Alumnus Bhargavi Sivapurapu Shares Her BACP Experience

Believe me when I say that I haven’t had such an impactful learning experience in years, not anytime after school definitely! The BACP program was a great way to get my feet wet in Analytics and gain exposure to the overall Analytics landscape.

Progress I Have Made in The Last Few Months:
The BACP course has been the greatest help in acquiring an Analytics skillset and proved to be the right recipe for success. I am putting to use what I learned, using Statistical significance calculators and matching up confidence intervals for the a/b tests that I do at work. We also use Time Series Forecasting in the background, it is great fun and there is so much scope to learn ahead.
Thanks to the #Learningforlife bug from Great Learning, I see myself pursuing my Masters in Statistics/Data Science in the future. Thank you all so much for the support but most importantly the BACP program and its following key highlights that left an inexpungeable impact on my life:

The Industry Sessions – I found these very useful as they gave an insight into the current market trends in India for Analytics compared to global trends. I found the Marketing Analytics and Social Analytics sessions most useful. The Resume building session was great as well.

Micro Groups – I really appreciate BACP’s approach of having micro groups (small groups of only 5 students) for targeted learning. I made some good friends on both professional and personal grounds here. Micro groups encourage open discussions and knowledge exchanges that participants may be hesitant to participate in at a bigger level.

Mini Projects/Regular Assignments – I must say I have had the best learnings while trying to scale up to the knowledge required to do the assignments/Kaggle Exercises/Mini Projects. I immediately started applying principles of what I learned theoretically during BACP at work. I understand the underlying statistics for 3rd party tools much better now. Absolutely great stuff!

Mentored Learning /Adithya – They say “A mentor is someone who sees more talent and ability within you than yourself, and helps bring it out of you.” This is true in every sense of the word for me, thanks to the excellent mentorship I experienced with my mentor Adithya, a Great Lakes PGP-BABI Alumnus. He made his contribution really count as I grew from being skeptical about my skills in Analytics to a confident Analyst now who looks at Data Analytics for more than 3 platforms at work. From sharing cheat sheets to reference materials and research papers and encouraging on pursuing further education, he pointed us to the right sources of study as and when approached. Due to time zone differences, I believe my emails to him were sent at the most abrupt timings, but I must thank him for putting up with my ‘over-enthusiastic’ learning rituals.
His knowledge on Advanced Statistics/Machine Learning/Time Series Forecasting is brilliant – he’s always backed what was learned in the video recordings with a mathematical viewpoint in his decks. For a guy who’s only a few years senior to us, he makes a great person to look up to with respect to his knowledge in an emerging science like this. My first steps in Analytics were under his able guidance and I heartfully thank him for the support I received during the course. I am sure he’ll make an extremely good mentor for the batches yet to come and I wish him all the success for the research work he’s doing. Adithya – You were just fab! 🙂

Program Office – There was constant support from the Program Office right from the beginning till the end of the program. Our program manager made sure the course went on smoothly despite abrupt personal circumstances surfacing out of nowhere. She was always available and her replies were instantaneous. I really appreciate her time and patience in keeping up with all our unique learning needs despite having to deal with a number of students across countries. Another program manager was particularly helpful in getting my academic references in place and putting it up on the letterhead.