The Data Science Minor has two requirements that DARS will not account for when running an audit. The first is the overlap restriction, and the second is the prefix restriction. 

• Overlap restriction: students cannot use more than 10 credits toward both their major(s) and Data Science Minor. A student in two majors can overlap 10 credits per major.
• Prefix restriction: students cannot use more than 10 credits from one course prefix (e.g. INFO, STAT, SOC, etc.)

Both of these requirements must be verified manually by an adviser for the Data Science Minor. This means that a student’s data science minor degree audit may display courses that are not actually allowed to be used for minor requirements.  

While advisers for the Data Science Minor manually review each student’s audit in the quarter they are graduating, we recommend students check their progress manually on their own as they move through the minor. 

Follow these instructions to check your own overlap and prefix restriction so you are not surprised by changes to your audit when an adviser completes their review.

Overlap Restriction

Courses that are considered for the overlap restriction are any courses that are required by your major. Most often this can be determined by looking at departmental requirements in a degree audit (DARS report) for your major. Some majors require students to take specific courses for their general education requirements. These courses also count toward the overlap restriction. See below to determine whether this applies to you or not. Note that there is no restriction on the amount of overlap among other minors. 

How to compare DARS Departmental Requirements

1. Open MyPlan to run a degree audit (DARS report) for your major. Read instructions for how to run and read a degree audit. 
2. Open a separate tab. Run another degree audit for your data science minor. 
3. Find the section of your major degree audit titled, Departmental Requirements. Some majors title this section differently, but it should be the section that includes required courses for your major. 
4. In your minor degree audit, compare each course to the courses that fall under Departmental Requirements or Admissions Requirements in your major degree audit. 
   1. Every course that falls under Departmental Requirements will be considered for the overlap restriction. 
   2. Courses that are categorized as Admissions Requirements are also considered for the overlap restriction.
   3. We do not count courses that fall under General Education, University Requirements, or General Electives. These are not considered for the overlap restriction.
      1. If your major requires you to choose from a specific set of courses for your general education (e.g. HCDE), these courses are considered for the overlap restriction. See the General Education section below these instructions if you are unsure if this applies to you.  
5. In your minor degree audit, you may see courses listed at the bottom under the statement, “A different course was used where the following could have applied.” These courses do not count toward your minor. 
   1. These courses may exceed the 10 allowable credits of lower division coursework or the 4 allowable courses from one minor course list (data studies, data skills, cross-cutting). 
6. If there are more than 10 credits that count for both your minor and major requirements, you have too much overlap. You are only allowed 10 credits of overlap.
   1. If you have a double major, 10 credits from each major can count toward your minor.
7. Contact us (dataminor@uw.edu) if…  
   1. If you would like us to rearrange your degree audit to include courses falling under “A different course was used where the following could have applied.”
   2. You have too much overlap. We can manually remove a course from your degree audit to correctly reflect the courses that count for your minor and the credits you have remaining. This helps prevent any delay in graduation.
   3. You are having trouble determining which courses count as overlap between your major and minor. 

How to determine whether your major requires specific general education courses

Most majors allow students to choose any General Education courses to take. For example, students may be able to choose any 20 credits of Social Sciences coursework to complete the Social Sciences Area of Inquiry. Some majors may specify which courses students must choose from for the General Education requirement. For example, students must take 20 credits of Social Science coursework, but 10 of the credits must be x course and y course or must be selected from a previously approved list. This means these courses are specific to your major, and will be considered for the Data Science Minor overlap restriction.  

If your major’s degree audit is unclear, you can compare it with your major’s website. In this example from HCDE, students must choose Natural Science Area of Inquiry courses from an HCDE-specific list. These courses would be considered for the overlap restriction because they are specific to the major.

Prefix Restriction 

The prefix restriction for the Data Science Minor means that students cannot use more than 10 credits from one course prefix. A course prefix refers to the department that offers the course. In the example of INFO 200, INFO refers to the Informatics department and 200 is the course number. “INFO” is the prefix for the course. This is separate from a student’s overlap with their major. 

How to check your course prefixes 

1. Open MyPlan to run a fresh degree audit (DARS report) for your Data Science Minor.
2. Review the different prefixes of the courses you have taken for your minor. 
3. If you have more than one course that uses the same prefix, count the number of credits that use the same prefix. 
   1. For example, if you have taken INFO 200 (5 credits) and INFO 201 (5 credits), you have 10 credits with the INFO prefix. This is allowed.
   2. If you have taken INFO 200 (5), INFO 201 (5), and INFO 330 (5), you have 15 credits with the INFO prefix. This is not allowed, and the Data Science Minor advisers will remove 5 of these credits from your minor.
4. Sometimes, courses may not total an even 10 credits. DARS does not allow us to split credits manually. In this case, the advisers may leave more than 10 credits from one prefix in your degree audit, but “ignore” credits beyond the allowed 10 credits when certifying your minor. 
   1. For example, you may have taken I S 320 (4), I S 445 (4), and I S 451 (4). This means you have 12 credits from the same prefix, which is not allowed. The advisers will calculate your total credits for the minor using just 2 credits from I S 451 to allow 10 credits from the same prefix. However, all 12 I S credits will remain in your degree audit despite not all credits being used.
5. Sometimes courses may be cross-listed in different departments. Cross-listed courses are different sections of the same course offered by different departments in the same quarter.
   1. For example, you may have taken SOC 225 (5), SOC 321 (5), and SOC 403 (5). Your degree audit will show 15 credits with the SOC prefix. However, SOC 321 can also be counted as STAT 321. We will allow you to use all 15 credits of SOC in this case, as you may not have had a choice of which course to register for.  
6. Contact us (dataminor@uw.edu) if…  
   1. You have too many credits from the same course prefix. We will manually remove a course from your degree audit to correctly reflect the courses that count for your minor and the credits you have remaining. This helps prevent any delay in graduation.
   2. You are having trouble determining how many credits from the same prefix count toward your minor.

 

Data Science Minor

Leverage familiarity with data science in fields outside of data science, and gain skills and fluency to work with data in your major domain of study.

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