BrainStation

What can I say - I loved it. My experience was part online, part in person. The campus is amazing and my cohort was made up of highly motivated people. I cannot emphasise the point of community enough. It was far more personal than the impression I got from the website. The curriculum was great and challenging. I had some coding experience but I saw other people who barely knew any HTML coding amazing full-stack games in React at the end. Particularly valuable IMO is the learning platform, synapse which has all the material in it plus additional readings and resources. The teachers always tried to teach us about current industry trends and we could see their passion for both web dev and teaching. The career service was also great - they connected me with one of their hiring partners before I had even ended the bootcamp. I'd def recommend BrainStation and already have to multiple friends :) Read less

I had a great experience at BrainStation. The educators are knowledgeable and they sure know how to teach (not a lot of people do).  TA's are always helpful. The career success team is there for you all the time. A mid-life career change is never easy but BrainStation made it smooth for me. I highly recommend people who have the drive and will to change to check out with BrainStation. The whole team there will not disappoint you.  Read less

I have just finished my online Data Science bootcamp with BrainStation and I could not recommend it enough! 100% no regret. One of the best decisions I have made, truly!

Without coding experience, I made it through the 12 week intense classes, and successfully secured a job (thanks to the BrainStation team). All of these would not have happened without the help of the education team and the career services team. They have been great help and supportive throughout. 

The 12 week classes covered a wide range of knowledge, and almost every week there was an individual project. That really helps to strengthen the knowledge I learn in class by really applying it. We get real world data to work on in these projects, that really helped prepared me for the technical interviews. Also, throughout the 12 weeks, there were plenty of chances to speak to the instructor/teaching assistant 1 to 1. This is definitely one of the points I appreciate the most! The class size is already relatively small, and adding on the 1 to 1 sessions, I never felt left out. 

Also, in addition to that, through their connections, they invite cool and inspiring people from the industry which includes but not limited to guest speakers from Shopify, Linkedin and Spotify... Being able to listen to these guest speakers was really an eye opening experience, you do not get these chances often. Being able to listen to, connect with, and ask them questions, it was really an amazing bonus to the bootcamp. 

Last but not least, throughout the program, they also ensure to include lots of social activities for whoever interested to broaden their connections with people from different disciplines - Web Development, UX/UI, Digital Marketing etc. They also designed an industry project together with Shopify, and have us from different disciplines working together as a group. There was a panel of judges from Shopify, it was definitely an interesting and memorable experience. 

And yes they do provide assistance on job hunting even before the bootcamp ended, throughout the bootcamp, there were workshops about resume, cover letter, interview skills etc. I was also able to book 1 to 1 session with one of the members from Career Services team to fine tune my resume. Read less

A very good bootcamp overall. Keeps you challenged from beginning to end. The first part of the program focuses on the frontend (html - css) , midway is all Javascript and the end is NodeJS and backend. The best part is they give you the tools to learn quickly and efficiently.  Read less

I came into BrainStation with barely any experience. About a month or two before joining a friend send me some prep for another bootcamp that had videos to help me learn HTML, CSS, and a little bit of JavaScript. I barely new what I was doing, but it was enough to help me get admitted to BrainStation and start their 8 month long part-time course. The course is a fairly fast-paced, instructor-led, and virtual via Zoom. It has been the hardest academic adventure of my short life. The material was often arduous and difficult to understand and takes a lot of time, 1:1 tutoring time, studying, and review. I have been working full-time so I haven't been able to learn/implement as I ought, but  I have still learned a lot more than I knew coming in. 
     In this course you will learn HTML, CSS, JS, OOP, React, Node, mySQL, Knex.js, REST, Axios, Git, coding practices, Agile Methodology, and more (they don't teach Python). Though you will learn back-end, it is very front-end heavy. There are also workshops for career help and you will also build impressive projects for your portfolio. Another great thing about the course is Open Studio, which allows you to have 1:1 tutoring with a teaching assistant. This is one of the most helpful tools that you have. 
     All in all, I would recommend BrainStation. It is a great course with teachers that genuinely care about you and want to see you learn and grow. They are some of the most patient people I've ever worked with.  The only criticisms I'd give the course are:
- It would be good to have two teaching assistants rather than one after class, at least when we have projects due. 
- It would be cool to learn Python (though I understand that this would extend the course).
In preparation for this course I would say:
- Try to learn enough beforehand so that you are at least proficient in JavaScript. 
- If you can, don't have a full-time job unless your job allows for flexibility. 
- Make sure you are ready to learn in a virtual environment. 

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I took the 3 months long, full-time boot camp at Brainstation. I really enjoyed my experience, learning a lot about UX design and working with other designers as well as developers. A lot of the course materials fit modern industry standards. If you are looking to jumpstart your UX design career, I highly recommend you take this bootcamp!  Read less

This course provided me with the knowledge to build my UX skills and the career guidance to land an internship with a great company after graduation. My instructors were fantastic, and I was able to book time to go over anything I needed extra help with.
If you're anything like me, this course will be your whole life for 3 months and you might pull a few all-nighters, but it's very worth it! Read less

I was part of the Data Science program at BrainStation from Feb-April 2022. The 12 week program gave me the skills I needed to change careers and furthermore helped me when looking for a job as a new Data Scientist with their Career Acceleration Program. I really did my research prior to joining the school, looking at the different options available to me and I can say with 100% confidence that I'm happy with my decision to join the BrainStation team. Read less

Had a great time learning the core concepts for Product Management from Siddharth and Giuliano!! They broke down an incredible amount of information into well-organized lessons with real life examples, in-class group activities and two group presentations. Working in groups helped add more perspective to the concepts and the feedback we received from the instructors was very valuable. This was an online course but the class structure enabled lots of interaction. Read less

Program: User Experience Design Bootcamp
Start: Nov 1, 2021
End: Feb 01, 2022.
3 months in length.
Class Size: 14 people.
Background: Medicine, Registered Nurse. Family Medicine, Oncology. Psychology & Mental Health @ UofT.
No specific background in UX, however, I did take User Experience Design from Google Coursera the month leading up to the start of the Bootcamp at BrainStation, a 6mo program that I finished in 2 weeks.

BrainStation Program taught by Joel Macleod (lead instructor). Lily Da Huang (associate instructor) Sherin George (TA & Mentor), who are absolutely great UX leaders and compliment each other. Look at where they came from and the companies they worked for, and you'll realize they're for real, especially when you try and apply to those companies which isn't easy to get in. 

I got hired on March 7.

Program isn't easy, but anything good in life doesn't come easy! $15000, but worth it to be honest. I've seen people WITH a heavy background in graphics and design, but disappear into other cohorts because they didn't take it seriously because the program requires your 150% focus and dedication. Sometimes, people with experience have too much ego.  On the other hand, people that start off weak IMPROVE over time and produce great content and designs because they don't sleep until 5am just to get it right!

BrainStation does NOT guarantee a job, which may sound "discouraging."

1. However, if you look at it logically, there are bound to be people who doesn't produce industry level content, which isn't BrainStation's fault. That is why a passing grade at BrainStation is 70%. Joel and Lily and Sherin do not give free lunches. They grade HARD to make sure you are at par with the industry standard. (I suspect other BrainStation instructors are the same). Our cohort of people had people who didn't have design BG and had people who did have design BG. In the end, they nail things and have a strong grasp of DESIGN THINKING. (the double diamond)

2. Some people aren't actually looking for UX jobs after they graduate. They take vacations to recover from the program, so that may delay ultimate job procurement.

3. People aren't putting in the effort to create portfolios, to pump out resumes, to socialize on LinkedIn and etc.

Curriculum: If you can glean 70% of the content on the first go. You're not human. That is why the content will be available for you after 6 months I THINK.

Job Assistance: MAKE SURE your portfolio is good enough....before you go asking for help from the BrainStation team. Make sure you have no regrets about your portfolio.   
 
Add me on LinkedIn. I'm down to talk. 
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My overall experience is phenomenal.

My instructors were knowledgeable, experienced, humble, and motivating.
The Teaching Assistants were super helpful and knowledgeable too.
I still remember my instructors and TA's sometimes providing the student with extra time in debugging their coding issues after a long day of class.

The good thing about their curriculum, is they keep on updating it as per the industrial demand, which is really important to become job-ready. There were group projects, which were really important for hands-on experience.

The career specialist department is excellent in their work. They have career success sessions that helped me in grooming my resumes and LinkedIn profiles. We also had webinars with recruiters from good companies to know their perspectives when they go through the candidate's profile, such webinars are really useful to know about the recruiter's perspective. The team is always there to support you to prepare with interview practice or any job search questions.

The classroom environment was nice. It is good to learn with like-minded people.

But the getting a job is completely up to you. There is no job guarantee. The team will provide you with the tools that may help you get the job but ultimately you have to search for jobs on your own, which may take less or more time.
To be honest, there is no boot camp in Canada that provides with job guarantee on paper and there is no boot camp with a 100 percent placement record. 
There are both kinds of students who land  jobs and who doesn't got a job after the bootcamp.

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(I’ve grown frustrated with answering questions from people who have found me on LinkedIn, so here’s a general rundown of my thoughts about BrainStation and their Digital Marketing Bootcamp.)
Fifteen thousand dollars. FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS! That is so much money, dramatically more than other bootcamps. Is it worth it? Absolutely not. I deeply regret my decision to participate in this program, and I encourage you to think long and hard about your decision before signing up. 
In my recent cohort, almost 70% of students dropped out after realizing that what the program offered was far short of what they had been promised. And BrainStation, seemingly knowing that they hadn’t lived up to their end of the bargain, gave each of the former students 100% refunds. This is completely contrary to their stated policy on program withdrawal. Reputable programs simply don’t lose 70% of their students. And they also don’t offer full refunds to those who make allegations such as plagiarism and gross incompetence.
Specific issues I had with the bootcamp:

1. Even though you are paying $15,000 for the course, they provide you with essentially no tools. Instead, they’ll tell you to create numerous email accounts so that you can repeatedly sign up for demo versions of the tools you’ll be using. Also, you’re putting your own credit card down on those demos, so you better not forget to cancel and switch to a new email, or else you may be paying hundreds of dollars for a subscription you don’t want.
2. You will spend a ridiculous number of hours searching for benchmark data that could otherwise easily be accessed if the school were to actually spend some of their revenue on student tools. But they won’t, so you’ll spend hours sifting through questionable websites with questionable data, trying to find something you can work with. It's an inefficient use of time, considering how demanding they keep their schedule. 
3. For certain units, their tool choice is questionable at best. Why are you building websites on Mailchimp? It’s certainly not because it’s the best, most useful, easiest, or most highly-adopted industry tool. To myself and other students, it felt that maybe this was due to some sort of undisclosed Mailchimp partnership rather than the best interest of the students. 
4. The lecture slides are quite often lifted wholesale from other websites. You can do a google search of key phrases and see where the content is just lifted from others. How they at all think this is appropriate just boggles the mind. They are also littered with spelling and grammatical errors, which isn't just embarrassing but also hypocritical as the instructors will constantly remind you that those same errors in your work are unprofessional and will result in lower grades. 
5. Speaking of the lectures, there are simply better places to learn this information more efficiently. At the end of the bootcamp, they’ll tell you that you need to go out and get a bunch of online certifications. When you do seek out those certifications you’ll discover that you’ll need to take their study courses anyhow, and that the information is presented more intuitively than it ever was at BrainsStation. Not to mention at a dramatically lower price. 
6. The posted curriculum and schedule can’t be trusted. The entire reason I stuck with the full program was because I wanted to learn about marketing budgets, which was part of the final unit. Once we got to that unit, they cut the marketing budget lectures and project because they had run out of time. They literally said that was the reason. Cut for time.
7. If you’re an American, their career services are pretty useless. I knew it was a Canadian school, but considering they had offices in NYC and Miami, I anticipated more opportunities for Americans. But overwhelmingly the job opportunities are based in Canada and not available to US citizens. 
8. Unless you are incredibly early in your career, their career success department is irrelevant. I certainly didn’t need to be instructed on how to dress for an interview, and they literally had us practice small talk. It was embarrassing. For somebody like me who is mid-career and simply wanted to upskill, there was absolutely zero value in these services. 

Honestly, I could go on and on. I just know that every month when I get $500+ automatically deducted from my bank account, I feel this anger in the pit of my stomach, knowing I’ve been ripped off. 
I will say that it’s possible that BrainStation is a quality bootcamp for the other disciplines. Coding and WebDev just more naturally lend themselves to a bootcamp format. But for digital marketing, this just isn’t a good investment. 
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Personally, I found this course really useful for my career and the analytics work that I do on a daily basis. The data science certificate course I took was the 10-weeks long one where we met online weekly for 3 hours. Overall, the course does cover the essential skills you need to become a data scientist (python, statistical modeling, and ML). It does feel a tiny bit intense, which makes sense as it's a Bootcamp. There is a lot of information in each session but they all were very helpful and organized nicely, A few things that stand out for me during this course: 
- Flexible schedule: the schedule works out pretty well for me, and people who have a full-time job as you have options to meet in the evening or during the weekend. 
- Helpful instructors: My instructor and TA are experienced industry people who gave a lot of great advice and the course content feels very relevant to the real world. 
- Fast-paced environment: We learned something brand new every time we met, so in order to keep up, there are lots of self-learning to do. My advice is to find relevant real-world projects to apply what you learned in class. This course does require you to already have some knowledge of python and data analytics. 
 To summarize, it was a very nice learning experience and I enjoyed it a lot. Would definitely recommend this course for someone who is already in the analytics fields (data analyst, marketing analyst, business analyst, BI analyst, etc) and would want to advance their career to break into data science.  Read less

Python programming Certification: An intensive five weeks later, I have finally completed the BrainStation Python program Certification with Saif Abid ! This course makes me a Python Developer, meaning I can develop websites, applications, build solutions, and more. I can work with Data Scientists, using Python programming to pull or generate large amounts of data from multiple databases and libraries. Read less

The course is very helpful, especially if you are new to the field. SQL part covers almost all you need to learn by yourself further. I'm glad I took that course. I got confidence in what I want, and I plan to move forward with Data Science Bootcamp. Overall experience is very positive; instructors are knowledgeable and helpful. They respond at any time, during and out of the class. The final project is a perfect challenge to apply all we have learnt—good practice-theory balance. Read less