Pragmatic Institute

I was a fellow during the summer of 2015 in DC. The Data Incubator helped me become a much more competitive applicant for jobs in the data science industry. By completing a collection of projects, I became much more proficient in the tools a data scientist needs to know and had multiple points to show off during job interviews. I also got to network with and befriend many other bright fellows who have since moved on to great jobs. I myself was hired at my current job through the Incubator, so it's hard to argue with results. 

To those considering the incubator, you will definitely benefit from the experience, but be prepared to work ~12-14 hour days throughout most of the program. It's hard work, but it pays off.

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I attended The Data Incubator with a very talented and highly motivated group of recent and soon to be PhDs in engineering, physics, math, neuroscience, psychology, and linguistics. We spent our days working on challenging mini projects and evenings polishing the pitches for our capstone projects. In between we met employers at partner panels, happy hours, and pitch nights. I ended up taking a job from one of the hiring partners and am really glad that I was a fellow at TDI.

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The Data Incubator surrounded me with incredibly smart, motivated Fellows who all had similar goals and backgrounds. Being in that environment, and having the structure of the program and the demands of my project, were essential to my education.

A talented instructor is not supposed to implant information into your mind, but rather function as a tour guide in a difficult landscape of concepts of varying relevance. The Data Incubator team did an incredible job of emphasizing the most important and fundamental concepts that a data scientist needs to know in his career – I know, because all of these things were confirmed in my first week at my new job.

I can't imagine having tried to find a job without The Data Incubator faciliating all of the connections we made.

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I was in the Spring 2015 cohort in NYC. I was very happy with the program. In two months, I was able to learn a ton, and ultimately land a job I am very happy with at Capital One Labs.

The most valuable thing I got out of The Data Incubator was the ability to meet people from industry through the partner panels and happy hours. For me this served two purposes. First, it was an extremely efficient way to do a lot of networking in a short amount of time, which greatly increases the chance of finding a job. It is much easier to initiate a dialogue with a hiring partner if you have already met someone from the company in person.

Second, I learned a lot about the landscape of the industry, which helped me figure out what I was looking for in a job. Over the course of the program, I was introduced to companies that weren’t on my radar and found myself very interested in them. Once you are in The Data Incubator program, there are too many partner companies on the list to be able to seriously pursue them all. You have to know what you are looking for in order to focus your efforts, and I definitely gained that focus over the course of the program.

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I was a tenure-track scientist when I decided to move to a job as a data scientist in industry after I got frustrated with funding issues in academia.  I was very happy with the Data Incubator course which met all my expectations an more. I was introduced to many concepts that I had just touched on in some online courses I had taken prior to the course. By having weekly mini projects, I was forced to understand the material more. Whilst there were lectures to accompany the mini-projects, in order to complete them I was forced to do some research on my own which was a valuable thing. We weren’t just fed the answers. 

On top of this, as an online Fellow, I appreciated being split into small groups. In my case, this worked really well and I would encourage others in the same situation to use this to their advantage and hold regular meetings.

The course provides practical interview prep and works with a large number of companies which makes finding a job after the course that much easier.  Often, as in the car of the company I ended up at, companies hire from the Data Incubator after hiring fellows from previous cohorts.  This shows that the Data Incubator graduates are held in high esteem by the hiring companies which shows the strength of the course.  I have no hesitation in recommending the Data Incubator to any aspiring data scientists.

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I applied to several data science programs.  This one had by-far the most rigorous admissions standards.  While it was a lot of working, after joining, I realized that it was well worth it because everyone you meet in the program is a genius.  And I'm not exaggerating.  I was sitting next to a guy who did his PhD research with a Nobel Laureate!

Being surrounded by the most inspiring, passionate, intelligent, and dedicated students meant I learned so much from my peers.  And that's on top of the industry-leading staff that taught the courses.  Their network is also really strong, especially in the Bay Area and NYC so I now have a built in network of data scientists.  I know that some employers don't even consider applicants who are not graduates from this program (I know we certainly don't)!

I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for a job in industry as a data scientist or data analyst.

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The data scientists at The Data Incubator taught us so much about data science -- from mathematics and statistics to machine-learning, natural language processing, mapreduce, and spark.  I really learned many useful things that I would not have learned on my own.

We got to run real mapreduce and spark jobs on 100-node clusters on AWS.  It was very impressive to employers.  This is the kind of experience you never get to have if you are just learning on your own.  I also met make great friends who are great professional network for me now.

You can learn more about them at their fellowship page.  And of course, I got a great job working at a top bank.  I love this program!

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I love this program.  I had to apply twice but was finally admitted.  The program was very tough to get into and it was really a very intense course -- you have to work very hard even when you get in.  But I learned a lot.

Most important, they had great relationships with employers.  As a foreign student, it can be hard to get a job in the US.  The team at The Data Incubator connected me to many opportunities and helped me get a job.  I am very grateful!

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As someone who's attended The Data Incubator bootcamp, I feel compelled to share my underwhelming experience in hopes of assisting others in making a more informed decision about this program.



To begin with, the cost structure of the program is disconcerting. Paying an upfront fee of $10,000 is hefty but manageable. However, the additional financial burden that comes into play once you secure a contract is astonishing. You end up paying back $16,000, which is a substantial amount, especially given the minimal value provided by the bootcamp.



The communication throughout the program was a significant letdown. The lines of communication were seldom open, and when they were, the responses were delayed and unhelpful. For a program that prides itself on being an incubator, this lack of guidance and responsiveness is shocking.



In terms of industry connections, The Data Incubator seems to have limited ties with a narrow range of companies. This minimizes opportunities for networking and job placement, severely undermining one of the main reasons to join such a bootcamp in the first place.



The course structure was another disappointment. The teaching was limited to a maximum of 2 hours a day, with a heavy emphasis on independent project work. While self-directed learning can be an effective method, the lack of guidance on project selection left me feeling directionless and unsupported. The expectation seems to be for students to navigate this complex field independently, which begs the question: why pay such exorbitant fees for such limited support?



In conclusion, my experience at The Data Incubator bootcamp was far from what I anticipated. The high costs, coupled with the lack of communication, guidance, and industry connections, have left me questioning the value of this program. If you're considering enrolling in this bootcamp, I urge you to carefully consider these factors. You might find, as I did, that you can achieve the same learning outcomes on your own, without the hefty price tag. Read less

Better off just learning on your own. The program is essentially self-taught.
Not worth the money.
Any time you need to get in touch with HR or Partnerships, they will be conveniently out of office. 
So you lose time having to constantly ping them, when you could just be learning. Read less

Not worth the money at all. 
This program takes students, who were already capable of learning this information on their own.

1) The screening requirements are MUCH LOWER than the skills you actually need to succeed in the course.

2) The lectures and Jupyter notebooks don't help you learn the material at all.
But if you actually need help with the work, they will take your money and then say "sorry can't help."
I had to literally hire a tutor outside of the program in order to help me to salvage anything from this course.

3) If you don't keep up, they will block you from hiring partners, as well. Read less

This program is a SCAM. 

If you ARE already a capable student, then you don't need this program at all.
If you AREN'T, then they won't actually teach you how to be a data scientist. 

1) The lectures are unhelpful.
2) If you are really stuck, then you just get useless hints.
3) The resume writing help takes more time to use, than just writing the resume yourself.

They will farm your cohort for cash, then move on to the next. Read less

Completing miniprojects on diverse and up-to-date topics really helped me to be confident about how to apply my technical skills on solving problems in practical situations. The hands-on experience from end to end, especially the relevance of the techniques to that in industry, is going to be a long term benefit for me and certainly for any previous and current fellow. 

The opportunity to have conversation and build relationship with different companies. This is not only for landing a job but more for a healthy business relationship in a long term. Getting the benefit from the bridge built up by The Data Incubator between fellows and partners is one thing. Another important goal of networking is for future communication and collaborations. Here comes our Fellows. I kept in touch with some of the fellows after we finish the program and we keep each other posted. It is invaluable having fellows experience the transition from academia to industry together including sharing thoughts and helping each other.

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Hi, 

I was a PhD student in physics who decided to switch to data science. I applied to both Inisght and the Data Incubator. The experience of the two bootcamps is very different. At Insight, they come across as very kind and helpful. Genuinly trying to get you some experience. While at Data Incubator, they are non-responsive and money oriented. You have to do a huge amount of work to get in, before even getting a single email from a coordinator. When you are selected as a semi-finalist, there is not much information about the next step, but they basically want you to have a full project ready to propose and talk about. After you have done all this work, more than onsite-interviews to data scientist at Google, you might end up with the "great news" that you have been selected as a scolar, where you have to pay $16,000 for the session. This is more than 2 semesters at a prestigious college. To me it seems like a scam, but that is just my oppinion. You will to better of taking online courses and traveling to Bahamas for this money!

Good luck on your transition! 

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All good review you can find about them on the web are very similar in style and were written by the same person or a handful of people. The curriculum is mediocre, to put it mildly. The promises of financial aid are lies. Once you complete all their assignments they will ask you to pay at least $18,000. And finally, to get the assignments done you have to possess enough knowledge that will certainly get you a job as a data scientist. Sheer waste of time and money.

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I went through the complete application process which involved several coding challenges, project proposal, and interviews, and thankfully, got in the program. Although their whole admission process has plenty of room for improvements (e.g. solution submission is a bit cumbersome, no contact person nor phone # for assistance), it takes about six to eight weeks, and a fair amount of work from the applicant; yet in hindsight, I think the whole process was instructive and helped sharpen both my programming, data analysis, and presentation skills. If you're phd academic refugee looking for a switch into data science industry, the data incubator is certainly worth a try. Good luck!

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Here's a warning: They don't seem interested in training people from scratch, despite what they claim. They appear only interested in training people who already have a pretty good knowledge base and could possibly already get a good job in the field, based on the application process. And their application process is amateurishly executed at best. The program itself might be just fine (it seems to be well regarded by those who do get in), but they seem like they're probably just trying to get a financial piece of the pie for demand for these positions and working off desperation for recent PhDs trying to get a job in a marketplace that is extremely hostile to on-the-job training.

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