Undergraduate University: University of Madras
Undergraduate Major: Electrical and Electronics Engineering
About Rathi: I was born in India and spent most of my life in Chennai and later in the Bay Area working in tech for banking and retail companies. I have been a life-long math aficionado, and continued to be a part-time math instructor until I joined UT. I moved to Austin at the start of the summer semester and it has been quite an exciting change. Growing up in Chennai, I was always in the middle of different music seasons and I get a similar vibe here in Austin!
Proudest Accomplishment: It has been my lifelong desire to do Master’s in a world-renowned school. Work and family commitment took most of my time away and when COVID hit, I got time to reprioritize. I was proud to receive scholarship for an MBA program at a UC school but felt even prouder when the UT Austin admit came along. It has really been a dream come true for me. Experiencing the learning process through highly skilled faculty and through my fellow go-getter classmates is such a rewarding experience – I am so proud to be a Longhorn!
Why did you choose the MSITM Program? I started off by teaching myself Python, R, and ML (machine learning) through several online forums. I wasn’t totally convinced that by merely posting my certifications on online forums I was making progress. I was looking for a brand tagged against my resume and a more hands-on learning, so I decided to take my learning process several leaps ahead and started looking at MS programs and also some STEM-focused MBA programs. The MSITM course curriculum felt like it would open up a plethora of opportunities and introduce me to several emerging technologies which were beyond my comfort zone. Given that I have work experience in tech, I wanted to stay close to tech and also be ready for leadership roles. I felt that MSITM offered this mix with a significantly more technical composition which was exactly what I was looking for.
What have you enjoyed during your time in the program? I have absolutely enjoyed the action during the last couple of semesters. There’s more doing than talking. I appreciate that there is repeated reinforcement of technical concepts from different perspectives across various courses. Non-technical courses are oriented towards solving business problems. The playing field is not level for sure, some students know more than others but I see that as an advantage and have enjoyed learning different technical approaches and absorbing different lines of thought while doing group projects and assignments.