About Data Science in University of Maryland

Data Science is an emerging field encapsulating interdisciplinary activities, used to create data-centric products, applications or programs that address specific scientific, socio-political, or business questions. It is making deep inroads in industry, government, health, and journalism. Due to the growing need for applying data science techniques in these and other domains, there is a significant shortage of trained data scientists. Data Science incorporates practices from a variety of fields in computer science, chiefly machine learning, statistics, databases, systems, algorithms, and visualization. The undergraduate data science specialization enables students to get the broad variety of skills needed to be successful data scientists.

Students looking to pursue the data science specialization are required to complete the lower level courses (MATH140, MATH141, CMSC131, CMSC132, CMSC216, CMSC250), the additional required courses (CMSC330, CMSC351, STAT400 and MATH240), and the upper level concentration requirements. The difference in the specialization is the upper level computer science courses.

Students must fulfill their computer science upper level course requirements from at least 3 areas. Students may fulfill an area requirement under the Upper Level Elective Courses requirement. Courses that fall within each area are listed in the CS Distributive Areas and Electives document.

The five areas are:

• Area 1: Systems;
• Area 2: Information Processing;
• Area 3: Software Engineering and Programming Languages;
• Area 4: Theory;
• Area 5: Numerical Analysis.

Academic qualification equivalents 

• The University of Maryland (UMD) seeks to enroll international students who demonstrate strong academic performance with records suggesting potential for success at the university. Admission to the University of Maryland is competitive. Typically, admission is offered to applicants whose academic credentials indicate marks of "very good" to "excellent." 

English language requirements

• International English Language Testing System (IELTS) | UMD accepts official IELTS and IELTS Indicator scores. 

               UMD passing score: 7

               Maryland English Institute score: 6.5 or lower

• Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) | UMD accepts official TOEFL and TOEFL Home Edition scores. At this time, we are not accepting TOEFL superscores known as MyBest Scores. 

               UMD passing score: 95

               Maryland English Institute score: 94 or lower

University of Maryland Highlights

University of Maryland Cost of Attendance

The estimated cost of attendance for international students to study at the university is mentioned-below: