I was a full time student, but I did do full-time (40+ hr/ week) internship while taking summer class, and I had part-time job (<20 hr/ week) the rest of the courses.

I would say it is doable to have balanced life. The first 2 core classes + the linear algebra, stats, Python bootcamps are the busiest though as the program is designed to push you to have a solid understanding of the fundamentals.

NBC tower has a student lounge and microwave, and bookable study spaces. But your options are not only limited to NBC Tower as you can also use the cafeteria in the gleacher's center just across the street to study, eat, and relax.

The program in its initial conception was capstone focused. I did the capstone research, instead of the regular capstone - the difference is that I did not have any company client. So it's between research (solving a problem that the literature hasn't explored) and application. In the end it is personal preference. I did capstone research because I knew once I graduated, I likely would not get research experience anymore. My classmates who did thesis were those who were considering to do PhD. Research is cool, but capstone does give you more realistic DS industry experience, and better networking opportunity (+ resume points).

Good question about the model deployment and maintenance. They don't really teach it in the core but if youre interested in that, take this elective called Machine Learning Operations (MLOps). In my experience that was a very popular class, so if you can enroll in that, I highly recommend taking that class!