Visualizations by Faisal Fattani // Article by Rachael Ren
Students in the Informatics Major have the option to build their own custom track or choose from the following five tracks: Data Science, Human-Computer Interaction, Information Architecture, Information Assurance and Cybersecurity, or Biomedical & Health Informatics. These tracks open up a wide array of career options ranging from Business Analyst to UX designer. In November 2020, we polled undergraduate Informatics students to determine which tracks they were pursuing as well as their future educational and career plans.
We found that our respondents had the following track distribution:
The most common track among our respondents was, by far, the custom track. This was followed by the Data Science and Human-Computer Interaction tracks.
How do these tracks influence Informatics students’ plans after graduation?
Our survey found that an overwhelming majority of respondents across tracks plan to work in tech after graduation. Around half of our respondents plan to pursue a Master’s, but only a few plan to pursue a PhD.
One interesting relationship we found was that students who participated in research were more likely to be interested in graduate school.
