Galvanize

The Galvanize’s admission counseling has been super helpful to me. I was trying to apply for MS Perfume Sciences in France , since it’s a niche course I was finding it a little difficult. But I trusted Galvanize with their process and they helped me at every step, from preparing my application documents till visa process , when and where required. I would like to thank Galvanize for their services, particularly Manasa Kavuluri for being available all the time.

Some points on why to choose Galvanize-

They help in preparing LOR , Resume , SOP and all the necessary documents based upon inputs from us.

They have a separate portal for accessing recorded classes, assessments and Academic counselling documents , the portal is user friendly and easy to navigate.

They help us choose the best fit for us and provide help for visa application, loan and scholarship if applicable.

Background:
I attended the Data science immersive in Austin from December of 2019 to March 2020. I have a psychology degree from a foreign university, which i graduated from relatively recently, and had a large amount of trouble finding work after university. I interviewed for several data analyst positions, but had hit a wall in terms of knowledge base. I found Galvanize after getting a good recommendation from a hack reactor alumnus and friend. 

Experience:
 I really enjoyed the experience, from start to finish. in terms of rigor, it was quite intense. Most days, starting at 8:30 and ending around 5:30, we would cover two different lecture topics, and follow these with a series of questions and challenges meant to reinforce the lessons from the lecture. We also had more long form projects in the form of capstones, which taught me a lot about making professional level projects that i to this day use on my resume. These topics covered every subject I needed to know in order to get employed.  More to that point, there was a comprehensive career services assistance program that was very helpful with securing my first job after the program, and i was even able to get hired during the peak of the pandemic. 

Community: 
the best part of studying at Galvanize is the huge alumni community. Using the connections i made at Galvanize has lead to landing several opportunities that i wouldn't have managed to achieve without them. It was partially through the connections i made while at Galvanize that led to my first job. 

Overall:
I highly recommend it for anyone with a background in statistics, math, or computer science. it was a transformative educational experience, helped me build confidence i needed to succeed professionally both in myself and my skills, and introduced me to a number of both personal and business relationships. 
 

The Data Analyst Training Accelerator has been the most impactful education I've received in my adult life. Transitioning from a career in finance, it was difficult to land a role in data without working experience. What this program will give you is so much more than a slide deck.

From Day One, you are a Data Analyst. Per the curriculum, you can expect intensive, hands-on coding learned in an open forum format. There is no such thing as a silly question. After all, you have to be curious to be an effective analyst. There is both group and solo work, capstone projects, peer review, supplemental resources & materials (for extracurricular study) Lunch & Learns with industry experts, and professional development administered by a team of instructors who want to invest in the students and see you grow! The team is incredibly patient and skilled. Trust them, because they know their stuff!

The curriculum will give you experience with tools like SQL, Python, Excel, Tableau, and Statistics. While this is a lot to take in during the 18-weeks, the team goes above and beyond to make sure you aren't falling behind with office hours, review sessions, and e-learning opportunities. 

Besides learning code, there are plenty of opportunities for personal and professional growth. From the onset, you'll be developing a growth mindset, and tackling issues like imposter syndrome head-on. An effective analyst must trust in their own ability in order for key business stakeholders to trust in their insights, and you will certainly develop this confidence in your own abilities. Lunch & Learn sessions are a great way to get a snapshot of where your career trajectory can take you. All throughout the program, you will become the ideal job candidate through career development services. The team at Galvanize will help you with your resume, cover letter, LinkedIn, networking, interview prep, and salary negotiation. Note that this support does not end at graduation; the team helps you get your foot in the door, but YOU will have the confidence and technical ability to step through that door. 

I am so grateful to have been a part of this program. As part of the second cohort, all learnings were done digitally during the pandemic, but it was managed flawlessly. The learnings this program instilled within me helped me land my first data role as a Data Strategy Analyst, and I hope this review can help be the deciding factor that pushes you to apply to DATA. Whether you're fresh out of college or looking to transition careers, the DATA program at Galvanize is the positive change you've been looking for.

Having just learned python, specifically to get into this program, I was excited yet apprehensive about starting this course.  Now looking back, taking this course was an incredibly worthwhile and valuable experience.  Sure you can find similar content online and learn by yourself.  However, the real value I found in Galvanize was the structure, live-setting, accountability, instructors, classmates, career services, and networking opportunities.  I found my current position through the galvanize network.  Kristen, the Austin program manager, was incredibly supportive and encouraging.  Thanks to her hard work the program rolled out and wrapped up without a hitch allowing the students to focus on learning.  The instructors, Juliana and Dan, were very knowledgeable, patient, and extremely hard working.  Laura, the career services manager, is very good at what she does.  Galvanize is lucky to have her.  The DSI is not easy.  The drain of long hours, seemingly impossible projects, and many moments of confusion can be overcome with the support of your classmates and staff.  The course wouldn't be great if you didn't have to work hard for it. Overall, a great experience.     

Taking this immersive was one of the bet choices I’ve made during my academic career! I’ve learned so much about Data Science and not just theory like most University courses would be, but application too. I would 100% recommend this course to anyone trying to get into the Data Science field or people just interested in how to apply Data Science to what they already do. 

The instructional staff is extremely helpful and educated on the topics. They will assist you in any area that you feel that you fall short on. And where if they can’t explain it in the way you may understand, the DSR’s are there to pick up where they left off. 

The career advisor is very knowledgeable about the process; I highly recommend anyone taking the course who will be looking for work afterwards to take what they say and the skills they teach seriously. Almost every interview I had following graduating the course, a scenario that was covered occurred (whether it was about your elevator pitch, salary negotiations, etc.) and I used the techniques taught and they worked exactly how described! Helped me get a sign on bonus for the employment I ended up accepting!

Overall, this course was well worth the time and resources put into it!

I'm a recent SF graduate w a background in consulting. I'm really impressed and in love with everything about the DSI! 
Organization and Structure: the organization of this program is insane. Every minute of every hour is designed with purpose. It's very structured and right from the beginning, you'll get a Google calendar detailing the agenda for every day of the program, and rarely do we ever deviate from the plan or even our punctuality. This structure and transparency really helped me as a student to know what to expect. 
Teaching Model: At the same time, I strongly support the daily model of learning they promote --which is  non-grade based. You have 2 lectures a day and 2 assignments a day (one solo and one with a partner), but neither are ever turned in or graded. Some may critique that that then takes away the external pressure to complete the assignment, and to some degree, that's true, but I benefitted strongly from it in being much more concerned about understanding the concepts and improving myself, than just working towards a grade or idea of "completion". 
Quality of Instruction: Another huge positive was the quality of the instructors and the student to teacher ratio/staff to student ratio. Depending on which city you complete the DSI in, you may have a diff number of applicants/cohortmates. But the ratio of students to instructors are the same. For our cohort of 18 people, we had 2 instructors and 2 DSRs (like TA's). As for quality...you know in college when you sometimes get professors who are clearly geniuses, but unfortunately really can't teach? Yeah, that didn't happen here. Concepts, problems, and solutions are explained thoroughly, and we were always encouraged to ask questions. The depth of knowledge our instructors had within them became very quickly apparent. Out of curiosity, I did some good old fashioned LinkedIn stalking and also found out they all have impressive work experience and credible backgrounds. You'd never know otherwise given they are so humble and never toot their own horn. 
How Students Get Help: I was initially really concerned about quality of instruction and help given the pandemic, we had to move everything online, but I was impressed by how adaptive the staff were in transitioning to an online format and develop an efficient way to offer help for each individual student when needed. Each day of the program, we typically have a solo assignment and a pair programming assignment. During pair programming, we shared our screen, one of us driving and one of us navigating. When we needed help, we messaged a helpdesk bot on slack, and usually within a few seconds to 2 min, a DSR or instructor would pop into our breakout room to assist. It was all a lot easier than I would have imagined it to be to get help. At the end of the assignments, we were given access to the solutions, which we’d typically go over on your own at the end of the day.
Curriculum: I think Galvanize does a really good job of pulling the curriculum together, from its free basic prep offering, to its premium prep offering, to its actual course. The course is extremely comprehensive and up to date with the current Data Science and Machine Learning industries, ranging from coding, to stats, to ML techniques, building models, and a little beyond. The last topics we learned even covered advanced topics that the industry as a whole is still just dipping into. When I showed what I was learning to other data scientists and machine learning professionals, they were impressed w the amount of topics covered. Built into the curriculum, too, is your own dedicated career coach who will break down the steps to building your resume, cover letter, income negotiating, interviewing, networking, tailored to fit the Data Scientist job entry experience. You have access to the same career coach up to 6 months (and access to the Galvanize workspace in your city) after you graduate, too.
Cost: Yea...it’s expensive. You have several options for payment. Here were the options I had:

1. scholarship: You should apply for the scholarships they offer every cohort. During my time, they offered one full ride scholarship. Now I see they might be offering more? The process is: you fill out an application w an essay portion, pass the technical interview, and submit a video by a certain deadline. Ask staff for more info.
2. early bird discount: during my cohort, they offered a 10% early bird discount off tuition if you completed passed the technical interview early. Not sure if it’s still ongoing, but again, check with staff.
3. payment plans: I give Galvanize a lot of credit for being flexible. You can pay everything upfront, OR pay half first and then the other half when you’re halfway through the program, OR enroll in an Income Share Agreement where you either pay a percent of your income every month for x number of months and a CAP after you get a job, OR you can set up a sort of hybrid pay upfront/ISA hybrid payment plan, OR you go through some lending partners they have who will have a set interest amount. 

Process:

1. complete prep work
2. pass the technical interview (TI) 
3. complete the precourse work
4. start the program. 

I would personally recommend taking the premium prep course ($495) which is deducted from the tuition of the program prior to taking the TI. 
Difficulty: Was it hard...yea. I came from a non-coding background and even before the program started, I had to put in serious work to meet a baseline for what you are expected to know before the program even starts. DON’T think of this as a “in-3-simple-months-I-can-totally-change-my-career get-rich-quick” scheme. You’re going to learn an incredible amount in the 3 months, yes, and I for example went from not even knowing what a terminal was, to building my own object detection machine learning model. And I am confident now in my grasp of concepts and in applying for jobs. BUT I had to really put in time to prep and learn the basics of python, git, pandas, basic stats, on my own, even before the program started. Not to mention, the full time program is on a M-F 8:30am-5:30pm schedule, but my cohortmates and I often found ourselves staying up until at least 10pm-1am working and reviewing. For me, the experience was really hard, not so much because of the complexity of the concepts, but because 1) the speed at which the material comes at you. 2) the number of topics you need to not only know, but be/become fluent in. 3) I came from a non-coding background, so while I was learning new concepts, I had to also translate them into code. I remember, for example, that the first week was supposed to be “review” on topics we did in the precourse material, but I was completely exhausted by end of week 1 and I realized I didn’t know as much as I thought! This is all to say...yea, it’s hard, but preparation, persistence, and practice will get you through!
Critiques:There are some points I do wish we had more guided help from instructors. Galvanize does push us to be as independent as possible, given the necessity of independent problem solving and troubleshooting as Data Scientist. However I think the bootcamp experience and learning would benefit from a recorded demo of the case studies we completed every Friday. That way, after we attempt it ourselves, we can watch how an experienced Data Scientist would think through such an assignment.
Overall: I’m such a big fan, because I came in as a skeptic but saw the quality of the instructors, comprehensiveness of the curriculum, got to do my own projects which I felt really excited about, and I came out of it feeling confident I can get my first job in this new industry. Along the way, Galvanize has truly demonstrated their support of my learning, and me as a student. They’ve been receptive to criticism (they beg for it, really…) and they do actually try to implement suggestions from students the best they can. Their ISA shows investment in me as an individual, and they are truly focused on churning out capable, quality Data Scientists.
Opinion:If you have the flexibility, see if the winter time cohort is right for you. I like the winter cohort schedule because the holidays allows for more breaks that wouldn’t typically be in the other cohort timeframes. This gave me more time to self-study, review, digest what we learned and prep for projects!

Completing the Galvanize Data Science Immersive has been one of the most fulfilling and enriching experiences of my life. I really appreciated the quality of materials even electing the free Basic Prep, the guidance throughout the enrollment process, and the support of the staff/instructors as I did the program. In addition to the awesome proprietary materials and live instruction, I was amazed at the focus on career services (resume review, LinkedIn usage, mock interviews) from the very beginning (lest we forget, most of us are looking to get a data science job post-graduation). Not to mention the genuine care and advice I received after graduating as I navigate the job market. Definitely feels like I joined a community rather than just receiving a certificate and out the door. Would 10/10 recommend checking out Galvanize if you're even considering a career pivot into data science.

The course was a challenging but a rewarding experience. I barely knew python the year prior to starting the course, however using their prep material I was able to get to a level that prepared me for the course. The course does not waste time teaching python, it is taught in python so the better prepared you are the more material you will be able to follow. However the amount of coding you will be doing will definitely improve your python and problem solving skills. The course is very hands on, every lecture is followed by practical application and there are plenty of case study’s and capstones for applying all the different things you are learning. Regardless of the pace of the course the professors are always willing to field questions and in my experience there was sufficient instructors ready to answer questions and troubleshoot any barriers you might come across that prevent you from moving forward in the practical application. 

First of all, I was impressed by preparatory step prior the course. For the long time I was looking for such a constructive and structured python tutorial with lot's of practice. It helped to become toned and prepared for the bootcamp. The week 0 and 13 following weeks have been very intense in knowledge and experience. Curriculum was well constructed, team followed the plan  minute-by-minute. Emotional aspect was treated well. We had time for retrospective thoughts and could share them. To my opinion this part is as important as the rest, as it helped to be 100% focused on materials during the bootcamp. All the interpersonal aspects were carefully managed. Curriculum and team was very professional, covering practical and fundamental concepts of data science topics. Lot's materials and references were given for future progress. As I had a PhD in physics prior to course, it was important for me to go deep enough in maths and statistics, and my curiosity was satisfied. Also I was looking for pretty profound practical outcome. That was as well satisfied and I ended up with cool projects allowing me to discuss them during the following interviewing process. My programming skills improved a lot during the precourse and the bootcamp. And on the top of that, professional team of job search coaches helped with the job search and all of my frustrations and fears. I didn't work for a long time after my PhD graduation and I am happy to be on board now. This is what I wanted and I got it. Thanks to Galvanize team.

I had an incredible experience taking the Galvanize Data Science Immersive program (remote campus).  For reference, I came to the program with a strong technical background, but with very little programming experience.  
What sets Galvanize apart is the rigorous instruction and career support.  
My two instructors had a wealth of industry experience, so they were able to make real-world connections for each topic.  The daily assignments (more like mini projects), weekly case-studies, and capstone projects were extremely rigorous, in that they were relatively open-ended and required students to develop intuition and problem solving skills while applying new concepts.  Throughout these tasks, I had the opportunity to pair program, work in small groups, and work independently, all of which were beneficial to my personal and academic growth.
In addition to receiving excellent instruction, we also had weekly lectures from a career coach, who continues to work with us after the program is over.  My coach set us up for success by focusing on actionable skills such as resume/linkedin building, job search strategies, and mock interviews.  When the program ended, I was able to hit the ground running in my job search, with confidence.
The program itself is a lot of work; it is impossible to learn everything the first time, so it requires a high level of grit and determination. However, I would recommend it to anyone who is willing to take on a challenge and is interested in diving into the world of data science! Galvanize truly has an amazing program.  

I'll start with the good. 

The lead instructor has a great mindset when it comes to focusing on the students and how they learn and grow individually. I dropped the program early since the second half just felt like a prison and all the work is self guided anyway, but career services seemed pretty good from the bit that I went through. Good advice on setting up LinkedIn and resume building, but maybe don't expect much more than that. Most of my gripes are from the curriculum and environment.

The curriculum and environment... 

The curriculum is almost completely taught by videos and self-guided time. You will be in class for 60 hours a week (so that they retatin accreditation), if you're five minutes late at any point in the day, expect a third of an absence, three absences you will be removed from the program. You will be pulled out of class or asked to change locations several times a day, often right as your just making progress/settling in. The building presents a hip, techy workplace at first glance, but the more time you spend there it quickly turns into the lifeless building it is.

The amount of effort that goes into presenting that environment would be better used actually building it. Every office around the building has giant glass walls that you can expect to feel like a zoo exhibit. They put on regular workshops in the middle of the space so they can make sure you see them being techy, or entrepreneurial, or whatever their angle is. It's an exhibit more than an incubator or school.

Overall it's a very disruptive environment. Also, not sure if this one is me being jaded by prior experience, but only expect to really walk into a job using the exact tools they teach the curriculum on. Instructors will not be able to provide advice unless you adhere exactly to what they have used and is part of the curriculum. Engineering is honestly a misnomer for what they selling here.

Data structures are very loosely touched on and never in the course is the application of engineering principles really taught. Expect to be handed a project with some test cases and told to go have fun. Assignments and tests are done by bullet points or following a list of instructions. It doesn't inspire free thought, or how to solve a problem using engineering.

The first six weeks of the course is definitely where the majority of the course lies. It does a good job of familiarizing you with javascript, but the second half where you're learning how to build actual applications. You're handed a business document and a rendering of a website and told to go make it. It's easy to make something show on the screen through code, but the means in which you accomplish this is where the term engineer comes from, and this is what is not touched on a single time through the course. 

 

My advice coming out of this.. if you need the in classroom setting, do the part time course. You're interaction is probably the same even if you're there full time. But at least you have you're own schedule and can have a less distracting environment. The price tag is high. If like online learning, do online, maybe look at some of the paid courses available elsewhere. You will get a lot more material for your dollar.

So the real question. What are you paying for at Galvanize?

The space (not great), the curriculum (has value early on, but definitely not 20k), the instructors (hardly any instruction or mentorship), career services (resume, linkedin, cover letter, interview advice, pay negotiations, overall valuable stuff, but again not 20k), oh, and the name Galvanize/Hack Reactor, which does carry value. So long as they don't tarnish it.

I personally found the Galvanize Data Science Immersive program to be a very rewarding experience. My prior background was in biotech, and after studying and working in that space for a bit, I felt I wanted to make a change. I found the program to be very interesting, filled with engaging instructors who were very knowledgeable about the material. The curriculum covered a great breadth of data science topics, but we still went into the depth of the math behind algorithms which I felt gave us good grounding on the justification of what we were learning. I also enjoyed the collaborative atmosphere of the daily assignments and group projects. Most importantly though, I really appreciated the career services they offered throughout the program, up to the final weeks, and even past graduation. I felt they really prepared me for navigating the job search and connecting with people. I'm glad I did the program.

SwitchUp initially matched me up with Galvanize when I was researching bootcamps. I did online programs previously and visited a few bootcamps (attended sample courses when available). I immediately knew that Galvanize was the best match for my learning style. I find that the curricula of most data science prep places cover the same topics - Galvanize's curriculum was a great mix and match between rock solid theoretical foundations and hands-on implementation experience. Accordingly, the bootcamp was intense, required great math and technical foundations - 10 hours days plus a lot of extra reading coding (plus material you don't even get to cover and can dive into later). Now a data scientist, I still use the course materials as reference. Where Galvanize truly shined was after the bootcamp was over. If you are switching careers, you have to slug through many interviews - career services was there for me with unbelievable one-on-one support every step of the way. If you paid a career coach, you'd have paid easily the bootcamp's price in hourly rates for all the help and support I've received. Pros: outstanding curriculum and instruction, small class size, extraordinary career support. Cons: their motto covers it all: "This is not school." They will give you all the tools to succeed but they will not force you to use them. It's up to you how hard and how fast you push yourself to achieve your goals of becoming a data scientist.

1-year after completing Galvanize Data Science Immersive and I couldn't be more pleased with the results. At 34 and already in a decent career field I wanted to make a change. I could have gone back to school or done a different boot camp- but the Galvanize program, structure, and community drew my attention. 

 

You can't argue with results. My cohort was small, only 7 people.  6 finished and all were employed full-time within 3 months. My personal experience was filled with a lot of apprehension and concern around  "is this going to be enough?". 

 

It was. That simple. 

 

Let's be clear - they are not going to apply to jobs for you. They are not going to do the course work for you. If you fall behind it is up to you to ask for more attention. 

 

However, I found the instructors to be knowledgeable and willing to dedicate time for those who wanted more attention - but also not hold the group back. Career services offered advice and gave you time when you asked for it. The atmosphere was positive and there were lots of ways to network/connect and hustle to find work.

 

I personally received two six-figure offers within 3 months, and there were a lot of possibles in the pipeline when I did end up accepting a position.  Of course your results may vary - but if you are interested in upping your data analytics game, being a master with python (a very useful language), and opening up career fields you didn't think would be possible - I found Galvanize a great place to do it and think it was exactly the right choice. I couldn’t be more pleased with the results at the present, and the future looks great!

 

Why 4 stars? Because there is always room for improvement and that missing star is YOU. You will make it 5 stars if you want it. 

 

Some additional thoughts I have: 

 

- Do at least an intro to Python course and have some exposure to Pandas - this will help you keep up. It also wouldn't hurt to do a simple Intro to Computer Science class where you really break down loops and objects in coding. Not 100% needed but will help you keep up. SQL practice also will be helpful. You don't need to be a master of any of this by all means - you know more than you realize!

 

- Do full immersive. I completely understand how big of a leap of faith it is to take 4+ months away from work and go without income during that time. I really believe the intensive is the way to go rather than doing it part-time. The crunched curriculum  is like a shot in the arm and you will learn/retain more and find more practical uses when you jump in with both feet.

 

Two years ago I knew that I wanted to make a substantial change to my life for myself and my family - Galvanize didn’t really help me do that though. I have been an Engineer now professionally for 2+ years and after taking some time to reflect on my journey I thought it would be best to leave a review.

 

I can honestly say that the crucial information I learned over the last two years mostly came from Udemy.com and practice. Galvanize was good for the sense that I had to dedicate myself to coding every single day for six months. There were many times though that my Cohort would be lost and asking for help with non to be found.

 

Galvanize even managed to use us as guinea pigs in our third quarter by letting us be the first to experience a completely lacking React curriculum. We had instructors on vacation and with no help to clarify things the class resorted to purchasing Stephen Grider’s “Modern React and Redux” course to complete together.

 

The overall experience was completely lacking. Some of my fellow graduates resorted to leaving it all behind and going back to old jobs. Some of them looked for work for about 2 years until finding something - they drove Lyft and Uber to get by. I resorted too Freelancing and trying to make websites and anything else I could to get people to pay me.

 

I ended up getting a job two years later with some help of Udemy.com and being in the right place at the right time.

 

When people ask me about attending Galvanize, I always give the same answer. If you have 20k to waste then go for it. If not invest time in to 3 - 4 Udemy Courses and you’ll achieve better results!

 

Please also note - The program has progressively gotten worse. I’ve kept in touch with many Alumni who were in attendance and the general consensus is that it was a complete waste and helped them go nowhere. I’ve seen the Phoenix campus churn through instructors and let go of critical staff all while shortening the program length, introducing more “Self-taught” curriculum, and leaving students to fend for themselves.

 

I have removed my time at Galvanize from my resume and don’t disclose it when talking with engineers because Galvanize didn’t get me to where I am. I did.

 

Please, If you are reading this - Spend your money more wisely. Udemy courses and some local tech groups will get you further, faster, then this utter disappointment of a program ever could.

I would highly recommend Galvanize's Data Science Immersive. It is tough, much tougher than I anticipated but that's what gets you a job afterwards. My best advice going into the program is practice practice practice, specifically python. This will help you go farther in the class. My background was an analyst and I put in about 12 hours a day M-F. By the weekend you are exhausted. Additionally, take the career services team's advice. They know what they are talking about, and are in a different league than any college counselor I ever worked with. I did everything the said to a T, and had a data science job lined up prior to graduation with two offers in total.

For me, Galvanize was life changing. It provided me the ability to create an entirely new career track in just a few short months. What you know by the end that  you didn't know in the beginning of the class is seriously impressive. I would recommend Galvanize to anyone as long as they are/can be a hard worker. Being surrounded by such a driven group of people is also a fun experience that you don't get at the typical job and helps push you farther.

The Data Science Immersive program at Galvanize has been absolutely amazing. Even though I had a technical background coming into the program, there was still so much to learn that it was still challenging, but by working with the instructors and other students I was able to overcome every block I hit. 

It's a lot of knowledge thrown at you every day, but the morning and afternoon sprints (especially the pair programming) really helped drive home what we were learning. Not only that, but having to actually apply the techniques we learned to different case studies and eventually our capstone projects was great and gave me a lot to add to my portfolio. 

I'm still in the process of searching for a job, but James has been essential throughout the process (even after we graduate), by helping us with our resume and interview skills, and connecting us to companies looking to hire.

10/10 would definitely recommend the Data Science Immersive at Galvanize.