Oliver Kaus

1. Why this program? Why Imperial?

Studying in a vibrant city such as London at one of Europe’s best universities in the field sounded like the perfect place to dive into Computer Science. In fact, this master turned out to be one of the only possibilities in Europe to pursue a computer science degree after having completed a business undergraduate degree.

2. What did you do before the program?

I studied International Business in Maastricht, The Netherlands with a major in Finance and did several internships in the Finance industry.

3. What coding experience did you have when you started?

I took a simple Excel Visual Basics programming course in my undergraduate degree. Apart from that, I did not have any coding experience.

4. What did you like best about the program?

First, even though people came from very different non-computer science backgrounds, the faculty opened up a lot of courses and entrusted students with the decision of whether courses are feasible with their given skill set. This equipped students with the great opportunity to take advanced courses in areas such as cryptography, machine learning, advanced statistics or cybersecurity.

Second, the people in the course were amazing. All coming from very diverse backgrounds with different levels of coding experience, but all united by the aspiration to learn as much as possible in this one year made it a very inspiring community.

5. What did you find most challenging about the program?

The workload in the first two terms was intense. Additionally, it required some extra effort to get up to speed in electives taught together with other Computer Science Bachelor’s or Master’s students.

6. What did you learn or do that you are most proud of?

As a child, I always wondered how computers work on a relatively low level (how does the computer process data, how are files stored, how is this visualised on the screen). Being able to understand this now is really cool! Additionally, I am proud of having built a good foundation in computer science. This makes it possible to dive deeper into the computer science-related topics that I am most interested in.

7. What was your ideal next step as the program was completing and what are you doing now?

I wanted a job where I could still code while at the same time making use of my previous business degree. I now work as a Data Scientist for a sports media company in London.

8. Anything else you would like to tell people who are considering this program?

For me personally, it has been the best decision I could have made. Now being able to work in a field that I find truly interesting and where my analytical thinking is valued a lot is very rewarding. If you like to think analytical and want to make a move into computer science, then this course is for you.