Data Science Career Track

A little background: I'm currently about 25% through Springboard's Data Science Career Track program. My professional background is in higher education. I recently completed a PhD in philosophy and have experience teaching undergraduate philosophy courses. I have minimal background in math beyond the high school level, but my philosophy degrees have prepared me for the sort of technical and critical thinking skills used in data science. I'm doing the Springboard program to make a career change. I completed most of Springboard's Data Science Prep Course, which I found helpful, before being accepted into the Career Track program.
Review: Overall, my experience in the Career Track program has been pretty good so far. My impression is that the quality of one's experience with the program depends largely on the quality of one's mentor. My mentor was initially pretty poor, and I had a difficult time understanding his accent. But I reached out to Springboard early in the program, and they helped reassign me to a new mentor. Thankfully, my new mentor is excellent and has dramatically improved my experience. I'm in a study group with other students, and I've gotten the impression that their mentors are so-so. I have learned a lot so far in the program, and I've been especially happy with Springboard's "customer support" (very friendly and helpful) and career support (they get you started on job stuff early on in the program). A fair portion of the data science curriculum (so far) has consisted of Datacamp exercises. Springboard partners with Datacamp, and students get free access to Datacamp courses. Honestly, I haven't been that impressed with the Datacamp courses. They are helpful for gaining superficial exposure to tools and skills used in data science, but they don't cultivate a deep understanding. I will say that the time estimates Springboard gives (completion in 6 months, working 15-20 hrs a week) are pretty unrealistic. Most of my study group (including me) is working on the course full time, and we are all on track to finish in 5 months (at the earliest), and probably more like 6 months. Unless you already have significant data science experience, don't expect to finish the program in under 5 months, and possibly even under 6 months.
Overall, given my experience so far, I would probably recommend (pretty highly) Springboard's program to people (depending on their circumstances). I'm happy to discuss my experience with people if anyone would like to know more, especially people with an academic background in the humanities. You can find me on LinkedIn and around the web if you look (e.g. philpeople.org). Feel free to reach out.

I was looking for an intense, well-run program that would help me get a job as a data scientist, and Springboard career track absolutely delivered.

Springboard is a great bootcamp with amazing mentors and ongoing career support. It consistently builds technical and professional competencies to be able to transition smoothly into a data science career. The job guarantee is a great incentive for studying hard and completing the course! Springboard has an active community that encourages students to attend conferences and local meetups. Personally it helped me to effectively transition into a data science role, coming from a chemical engineering background. 

The Springboard Data Science Career Track 6-month course has taught me a lot.  The curriculum is set up very well.  You start by learning Python basics, then go into inferential statistics, machine learning, software engineering, etc.  Throughout the course there are 2 major capstones that you build from scratch.  The links to my projects are below.  I've learned so much but please do not think that you can spend 10 hours a week on the course and complete it.  I spent 3-4 hours every night during the week and some weekend days working on the course.  And I will mention that I did not do the job guarantee since I already enjoy working at my current company so you will need to add more time to do the job guarantee sections.

Overall I highly recommend the Springboard Data Science Career Track.   It is kind of pricy but they do have payment plans.  I personally did not pay for the course as my company picked up the cost but just remember that you get what you paid for.  

I can't wait to start applying my knowledge to the real-world!

Capstone 1: https://github.com/brocknosbisch/Springboard_Capstone_1
Capstone 2: https://github.com/brocknosbisch/Springboard_Capstone_2
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brocknosbisch/

As a electronics engineering graduate, I found this program can quickly being you to the data science/analytics field and you can also relate the data to the field you are interested, and translate the data into engineering sense and business sense easily.
Thank you springboard, this program really opens my eyes to the data world and business world.

As a former clinical lab technician who enrolled in this course, I'd say it is a great learning experience. The inclusion of one-on-one mentoring was very helpful for me since I can quickly contact someone for help and advice on the cirriculum. The emphasis on practical applications makes the material more approachable for newcomers. Overall a great choice for anyone interested in data science careers.

- Independent of your background, you can finish this program, on your way and with all the mentoring support that you need. The program encourages you to be creative to face challenging capstone projects. 
- Opportunity to work in topics where you really feel passion, using the newly learned skills.
- Excellent professional coaching and final interviews to prepare yourself for the next steps and to build networking.
- The program might include more content and mini-projects related to PySpark and a sense of programming at scale.
- Some tutorials on the curriculum are little longs. They could be shorter (including just the essential content). The curriculum has a couple of own videos -introducing the chapters and coaching advice-. Maybe they could work in their own technical videos. 
- Some people could need a little more support about datasets and available tools for capstone projects. Maybe in the first chapter, the curriculum could include links to datasets and examples of projects to guide them. 

I have just finished the Data Science Career track program at Springboard. I picked Springboard over the other data science course because of two main reasons:

1. I was able to work my current job and complete the coursework in the evenings and the weekends

2. My mentor was extremely helpful and guided to build a good foundation in machine learning and neural networks

3.  The staff is great, understanding and respectful and my student advisor was really prompt in replying to any queries

4. The career courches are very passionate and experienced which matters especially when you are on verge of making a career change and you need someone to keep you motivated

Completing a couple well thought-out projects is really valuable, especially for someone who doesn't have any work experience in data science. Doing these types of projects would have been very difficult on my own. Additionally, having a mentor to consult with every step of the way provided reassurance more than once. You always knew you had help if you got stuck. Lastly, I really enjoyed the community aspect of the course. It provided a forum for Q/A, and often my question had already been asked by another student, so I was able to get an answer immediately. This was great for those moments when you're stuck on an assignment and don't want to wait for your mentor's email or call.

Advice for those considering the course:

1. Keep a steady pace. Plan out in advance how much you will work on the course each day.

2. Work hard on all the assignments, but especially the projects. What you put in is what you get out.

The Springboard Data Science Career Track course provides more resources than I expected.  These include the weekly calls with a professional for mentoring, career calls to talk about aspects of applying and making contacts and refining a resume and LinkedIn profile, mock interviews that were a great motivation to prepare for, and individuals who can review projects and code.  I was impressed by the number of resources and their quality.  My mentor helped me understand a solid strategy for making contacts with individuals at companies for referrals.  Another resource is the free access to DataCamp during and after the course, which is effective at teaching concepts and code.  The main suggestion I would make to improve the course is providing supplemental resources to deepen knowledge of a topic if one wanted to increase understanding.  Overall, I feel that I advanced a lot from studying the course materials but, of course, expect that I will need to study independently to be effective in my new job.

I'm so thankful I enrolled in this bootcamp.  The curriculum was very comprehensive, delving into statistical concepts, data wrangling, and Python with machine learning applications (and more).  The mini projects and 2 capstone reports really allowed me to hone my Python and analytical skills.  Moreover, the career support and the mentor support were invaluable. Having weekly calls with my mentor  really helped in terms of direction for my projects and with any miscellaneous curriculum questions.  Interviewing skills and networking is part of the curriculum, so you're set up for success from the beginning.  I was able to get a Data Science job (albeit with prior data experience) after 3 months of the the bootcamp; the portfolio I've created through Springboard was a major asset in my interviewing process.

I had a statistics degree and moved to the US from a 3rd world country.  My skill set wasn't a good match for the data science community in the States. I needed a boost and found Springboard.

Unlimited mentoring is a gem. Thanks to all the mentors I have bothered.

You can ask your questions to  TA's. They say they will return in 24 hrs. It takes more than that but they return for sure.

Weekly mentor calls feel unnecessary at first but they are almost not enough towards to the end.

Got my job offer before finishing the course. Definitely, suggest it.

Enrolling at Springboard was one of the best decisions I've ever made. I decided I wanted to be a data scientist while I was working on my Mechanical Engineering degree. A couple of months before graduating, I searched for Data Science bootcamps that could offer me a pathway to attaining a data science position. I found Springboard during my search and was really impressed by how intensive and rich the program was. Needless to say, enrolling has been one of the best decisions of my life. The assignments, reading and projects really help prepare you to be a data scientist and the career support is world class.  I would highly encourage anyone looking to get the skills to be a data scientist, to really consider enrolling in Springboard.  

The best part of the course is its 1:1 sessions with industry specialist mentors. They are really flexible and make sure to impart best knowledge of subject.

The curriculum is well structured and the mentors are a great deal of support for the price. The only thing that I had trouble with was completing the program in the advertised amount of time. I think in total I averaged about 25-30 hours a week over the course of 7 months, but that could have been due to the complexity of my capstone projects. I definitely learned a ton in that time period though and they were very supportive the whole time!

The main positives to take from the course are the interactions with the mentor and the interview preps. Now I had a very hesitant mindset about applying for a bootcamp wondering whether I would be able to get employment considering I do not have a computer science degree or a STEM degree. I have a political science degree. I was told that these things do not matter and that you can easily land a job after you get both your projects done. I had done very detailed projects and posted them on github and did everything the career coaches suggested I do. Unfortunately not a single data science position had reached out to me. 

Now for the curriculum. This was sadly most dissappointing. The course mainly revolves around data camp courses. And then these are supplemented by youtube lectures from Harvard or other institutions that would talk about the subject with the impression that you have intermediate knowledge of the subject matter, despite it being a beginners intro video to a concept. I have had much better success with the self study resources available on the internet, such as youtube tutorials etc. Also did two Udemy courses for 11 dollars each and got a better understanding of the subjects. There was no feel of an actual boot camp teaching you, they basically link you to external sources that arent theirs. 

So overall it was a good experience from Springboard. I think where they excel is pairing you up with a mentor who has real work experience. What they may need to work on is more helpful feedback to students after submitting assignments, projects.

The course went over the general data science process. Maybe more emphasis on cloud services and big data.

I took this online bootcamp when deciding to move my career into data science. In general, Springboard provided very helpful materials for me to learn all basic background in data science.
My mentor is an senior data scientist who worked with me to finish two big capstone project (a practical problem). He has a strong experience in data science. So, I learned a lot of good skills from him.
I think the best things that springboard can help its students be career services. It has many good career coach with strong experience in HR and recruiting. So, you figure out how to find a appropriate job and persuade the hiring manager to consider you as a good candidate.

I completed all curriculum in 6 months and got the guarantee for refunding if I can not find a job within next 6 month of job searching.

Initially, my job searching is not good. But my career mentor helped me a good strategy in applying for a job. Lukily, I got an job offer (last week) after around 6 months after finishing this program.

Another thing I should mention that finishing a springboard program only shows that you can work in data science. You have to improve a lot of neccesary skills in order to be successed in this field.
I hope my share could be helpful.

Overall it was a good experience - you will learn to think analytically as well as learn how to write effective and efficient code in Python, SQL, and spark for data science. In addition to the core data science curriculum, you will also learn how to network, ask for and ace interviews, and negotiate salary. Anyone can take free courses online to learn how to code in python, but having everything arranged in a structed environment with a completion deadline really helped motivate me to do the work.

Personally, my biggest takeaway from this course was how to network and get jobs - as well as getting feedback from my mentor and career coaches. Networking was something I have always struggled with, so having access to the career coaches and seeing all of the ways to network really helped solidify my strategy. 

A terrific, motivating course that gives you all of the tools to succeed. I loved my mentor, speaking with him weekly was a crucial element in my education. He brought thoughtful analysis to my coursework, gave good advise in the job search setting, and was overall very fun to talk to. The course was extremely indepth and productive!