Data Science Career Track Reviews

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. 

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. 

I just completed the SpringBoard Data Science Career Track program.  

The purpose of the program is to give you the research skills to work in the Data Science world.  It helps you prepare for the job search and the basic skills to be successful in the position.  

PROs
1:1 weekly mentor call.  
Office hours.
Career prep (university courses are theoretical, not real world focusing on the job.)

CONs
Time consuming (another part of your life will be sacrificed for awhile).
Should give more attention on business side.  Data Science is great but needs to keep the company's mission as the most important thing.  

Conclusion:
Do it!

Overall, I had a very nice experience with SpringBoard. The most useful resources to me are my career coach and mentor. 

My career coach is extremely supportive, and helped me throughout my interview process, and always gave me very prompt replies. Big thanks!

My (2nd) mentor is very patient, knowledgable and supportive. Always thinking from my perspective, and sharing all he knows about a problem. 

SpringBoard is also very supportive when I had to switch mentor two months into my program. I think it is worth the effort to find someone that is suitable for your background and situation. Don't settle down with someone you don't feel comfortable.

SpringBoard administation and student advisor team are also very responsive everytime I need help. 

One thing that may require improvement is the course material, which appears to be a big collection of online videos and articles. So after going through, I would not treat it as a structured course like from school, but rather a big libary with most things about data science up to now. The good thing is that I provides me a complete picture of what are the things available and need to know. But some people may feel overwhelmed if they try to completely read everything, and lose focus. My advice is that feel free to skip and bookmark some of them (most of them are free online materials that you can always access), but just be aware that they exist and come back when you really need them. 

I have an environmental engineering background and spent 6 months on the data science career track via springboard hoping to step into the data science career. It's definitely challenging and intense when you have a full time job at the same time. If you do not have the time, energy or persistence, I suggest you get yourself both mentally and physically prepared, if you have a full time job. The course program is good overall, not perfect. But the same goes for all other data science boot camps, as they are a relatively new field and still growing. The mentorship offered by springboard is definitely a highlight of the program and I had a great experience with my mentor. I got a couple of data scientist offers right before I finished the program and the outcome is extremely rewarding. If you are fully prepared, dedicated, and eager to learn and constantly challenging yourself (the learning does not stop through out your career), then I highly recommend this program to you. And best luck!

Springboard helped me ultimately transition from a career in academia to one where I applied my knowledge of research and the scientific method to industry problems in data science. My weekly mentor calls helped me contextualize my online training (which I could do completely on my own, about 10-12 hours each week on my own time) and also helped me understand how best to market my projects to appeal when I applied for jobs. While some can afford to quit their jobs and attend trainings like this full-time, Springboard allowed me to continue to support myself while gaining the training I needed to re-tailor my resume for a data science career.

SpringBoard is an ideal bootcamp for many reasons. There are flexible payment options, the course is entirely online, and there is tons of support from the large community and network of mentors. The curriculum uses many different resources to keep things fresh, exposes you to many different data science methodologies, and has two capstone project. The capstone projects were my favorite part of the bootcamp, as they were where I was able to learn best, bringing everything I had learned together for a problem that I got to choose. Overall a wonderful learning experience.

This program has many great resources to help you advance your skills as well as a curriculum that keeps you focused and scheduled in completing your work. There is a community of people looking to help you including career coaches, weekly mentor calls, which I used to discuss the projects I was working on as well as specific questions about coding. And an online forum of students asking questions pertaining to the same types of projects you are working on. The main focus of the course is completing two main capstone projects which are geared towards building your portfolio and are exemplary of work one may do in a data science career. While there are many smaller mini projects included in the course that are also good practice to improving python and sql skills, there could be created content designed for learning the code and applications needed in these types of assignments. A significant portion of the curriculum was just courses on DataCamp and video lectures, while informative, are not particularly useful in grasping the concepts needed. For an expensive course, I was expecting more specialized resources focused on learning the skills needed, rather than just projects that force you to know the material and go out and use it, which is difficult at first and slowed my progress throughout the beginning of the course. I viewed this as being both a good and bad thing, because although I began working on these projects without all the necessary knowledge and skills, it forced me to pick them up as I went along.

Pros:
- dedicated mentor
- can schedule calls with random mentors for problems your having with very open times to choose (super helpful)
- access to datacamp and linkedinlearning (my favorite platform to learn data is from datacamp personally)
- Excellent administrative team
- Excellent career support team with advice well in line with reality, always super friendly
- Show you how to network properly
- Annual springboard rise event
- Involved student community

Cons: 
- too much use of videos and not enough use of reading for many of the subjects. Many of the topics could have been better explained from a book or article than watching many of the webinars from Harvard or pycon in my opinion. Those videos were often very lengthy and hard to follow along with and I found myself skimming through them. They didnt have decent background information before the these videos that would delve into complex subjects sometimes. This is my biggest complaint to be honest. 
- Some of the assignments needed better instructions such as the databricks miniproject. I know trying to figure something out yourself is the best way to learn but when you dont have the 
preknowledge on something so new to you it could be frustrating

Summary:
Springboard was exactly what I needed as someone coming from a background in business and who had next to zero technical skills such as coding. I landed a role as a  contingent worker  at Facebook as a business data analyst. Without a masters degree or more extensive work experience in tech working with data, i still havent been well suited for a data scientist position, so I'm supplementing this with starting a masters degree program in data scientist, but I believe if you already have a masters in any field and or have remotely relevant experience working with data, a masters degree wont be needed to land a data scientist position like I think is needed for me. Springboard is overall an excellent program to learn. 

After getting my Ph.D. last year, I started to study about data science and get some online certificates. However since I had a full-time job as an Electrical Engineer, it was pretty hard to find the right materials to study or build my portfolio in Github. I got lost after a few months, and there was no support and feedback.  When I found the Springboard career track program, I found it a matching base on my interest and my background. The  1:1 mentor calls every week, was excellent support and pushed for me. The other advantages were about the four mock interviews that Springboard provide to get us ready for the real interviews. 
I recommend this course to people who have a good background in coding and have some knowledge about machine learning since it is an intense program and you have to invest proper time and effort in 6-8 months. 

Springboard was great with providing a clear path to learn about data science. The course is well laid out and progresses naturally, building on previous concepts. The 1:1 mentor time is critical in getting things clarified and individualized help, make sure you get the most of it by knowing what you want to discuss. The course is designed for 6 months but if you have limited to no coding experience expect to put in more time. Great support from the staff and career coaches as well. I came from a physical science background, so was lucky to be familiar with a lot of the math and statistics the course covers, but others may find having to spend extra time on that as well. Being able to work on projects that you have interest in is also a great way to make it more exciting.

I just completed my "data science career track". This "track" took me a point which I would not be able to reach by myself. To me, the main difference of a bootcamp is mentor support. My mentor was Jeremy Cunningham. He has a high-level real-world experience and he is willing to teach what he knows. He provided guidance and constructive feedbacks, and he always motivated me to develop my own strengths. I feel myself lucky to be mentored by him.