I love the teaching style, we do real projects with real life data

Derrick Ofori studied economics in Ghana and worked as an accountant. He has always been interested in computing and programming, so he decided to apply for the Data Science programme at University of Gloucestershire.

“I studied economics for my undergrad, and I liked it, but I still wanted to do something computing afterwards. Due to unemployment issues, I had to change into accounting, but that wasn’t paying sufficiently. I studied programming on my own without any school. I self-taught myself to programme within about a year. Then I started doing freelancing work to supplement my income. That gave me the programming experience. I was faced with many challenges through the freelancing, but I did learn.”

“If you want to transition into a proper professional role as a programmer, most companies will prefer some form of verification like a master’s programme. I taught myself, but there’s so much more, I think. Because you don’t know what you don’t know. I’m here to learn more, to get accreditation from the University of Gloucestershire and build on my career.”

“Fortunately, the University of Gloucestershire was accepting people with an economics background. I would not have been able to pursue this masters course which is like a dream, without the University of Gloucestershire. They allowed people with economic backgrounds to do it and checked my programming experience and the combination of those factors worked well.”

Facilities

“The facilities are amazing; the level of equipment is crazy. The number of computers on campus is incredible. So many computers with graphics cards and stuff. It’s fascinating.”

Course

“I love the teaching style. Especially for the course I’m doing because you learn programming by applying it in a professional setting. We do real projects with real life data. For example, we use real data from the government, and we are applying it to solve real problems. I love that we are being assessed like that, and not writing a test on a paper.”

“Gloucestershire isn’t really known in Ghana. We know Leeds, Manchester, but people don’t really know about Gloucestershire. I’m encouraging the Ghanaian to apply to this Uni because it is lovely. I love their teaching style, and everything is great.”

Lifestyle

“I’ve made friends with everybody. I have an Indian friend, I have British friends and I have a lot of Nigerian friends, I’m surrounded by friends. In Cheltenham it is chill and feels safe. It’s a lovely place. I’ve also been to Gloucester which is quite diverse. Everyone is nice. I love going to the gym and there are some lovely parks.”

Application process

“I used an agency called Intake Ghana to help me with my application. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t make any mistakes. They went through everything I did to just make sure everything was okay. They guided me through the visa application stage as well. Their help was very useful.”

Advice

“Get your accommodation sorted as quickly as possible. Initially, I was quite hesitant. I was thinking maybe I should wait, come here first, and see, but all my friends who did that had a really hard time. If you come here without accommodation, you will really be stressed out. Another advice, be hardworking. And just be yourself because you have so much at stake.”

Scholarship

“I was granted a 50% scholarship. That really helped me. In my application, I spoke about how I’ve had to overcome all the challenges and dealing with clients and topics I knew nothing about. My advice is that if you have any skills or any knowledge, anything relevant to whatever course you’re going to do, just demonstrated it in the application.”

Future Plan

“What I like is the Your Future Plan. Because placement and finding job prospects are super important to me. Every other week or every other day they keep sending prospective placement opportunities, prospective employers.”