Frequently asked questions
Membership, recruitment, technical background, events, partnerships, and data privacy answers are stored in one reusable collection.
As a member of BSA, you’ll work with other students on sports analytics projects using real data. Most new members begin in Data Journalism, where they choose a research question and build a project with guidance from the Data Journalism leads. As you gain experience, you can transition to a sports team and contribute to larger club specfic projects or projects for outside clients through research, data cleaning, visualization, statistical analysis, dashboards, or machine learning.
Team members collaborate on larger-scale projects like those featured on our website. Tasks are assigned based on your skills and the team's needs and can range from research and data cleaning to building dashboards and machine learning models. Most work is completed independently, with weekly meetings to discuss progress, delegate tasks, collaborate, and catch up with teammates.
In Data Journalism, you choose a group of roughly three members and develop your own research project on any sports-related topic. On a sports team, you are assigned to a group of roughly 5–10 members based on your preferences. Your team will either develop a new project or contribute to an ongoing project guided by your team lead.
Yes, to an extent. In Data Journalism, you have full control over your project's topic. For sports teams, you will be assigned based on your interests, skills, and team availability.
Not at all! We welcome students with an interest in sports, data science, and data analytics. If you have limited experience, we recommend starting in Data Journalism and attending our workshops to build your skills before joining a sports team.
Common tools include Python, R, SQL, Tableau, React, GitHub, and statistical modeling libraries, though the exact stack depends on the project. Web development experience is also a plus. You do not need to be highly experienced with these tools before joining, we are looking for people who are eager to learn and contribute to an engaging club environment.
Members should expect to commit 5+ hours per week, including project work, weekly team meetings, general member meetings, and workshops.
Recruitment begins at EAF, where you can meet current members and learn what BSA can offer you and what you can bring to BSA. Applications open after the Data Science Showcase, with strong applicants invited to coffee chats on Tuesday and Wednesday of Week 2. Our first workshop also takes place during this period and is strongly recommended for applicants. Final-round interviews are held Thursday and Friday of Week 2, followed by final decisions.
Our main recruitment period takes place during the first two weeks of Fall Quarter, with a smaller recruitment period during the first two weeks of Winter Quarter.
Yes, but public pages only show approved summaries. Private repositories, athlete-level sensitive information, and protected partner data are not exposed.
We partner with collegiate and professional teams, leagues, agencies, sports-technology companies, and departments across UCLA Athletics. Engagements range from focused one-off analyses to season-long projects.
As a student organization, most engagements are low-cost or pro bono depending on scope and data access. We align on expectations and any costs together during the discovery call before work begins.
Most projects run from a few weeks to a full academic quarter, depending on complexity and how ready your data is. We scope the timeline with you up front.
You do. Partners retain ownership of final deliverables and any proprietary outputs. We only display approved, non-sensitive summaries publicly, and only with your permission.
Submit the inquiry form with your problem and available data. Our External Vice President will follow up to schedule a discovery call and scope the engagement.