Advanced Data Science Certificate Program

For students who have completed a graduate degree in Data Science, Predictive Analytics, or a similar field, this certificate provides a unique and in-depth exploration into the various industry-based applications of their specific skillset. The program offers students the opportunity to pursue concentrations in analytics fields, including offerings in the five specializations that are part of the Masters of Science in Data Science program:  Analytics Management, Analytics and Modeling, Data Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, and Technology Entrepreneurship.  This affords students the ability to study any of the exciting elective offerings in data science.

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About the Advanced Data Science Certificate Program

Advanced Data Science Certificate Course Schedule

From Big Data management to marketing analytics, the Advanced Data Science Certificate Courses page provides you with detailed information on the program's offerings.

Advanced Data Science Faculty

Instructors in this certificate program are the same world-renowned experts in our Master's in Data Science program. You can find a full listing of them on the Advanced Data Science Faculty page.

Admission for the Advanced Data Science Certificate

Applicants to the Advanced Data Science certificate program must hold a graduate degree in Data Science, Predictive Analytics, or similar field from an accredited U.S. college, university or its foreign equivalent. A list of admission requirements can be found on the Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study Admission page.

Certificate in Advanced Data Science Tuition

Tuition costs can vary for each of our programs. For the most up-to-date information on financial obligations, please visit our Certificate in Advanced Data Science Tuition page.

Advanced Data Science Registration Information

Our Advanced Data Science Registration Information page outlines important dates and deadlines as well as the process for adding and dropping courses.

Additional Information

Prior to applying to this program, students must have completed MSDS 420 and 422 or possess equivalent knowledge and skills. Please see below for more information:

MSDS 420 Database Systems

This course introduces data management and data preparation with a focus on applications in large-scale analytics projects utilizing relational, document, graph, and graph-relational databases. Students learn about the relational model, the normalization process, and structured query language. They learn about data cleaning and integration, and database programming for extract, transform, and load operations. Students work with unstructured data, indexing and scoring documents for effective and relevant responses to user queries. They learn about graph data models and query processing. Students write programs for data preparation and extraction using various data sources and file formats. Recommended prior programming experience or 430 Python for Data Science. Prerequisites: None.

MSDS 422 Practical Machine Learning

The course introduces machine learning with business applications. It provides a survey of machine learning techniques, including traditional statistical methods, resampling techniques, model selection and regularization, tree-based methods, principal components analysis, cluster analysis, artificial neural networks, and deep learning. Students implement machine learning models with open-source software for data science. They explore data and learn from data, finding underlying patterns useful for data reduction, feature analysis, prediction, and classification. Prerequisites: MSDS 400 Math for Modelers and MSDS 401-DL Applied Statistics with R.

 


Find out more about Northwestern's Certificates of Advanced Graduate Study

Corporate Data Science Training

  • Let us assess your training needs. We will work with you to evaluate your needs and tailor a program that meets your schedule and budget.
  • Your team members will learn together in small online classes and build the skills needed to implement consistent, high-level best practices across your organization.
  • You can increase the decision-making and forecasting ability of your organization without adding new positions.
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Advanced Data Science Required Courses

To earn a certificate, students must complete any four of the MSDS electives. In some cases, students who have completed equivalent coursework previously may be allowed to replace the required course with another course in the field.

Please note that courses completed in the certificate program cannot be transferred to the corresponding graduate degree.

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