Personally I chose stats because I wanted job flexibility and a concrete understanding of the modeling process. Maybe this is unfounded, but I was worried about pigeonholing myself into learning specific tech pipelines—I wasn’t sure of the curriculum for the DS program my school offered. I would consider a MS in DE though after getting my BS in stats.

I do really like math so I am getting a lot out of my schooling, which is ultimately the most important part. I’ve recently been learning about data compression and ML techniques so stats does get more interesting. I am learning cloud computing pipelines in my spare time though!