back to Verizon in the data science domain. I know the system, I know the people, and I’m very excited to go back. Verizon is sort of like a family, and a lot of those folks were so excited to bring me back.”
What advice would you give to underclassmen at UIUC?
“Never, ever, get swayed by what’s going on with the market or the buzzwords that go around. Just worry about what you actually want to do, and take your sweet time. There’s no haste.”