BrainStation Reviews
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Anonymous
Good introduction to data analytics
The course was a decent foundation for getting into advanced Excel, SQL, and Tableau. While the instructors were very knowledgeable and patient with explaining concepts, I feel like more information could have been covered. I also wish there were more hands-on exercises to practice the skills that were taught. -
Anonymous
Transformative, Hands-on, Breadth and Depth.
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First I want to disclose that I came into this bootcamp with some prior self-studying: reading several books (Python, R, and ML) and taking a few online certifications. After trying to apply for jobs and looking into job descriptions, I realized there was still a gap. I needed more hands on experience to solidify my knowledge, build a portfolio, and know more on how to actually conduct myself when applying for these jobs as an entry level. In addition, I needed a good turn around time, so bootcamps naturally fell into view. BrainStation popped out in my mind and what really caught my attention was the curriculum. There were sections in the course that I knew I would benefit from studying with a bootcamp that I could not do as well on my own: this included big data/cloud technology, deep learning, and the fabled statistics that really made DS a well rounded field. Once joining, I realized how high quality the program was because the instructors and TAs took their time to breakdown the material in an intuitive manner, applied their DS background from the field, and even connected current events. I was soon filling in the gaps in my knowledge and actually applying it. Moreover, BrainStation has a great aspect with its online course. It allows you to meet people from around the world bringing in a diverse background in thought and experiences. There were people who were from business, education, engineering, art and so many other disciplines. Because of the way they process the material, I got to think in a so many new ways. For those who think the online course may reduce the teamwork and camaraderie, I do not believe it has. There were key experiences when working with groups. There was an opportunity to pair with a classmate in a friendly competition competition in the class, working on a cross-discipline team with the other sections in UX/UI and software engineering, and giving feedback between and among each other that culminated to a capstone project. After the bootcamp, I feel more confident in my technical knowledge and ideas for future projects. As a note, for those without a background it is difficult, but if you are preparing for it full-time it most certainly can be done with enough grit and curiosity. Right now, I will be conducting the job search process, but the best part about this program is that it includes job preparation with your resume, LinkedIn, and other techniques on how to approach people. All in all, BrainStation has prepared me well, and I am confident I will do well post-bootcamp. -
Anonymous
Fun & Fast Paced, I learned a lot of new Data Analysis Skills
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I enjoyed that the boot camp covered a variety of topics related to data analysis, and I must say, it was an incredibly fun and fast-paced experience. Over the course of the program, I gained a wealth of knowledge and skills in several different languages, including SQL, Python, Bash, and R.
One of the highlights of the boot camp was the focus on machine learning, big data, and data fundamentals. These topics were covered in depth, and I was able to get hands-on experience working with large datasets and applying advanced techniques to gain insights and make predictions. The instructors were knowledgeable and experienced in these areas, and they provided helpful guidance and support throughout the program.
In addition to the technical skills, I also learned a lot about data visualization and presentation. This is an important aspect of data analysis that can often be overlooked, but the boot camp emphasized the importance of effectively communicating insights to stakeholders.
Overall, I would highly recommend this boot camp to anyone who is interested in gaining new skills. The program was well-structured, and the pace was just right – not too fast that it was overwhelming, but not too slow that it was boring. I feel confident in my ability to apply what I learned in real-world scenarios, and I look forward to continuing to build on these skills in my future career endeavours. -
Anonymous
Rewarding leap of faith
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It was difficult to break out of the traditional education way of thinking that’s been ingrained in our brains for our whole lives. However, the educators were very knowledgeable, engaging, accessible, encouraging, and approachable. They truly wanted to see everyone succeed and were prepared to not only educate us on the curriculum content, but they also stepped up to coach us through all of the fears and tears. Some of the content seemed to be delivered a little out of order in relation to our deliverables, but it all worked out in the end. The work is very intensive, but incredibly rewarding at the end. I would definitely do it over again. You will be amazed at how much you can learn and accomplish in such a short time. -
Anonymous
Intense and Rewarding!
What an experience! To anyone who is looking to make a career pivot/change/reimagining, I would recommend Brainstation. Not only do they have passionate educators and relevant curricula, but a dedicated career support centre to help you with your career transition. At least check out the Intro Day. -
Anonymous
Hard but gratfull
It was definitely not a easy journey to go through, but with the support from instructors and friends you will meet here will help you, encourage you to finish it, and you will actually getting the skills you want. -
Anonymous
Too slow and introductory
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The python certificate course was a bit too slow and introductory for me. Furthermore, a lot of the pre-material that should've been completed (i.e. setup of anaconda, jupyter notebooks) were not done by most students, and ended up delaying the first class by a lot of time. The instructors were well-spoken and knew a lot about the language and frameworks. However, there were too many questions (repeated ones) and students sharing their screens to solve their specific problem as we went through the class that delayed and took away from the class content and pace (i.e. spent 30 minutes reviewing BEDMAS). I felt it would've been better if there were 1:1's set up with these students after the class or separate breakout rooms with one of the instructors during the class while the other instructor continued teaching. -
Anonymous
Great Experience!
The content was engaging, Avi was very knowledgable, and the staff were always helpful. Beautiful campus too! I really like that you have a project throughout the entire course and each week builds another layer onto it. -
Anonymous
Brainstation has amazing mentons, good for social networking,good hands on experience with tools...all in all it was a great experience.
Brainstation has amazing facuty,you get to learn a lot from them,they are highly skilled and very welcoming to our questions.It is a great place to build your network and work together.It was a great experience. -
Anonymous
Knowledgable instructors & great learning
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I've been working in marketing for roughly 12 years and while I am well versed in traditional marketing strategy and tactis, the digital world is fairly new to me. I had heard great things from coworkers and friends about the courses at Brainstation and so decided to sign up for the Digital Marketing Course. It did not disappoint :) From real life examples to breaking down different digital marketing concepts - the instructors were very knowledgable and made learning fun for all. -
Anonymous
Engaging, Memorable, Fun
Great course with some really fun discussions. I'm excited to see where this certificate takes me. I wish the course had some quizzes in between lessons, think that would have been helpful. My teachers were really cool and had exciting stories to share about the industry. -
Anonymous
Excellent
This was a great class! Very useful information and well-structured. Instructors are very knowledgeable and helpful. I feel like I got a lot out of it. Wish there was some more time spent on career opportunities and how to position oneself to succeed in the digital marketing landscape, but c'est la vie! -
Anonymous
UX Design Certificate
If you're seeking an accelerated method of learning UX design, this is the ideal course for you. The instructors are outstanding! However, I would have preferred if job assistance was included in the curriculum as well. -
Anonymous
Excellent Instructors. Engaging Students. Responsive School.
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Prior to BrainStation, I connected with at least 3 ex-students who successfully completed their courses / bootcamps. While their opinions differed, their conclusions were identical: they all recommended BrainStation.
I am delighted to report the same conclusion: I recommend BrainStation. (I completed the part-time Product Management course). My recommendation is attributed to these factors:
1) Excellent Instructors - Instructors have real-world experience. They are very engaged, responsive, and helpful. Instructors DO care about their students.
2) Engaging Classmates - I am fortunate that all my classmates were engaged, curious, and kind to interact with. BrainStation students are typically young professionals with 3 - 8 years of working experience.
3) Mix of theory + hands-on - you get to work on individual or group projects. They also allocate in-class exercises.
4) Location - It's very accessible via TTC and about 15 mins walk from Union Station. -
Anonymous
Very Average, Mostly Review
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I think the PM class at brainstation was run decently. However, most of the content material was review. Most of the information felt like things you could find online. It was nice to hear about the industry experience from our teachers but we often had to cut that short as we could barely get through the course material on time. I think Brainstation should leverage the industry experience that teachers can share with the class rather than a heavy focus on the course material. Perhaps the content can be more tailored to the experience that the teachers have so the content feels more intertwined with the teachers' philosophy on Product Management. That way, the course material feels more realistic and delivered contextually. -
Anonymous
Awesome Product Management Course
This course had great instructors and provided a great experience! The content was relevant, engaging, easy to understand and well presented. Highly recommend to anyone wanting to gain exposure to Product management. -
Anonymous
Product Management at Brainstation
Great hands-on course but expensive & taught by peers, not professional educators or senior-level professionals.
Good to have in-person classes Vs just on-line. Like the downtown Toronto location. -
Anonymous
very engaging and helpful class
I had a great experience here. Instructors were knowledgable and experienced. Very helpful and always eager to help. As a product design graduate, taking this product management course has helped me a lot so far at work. -
Anonymous
My time at Brainstation was a pleasant learning experience
I learned the tools that I wanted to master and had a lot of practice exercises. There was continuous help available via slack and email whenever I had a question about something in the course. My overall experience was very positive. -
Anonymous
Great experience!
I took a UI design course. It was part-time course so I could manage my work time and learning time.
The teacher was amazing! I learned a lot from this course and I could use some knowledge from this course in my Job.
I highly recommend this course! -
Anonymous
Great experience.
Very good experience, I have learned alot of new things and strengthened my previous knowledge. great feedback from the instructors. I have really enjoyed the class. Loved the labs and hands on exercises. -
Anonymous
UX design
The course was great, I am able to learn a lot of hands-on skills in UX design, and my classmates were passionate about taking part in class as well, which helps me review my project from different points of view. -
Anonymous
Quality but Expensive
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The curriculum and educators were all great, but the price is very suspect in hindsight. I ended up landing a pretty ideal job after the course but this was done on my own accords and not from their career center, even though they do a good job at staying in touch. The company really did not care that I had the brainstation diploma, only the project and my degree. So the value of the actual bootcamp is questionable. -
Anonymous
Good program, cannot guarantee you a job.
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I think that the BrainStation UX program has a great curriculum. I learned so much in my UX design program. The instructors really went out of their way to make sure that students understood the material. As it pertains to job assistance, the program cannot guarantee that you will get a job. After you graduate you're really on your own to do individual learning, networking, and applying. If you're expecting to get a job from immediately from a bootcamp (especially in today's economy) that's an unrealistic expectation. You have to work hard even outside of the bootcamp to get a job or even an internship. The market is highly saturated with bootcamp grads. -
Anonymous
Waste of Money
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I enrolled in Brainstation because it had good reviews. Unfortunately, I had a horrible experience and I wasn't the only one.
We found out Brainstation recently implemented the part-time Boot Camp and it was highly unorganized, they use a zoom link that didn't work properly and classes started 30 minutes late for over 2 months. One of the teachers was rude and didn't want to teach at all, he didn't have any teaching certification. Every time we asked him to demonstrate how to do something on Figma he would say that he didn't want to do it, the whole class was horrified by that teacher, he demotivated all my classmates.
The school always "invited students" to workshops but we were never able to attend because they were during class time.
I DO NOT 100% recommend this Bootcamp, run as fast as you can -
Anonymous
Very attentive, some very experienced instructors
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During my time in the course I had been in a very small class and thus got a lot of one-on-one time with instructors which I found to be very helpful. There had been numerous instructors during my course, which was confusing at times but most of the instructors were very experienced and knew how to introduce computer languages well. Although I had had a few inexperienced instructors initially, BrainStation was very attentive to student requests and quickly replaced those with the better, more experienced instructors. -
Anonymous
Best bootcamp out there!
I really appreciate the stella education & career teams at Brainstation. The lecturers, TA's, and career advisors are very helpful! Really love the life-long access to the career resources post graduation. -
Anonymous
2022 September in-person Toronto
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The onboarding experience was a bit shaky. The admission team didn't set out the expectation unless I asked specific questions. I didn't know the first two-weeks were remote until I joined the program and the person who explained the time for the course misinformed by an hour early which I had to confirm after seeing it written on the admission agreement. I understand that the terms and conditions with software programs can change rapidly, but I wish the BrainStation team were a bit communicative. There was initially sign-up code for students for Sketch which was no longer the case for my cohort. But the fact that I had to reach out to admission team first to be told "Don't worry about it", then later on during the first two weeks of remote classes one of the educator explained the backstory after they got asked by one of the student. It gave me the impression that they weren't as organized or transparent.
Then from week 3-12, it was in-person. The learning experience was soo much better. If you are considering between remote or in-person, and if you are able to commute to one of their campuses, please take in-person. Although there were some days that were mostly independent work hours besides morning kick-offs (which is about 30 minutes long). For those days, I wish I had an option to work from home since some of us were commuting 1hr + one way. Since they take attendance, you still need to go in even when the schedules looks pretty empty. Also they switched the schedules last minutes without notice, specially last couple weeks. I checked the schedule the night before and the next morning it'd be something different. Those incidents made me feel like my time wasn't valued. But besides that the quality of educators were brilliant. My TA was amazing. They were all very supportive, passionate about the subject and teaching.
I didn't appreciate how they placed career accelerator lectures (Essentially improving your resume, and LinkedIn account) when we were swarmed with projects and capstone projects. The structure of the curriculum can be improved but overall I'm happy about my decisions and what I gained from the program.
There are so many great things but I wanted whoever is reading this knows what I wished I knew before enrolling so that you have fair expectations of what you'll be getting.
Cheers to you:) -
Anonymous
Wonderful learning experience
I had a wonderful experience taking the data analytics choose through Brainstation. The instructor was knowledgeable and engaging. Would recommend the course to anyone interested. As a professional already working, the course was a very good addition to my skills. -
Anonymous
So informative and valuable!
This course and the instructors were great. We completed a project over the 10 weeks and every class led up to the presentation was so helpful. It was such a valuable learning experience for my career. -
Anonymous
Intense but rewarding experience
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The UX Design Bootcamp is what you make of it. Unlike some of my classmates, I knew going in that I needed to dedicate my most of my time and energy to get the full experience. I am making a career change and set my life up outside of the bootcamp in order to put all of my focus on it.
The instructors are great, they are knowledgeable, insightful, are always available to help, and are constantly trying to get the most of you. They bring good energy into the classroom and try to make learning the content a good experience. -
Anonymous
High Level Intro to Product Management
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The course was very informative at a high level. Our instructor David was great and had a lot of experience he shared throughout the duration of the course. He shared a ton of resources to help us dive deeper in the the subject as well. The curriculum was useful as an introduction and good for people pivoting into Product Management rather than starting from scratch in a completely different field. I would've like to see more real world examples throughout the course, but I feel like I have a good grasp of the field now. -
Anonymous
Quite intense - yet resourceful
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I never worked on anything related to tech before and only knew HTML, CSS & js for student application. If you know nothing, then this course is probably not right for you. Whole curriculum goes on very high level technical .
Teaching & can be intimidating. If you miss a class, there are no resources to catch up other than referring to presentation & you are on your own. All promises they give are literally fake. It's a complete corporate environment and all they care about is their reputation. Love the instructors tho!
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Anonymous
Great Experience
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I am just graduating from the UX BootCamp, and it has been an intense but fun experience. If you're considering keep in mind that: you won't have a life for 3 months, you're going to be constantly exhausted and won't have extra time to do things that you are used to. It is a stressful but great experience. So if I can give you one piece of advice: plan ahead your bootcamp routine and notify your loved ones that you'll be off during bootcamp. -
Anonymous
BrainStation - UX Design Bootcamp
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I had a great experience at BrainStation. I met some amazing people and gained a lot of knowledge and valuable skills to help me in my UX Design journey. It also really helped me stick to a routine which I didn't have before. My main criticism is that we got most of the feedback for our work pretty late so I would jump into doing new work not fully aware of what I had to improve yet and there was A LOT of work. You really have to manage your time well and know how to multitask. The bootcamp will be easier for you if you already know how to use tools like Figma and make presentations. -
Anonymous
Engaging, Fast-pace learning
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I was part of the online full-time cohort and let me tell you, the 12 weeks so fast. The instructors, TA's and classmates are really what make the experience special and fulfilling. I had no design background so a month before starting the program I did the google certificate and I found that I helped out a lot because it's so fast-pace and intensive. There's a lot of self-taught learning after class hours especially when it comes to using Figma. There's a lot of support throughout the bootcamp. But at the end it's what you make out of the program. If you're willing to spend your free time learning about UX and going out of your way to learn outside of the classroom, even connecting to the UX community, you'll do just fine. -
Anonymous
Intense bootcamp for Career Change
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I just finished up my 3 months at BrainStation, and wow, was it intense! You're changing your career in a matter of 12 weeks, of course, it's going to be hard. I learned so much from my instructors. We have lectures every day about a different UX topic. If you think you will have time to work on projects during lecture time, think again. This is an extremely difficult course timewise and only for those who are really serious about making a life transformation. You do not have free time in these 3 months... Let me say it again YOU DO NOT HAVE FREE TIME!! But for me and what I want to do with the rest of my life, it was worth it and incredibly rewarding now that I have graduated. EdX and Career Services have cool events throughout the 12 weeks like LinkedIn workshops and a 24-hour industry project. I would totally recommend BrainStation to anyone who is seriously interested in investing their time and money. -
Anonymous
Incredible journey
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Like many of you who are looking for a career change most likely, I was in the same boat as you. I went with BrainStation from their great reviews and just completed the program, and all I can say it lives up to the excellence. You truly feel like a UX/UI Designer by the end of it with the curriculum they have in place and the educators and TA's give you so much support throughout. I was nervous to begin a bootcamp as you feel like it's just you vs. the world doing a bunch of projects with tight deadlines, but BrainStation provides a refreshing experience to the bootcamp side and makes it enjoyable. -
Anonymous
Very thorough and supportive!
The UX design bootcamp was super intense and full on, but now I feel so prepared to start a career in UX Design. I started with 0 knowledge in UX besides what it was, and they did a great job walking us through the foundations all the way up to being proficient designers. Would recommend! (But set aside ALL your time to focus on the course - you'll need it!) -
Anonymous
Learning, Intensity, Stress, Community
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Having just completed the course, I can't speak to the job assistance portion of the bootcamp yet, but for everything else about the bootcamp, I would highly recommend it to SPECIFIC people. To start, I would highly recommend that anyone consider applying 1) knows with certainty that data science is a field that they want to get into, no matter how difficult and 2) has ALL of their time available for bootcamp. If either of these things aren't the case, then I would instead reccomend self-guided online learning or courses which move much slower. On this second point, I think it's really important to understand that if you wish to perform well in bootcamp, almost all of your waking hours, weekends included, should be committed to it. That model is not sustainable, but it is doable for 12 weeks. Coming into this course, I had almost no technical background, and coming out of it, I feel well qualified to be a part of a team working on almost any data science project.