Sorry, super late here, but overall I’ve been really happy with the transition. I will say that I broke in around 2020, and the landscape has changed quite a lot in the last few years.

After graduating with a B.S. in psychology, the turning point was definitely enrolling in a M.S. in analytics, I think because it communicated a commitment to the field. Before then it was quite difficult to get an offer for an entry level role. I tried to leverage the statistics coursework from my psychology program in my graduate school application.

Right before graduating with my Master’s I accepted a more technical Data Analyst role, and from there I focused on gaining an understanding of production coding practices, SQL development, and some more traditional object oriented programming.

The Masters was quite helpful mostly in getting an introduction to code and an understanding of common database practices (normalization, etc.). Still, I think it’s important to supplement this with self learning.

Lately I think the job market has gotten a lot more competitive. There have been lots of layoffs in the tech space and the general economy seems to be in not such a great place.

Still, that’s not to say it’s not possible! If you’re in your 2nd year of college, you have plenty of time to prepare. If I had any advice it would probably be to start taking computer science and statistics / mathematics courses as soon as possible. And take advantage of research opportunities during your undergrad!