Data Science Career Track

Overall a very strong course that teaches you the many different facets of Data Science. As someone who was very new to computer science, I felt the course was well balanced and not too overwhelming though difficult at points. The Capstone Projects were key in me putting all of this knowledge together and really understanding the data science process. Both my normal mentor and career mentor were very helpful throughout the course and I would recommend it for anyone looking into a change in careers.

(I wrote a review on another site about Springboard using the same title as this review - rather than just copy/paste, I'll start again from scratch here. If it seems fishy to you that they have the exact same title and similar themes, it's because they were written by the exact same dude.)

Do a lot of research into which bootcamp is the best for you. Springboard will be at or near the top of your list. It's everything that you need, without a bunch of stuff that you don't.

Some reasons that Springboard may not be right for you:

- If you absolutely need to learn R. (You don't right now.  You'll be learning so many other things that you're better off learning just one language, Python, even if you already know Python.)

- If you need an in-person boot camp.  (They may have one, I don't know, I did it online because I'm in Cleveland)

- If you don't want to do a 6-month boot camp. (They probably have shorter ones; I don't know because I knew I needed to learn a ton.)

Some reasons that Springboard was right for me:

- It allowed me to have confidence to go to employers and say "Yes I'm still learning, but I can add value to your organization from Day 1. Besides all the things that I can explain to make that case, here are two projects that I designed and implemented myself."

- I checked out the curriculum, and it was credible, complete, and focused on what I really needed to know. (Having gone through the course, I can say the curriculum was accurately represented - I got out of it what I expected to get out of it.)

- The financing options/payment plan were reasonable, and they have a job guarantee, which gave me confidence that they stand behind their product.

I think you can see my name here on this review - if so, feel free to reach out to me if you have questions. As long as I'm not totally inundated with requests, I'll do my best to set up a time where we can talk if you have questions.

This program is top-notch if you're looking to break into data science.  From technical skills to securing a new job, the course offers 360 degree support.  Although people of all skill levels will benefit, it is certainly helpful to have some background in programming and/or statistics.

Well-organized intensive online boot camp covering all aspects of the data science life cycle. In addition, materials on advanced topics (NLP, recommender system, Spark, etc.) are also included in the curriculum. The weekly one-on-one coaching call with industry expert is my favorite, providing necessary guidance and keeping me motivated throughout the program. Overall, I had a nice learning journey with Springboard and appreciated all the supports along the way. If you are looking for a good online boot camp with flexible hours at a reasonable price, Springboard Data Science Career Track is a good bet.

Well-organized intensive online boot camp covering all aspects of the data science life cycle. In addition, materials on advanced topics (NLP, recommender system, Spark, etc.) are also included in the curriculum. The weekly one-on-one coaching call with industry expert is my favorite, providing necessary guidance and keeping me motivated throughout the program. Overall, I had a nice learning journey with Springboard and appreciated all the supports along the way. If you are looking for a good online boot camp with flexible hours at a reasonable price, Springboard Data Science Career Track is a good bet.

The boot campt was a good learnig experince. The support from TA abd mentors was outstanding. Job search support from the career coahces is excellent. It provides a good foundation for the data science career, specially for students with academic background.

There are some videos in the curriculum which can be difficult to follow. Springboard should have enough data now to create their own course material.

I tried many times in the past to learn data science, but work always got in the way. My top 3 ways way that Springboard helps you. They help you focus on what is important to learn so you spend less time on learning useless information. Your mentor is able to guide you when you do not understand certain concepts. And they make you concentrate on career development which is the part I hate doing, but it is the most important. Overall, I am glad that I have taken this course because I feel confident that I have developed a great foundation to start my data science career. The rest is up to me to learn and develop myself to become even better. 

Springboard's project-based, mentor-guided curriculum combined with their helpful and friendly career services and support staff made for a wonderful experience as a student. There is a broad range of skills learned and practiced through projects including statistics, hypothesis testing, data visualization, SQL, and applied machine learning. Through your capstones, you can dive deeper into data science topics that interest you. Since there is a job guarantee, a fair amount is asked of students, including finding additional resources to help complete projects. For me, this meant spending a minimum of 20-25 hours a week, so make sure you are able to carve out time in your day on a consistent basis.

Lot of material and practice with data munging/cleaning/visualization. However, certain topics, such as Spark and Data Science for production, are only covered superficially with no actual practice. Overall, there are plenty of resources to practice the general skill set needed.

I’ve had an amazing experience at Springboard. Their Data Science Career Track program is curated, but they you can tell they really took the time to find all the best resources out there. It’s  not going to be easy because you’re learning so much in s limited time, but it will be so worth it if you’re seeking for a career change or to enhance your skills. In addition to getting one-on-one mentoring, you also get extra support from the community. Also, their career services is also amazing! Coming out of this program, I not only learned the skills to become a data scientist, but the drive to become an independent learner. If you’re seeking to venture into data science, I definitely recommend Springboard!

I enrolled in the Data Science career track. I completed my course a couple of weeks back. I opted out of the career assistance because I already had a job which I am not planning to quit any time soon. I completed my course work. I had to interrupt my course twice. Once due to flooding and the other time when I was about to be a father. On both occasions Springboard paused my course and were supportive of me resuming it later.

Pros:-
1. Structure: The course is well structured and gives you a good idea of how to progress
2. Exercises: There were a lot of exercises which gave a very good insight about how a data science project progresses. This included basic and intermediate statistical analyses and advanced topics.
3. Projects: Two capstones make you practice a lot. The capstones along with mentor guidance solidified many concepts in my mind.
4. Mentors (Biggest Pro): Having a mentor was the biggest pro. I was matched up to an excellent mentor, an expert in the field and he was extremely patient with me and always pushed me in the right direction. I understand a mentor can be different for different people but if they match you up with a mentor who is helpful, extract every thing from the opportunity.

Cons:-
1. I felt that not enough attention was paid to big data and data engineering. Maybe they will fix it in the future.
2. The content was...ok. You can find equally good video materials on YouTube if not better materials.

Overall:-
Its a very good program for the amount of money you pay. I am not sure about the job support but based on the quality of my mentors, I am sure that is solid too.

The program gives great job support and has a great curriculum. The curriculum combines some lectures providing theoretical backgrounds of the algorithm, coding lessons, homework and projects. I have gained a lot of knowledge on Python and Machine Learning.  

There are probably some people who are very at selling themselves and wont need this program, but for people like me it was immensly helpful. In particular, the help in building a network and assembling a portfolio it was really helpful. It's farily pricey, but I can confidently say it would have taken me much longer to find a job without it.

This was an excellent program to gain exposure to many different areas in the data science process. I had excellent support from my mentor and the career resources during the program, and am confident this will continue throughout the job search. The curriculum is very good, although some issues are slightly present due to pacing but are relatively minor. There is a lot of work which will need to be done in the program over a long period of time but if you are willing to put the effort in it will certainly be worth it. 

o I completed my Bachelors, went directly into my Masters, but then was really struggling with landing a job. I was failing the technical interviews, and then a good friend of mine recommended Springboard.

I took the entrance exam (At the time it was timed exam with a few simple to moderate coding problems) and was accepted into the program.

In my first week I was assigned a mentor and introduced to all of the software / learning platforms.

The first month was centered around learning python, SQL, and completing a slew of DataCamp courses (You get a DataCamp membership with your Springboard course) that really prepare you for your big projects, the Capstone Projects.

You work with your mentor to choose your projects (The first one is intended for a simple but deep data set, a good example is the Capital Bikeshare dataset from the UCI Repository, feel free to checkout my github for an example Username: JonOrr . Meanwhile the second project requires a bit more data cleaning, think along the lines of a kaggle competition.) then you follow up through weekly calls that keep you on point.

Throughout the course you'll also learn how to better conduct your job search, interviews, and role targeting (Do you want to be a Data Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer, Data Scientist, Data Analyst, etc.). There is a job guarantee that gave me a lot of confidence while I was doing the course, it has a good amount of terms and conditions, but all of them are reasonable. They include but aren't limited to: Apply to 5 jobs a week, don't skip any interviews, etc. The career team works hard to make sure you get into a role that both fits your skill level, and your career goals. Let's say you want to be a Data Engineer and are quite suited to it, they won't push you to be a Data Analyst instead.

One month after the completion of my course I was offered a Data Scientist position with a competitive salary (going to keep the number confidential but it was strong) in one of the regions of my choice (You choose 2-3 regions at the start of the course, I chose: Boston & San Francisco) I could not be happier with my experience.

If you found my review helpful and decide to pursue a Springboard course please consider using the following referral link: https://www.springboard.com/invite/6HPPV

This was a great self paced boot camp. I highly recommend anyone serious about learning Data Science and getting help looking for a new job to take this boot camp. 

Pros

- Mentor was great. Really guided me and showed me how someone in the field thinks. Also put my name in at the start up that she works at and they hired me as a contractor!

-Lots of practice on the analytics side. I feel like I'm pretty knowledgeable now

-Mock interviews and career coaches, especially Allison, were great for preparing for interviews. 

Cons

-Was unemployed and finished in 4.5 months. I find it quite hard to believe someone can finish within 6 months with a full time job.

-Second half of course seemed disjointed and unfocused, though that could've been because of the track I chose. 

-They focus on us contacting random people on LinkedIn as a means of "growing our network", which in turn will allow us to get a job eventually. They don't really do much in terms of actually putting you in contact with people who are looking to hire or are open to meeting someone new to the field. 

I had a fantastic experience with Springboard. I took their Introduction to Data Science course in fall of 2017 and their Data Science Career Track course in 2018.  The course was a great alternative to a fully immersive bootcamp, since I wanted something that allowed me to quickly learn the skills required for a Data Scientist while still being able to work my full time job. The course does require a lot of self-discipline in time management since you're working through everything online and there is a lot of material to get through. I ended up spending an average 10-20 hours per week working through the course material so that I could finish in 6 months. The biggest asset for me was the weekly meetings with my mentor. He was a huge help in making sure I understood the tutorials and assignments and he helped keep me accountable and on track.

If you are willing to put in the work and don't mind learning online in an isolated environment instead of in a classroom, I highly recommend Springboard. It was a lot of work, but ultimately worth it because I ended up landing my first job in data. 

I'm very happy I took the Data Science career track, it landed me a job in 5 weeks, was very useful and very flexible.

PROS:
It's flexible, with all the contents online, so you can go at your own speed and take time off if needed.
The contents are complete and wide, well focused onto what the professional world looks for
There is a lot of support, from TAs, mentors, and career services. Always there when needed
The exercises are interesting, gaining good insight from real data

CONS:

If any, some lessons can be a bit tedious or feel that you already went over it before. But this was only like 3 times in 6 months.

The last 6 months has been quite the journey and I'm happy to have chosen Springboard to jet-start my data science career. The program covers a lot of ground and includes concepts such as Python programming, SQL databases, inferential statistics, building your resume/cover letter, networking with professionals, machine learning, etc. 

Pros:
- Everything is online so you can learn at your own pace.
- You are assigned a personal mentor who is a data science professional.
- You have access to extra daily mentor calls with one of the other data science mentors.
- The course will help you complete 2 major capstone projects that you will add to your data science portfolio.
- The curriculum is very thorough and presents you with an abundant amount of resources for learning.
- There are many mini-projects along the way that help you practice your learning.
- You can schedule calls with career coaches who will help you prepare for interviewing and beefing up your resume.

Cons:
- Since everything is online, there are no live instructors who give you feedback in-person.
- Getting feedback on your projects may sometimes take a while because the TAs are typically busy.
- Some of the material was confusing, which resulted in difficulty understanding some of the concepts.

Overall, I would give Springboard a rating of 4/5. I definitely recommend it to anybody interested in becoming a data scientist!