BrainStation

The BrainStation course is great for giving you a foundation for Product Management. They have you pick a product and go through the thought process as a full time PM would. The instructors work in the field and are great at using their real life examples to bring concepts to life and the feedback they give you is good for your growth. My only issue is that you're paying thousands of dollars for this with little to no assistance with finding a career after. I don't know a single person from my cohort who got a PM job afterward and the school provided no help. I will give my instructors a shoutout as they took the time to give interview advice and look over people's resumes on their own time. That's a plus for the instructors and not the school. If Toronto has an APM program, why can't BrainStation work with companies to create their own for graduates in the cities they operate. Overall, I had great instructors with a great cohort but don't expect to have help finding a job.

The course was a very good refresher and introduction to social media marketing. The instructors were friendly and approachable, and they boiled down the concepts very well. I would recommend it to anyone who needs to further their understanding or just want to build a good base for social media marketing. 

Learning Data analytics course designed by Brain Station was such a big achievement. During continuation of my day to day job it was so easy to learn in a very short time and professional way. This course is amazing, consists of advanced excel, learn and practice on query writing in SQL, learning and practice on tableau with easy to learn online methods. Instructor was so experienced that he never took a second for any questions to answer in a very professional and friendly manners that everything he explained got feed and saved into my mind like data is copied to the brain chip. Thanks to Brain station for this valuable quick course. I would like to recommend this course to the people who want to take a jump in their career to achieve great success. 

I wanted to explore a new career path and the 10-week User Experience Design course at Brainstation was a great experience. It helped me understand the basics of UX and gave me a good overview of the field. The instructor was an expert in the field and showed us examples from his own work experience, which was very helpful.
I would definitely recommend this course for people who want to introduce themselves into UX.

I took the Digital Marketing certificate course in early February. The course contained a large amount of information and the pace of the course is rather fast to ensure all topics are covered. That being said, this means the course information is very compressed; take the course if you're willing to put in the time to re-read information after class. Scott (teacher) was extremely helpful in providing real-life situational examples of when to use certain methods (Paid ads, PR releases, SEO, etc). 

The instructors were extremely knowledgeable and I learned a lot in the 3 months I took this course! It definitely gave me the basics of UX in a short time though the learning continues after. You get pushed to produce a lot in a short time and in the end, you come out with some version of portfolio. They helped me a lot with my projects and the feedback was good. Be prepared to breathe, eat, and sleep UX though! Being job ready is up to you once the course ends though. 

 I took the 12 week Digital Marketing course via in class sessions and it was great! The BrainStation instructor made it easy to learn and the course material was clear enough to grasp. My instructor was super knowledgeable and provided relevant industry examples. I'd recommend BrainStation to anyone looking to kickstart their career in tech 

My overall experience was great. 
The brainstation instructors were industry professions who not only taught the course material, they provided us with the tools and tricks needed to succeed in the industry. 

The classes were very engaging and the instructors always matched the pace of the group’s learning ability. Very valuable feedback was given as to how to effectively navigate the new material and improve your work.  

I am definitely looking forward to taking another course soon. 

Course was excellent for beginners in the area!

I had a great time with the Intro to UX Design course. I took the 6week certificate course to learn the basics of UX Design with the aim of helping me develop projects in my current career. Avi, our instructor, had a real passion for everything to do with design. He was able to share his experience and his insight which helped me gain an appreciation for the intricacies of Design. They went through each stage from ideation to conceptualization to user interviews to the design process. The best part was the practical application. Being put in an environment where we had to work with other people to present a final project gave us a realistic perspective of what UX Designers really do. I’ve been able to use a lot of the skills I’ve learned to my own projects at work and have actually started studying design concepts on my own. I’d definitely recommend this course and take another Brainstation course in the future!

They also have a lot of events you can attend for learning and networking! 

I’ve taken the the live python bootcamp and the data science virtual class. I’ve take a number of exec Ed courses and boot camps and I’ll very happy with Brainstation. Instructors aren’t just reading a long python worksheet - they’re willing to answer questions. And the materials are really excellent - I often go back to them. And this is written as a person who is totally new to programming. Highly recommend

Brain station was a great start in my UX journey of building the foundation that I needed to pursue UX. I was able to learn the whole entire process of figuring out what the UX problem is, building personas, and other tools to help me solve the problem. I've learned a lot through the process and the instructors and teaching assistants were great. They always gave me insightful knowledge on how I could improve my projects and definitely all the feedback was always needed to help me grow. 

The only set back was the fact that the projects that we were given didn't have any business constraints where we were able to work with an actual company. As a result, after I graduated from Brainstation, that was one of my biggest blockers of getting a job. I had a good enough portfolio that allowed me to get interviewed at a lot of great companies, but the moment they realized I didn't have any actual UX job experience and I didn't have a project that worked with business constraints, I wasn't able to move further to the other round. 

Another thing was, the job assistance didn't help me much, if anything at all, if I have to be truthfully honest. Don't get me wrong, the career counsellors were GREAT and had GREAT personalities. They were always ready to look over my resume or give me mock interviews, but I personally found more success connecting with ux professionals that were already in the industry to give me feedback on my resume, portfolio and interview. 

As a result, for whoever is entering the bootcamp, I would recommend you to go into this bootcamp, only if you truly have a passion or interest in doing either coding, ux design, and etc. Because for people who have the expectation that they would get a job right away after doing a bootcamp, it is false.

You're going to need to grind, because my learning definitely did not stop after the bootcamp. I had to push myself to learn more.
However, I was only able to grind successfully because of the great foundation knowledge of UX that I got from Brainstation.

I ended up getting a job and I am very thankful that someone was able to give me a chance and I have grown in a lot of different ways. So in the end, if I were to go back I would go back to Brainstation.

I do not think going to a bootcamp is needed to get into UX and I do think all of it can be done through self-learning. However, I just know that for me and myself, I do better learning in class. So in this case, there is no right or wrong. It's what you feel is best for yourself. However, I would like to note that one of the the benefit of learning at Brainstation that you can't get from self learning is that you will be able to be in a class full of students who have the same passion as you and you're able to bounce ideas off each other. 

This course boosted my knowledge and skills with data through a focused curriculum, experienced instructor, and inviting  classroom environment. The assignments and tasks were relevant to the work world and follow-up with the instructor was welcomed. I would highly recommend brainstation to anyone who wants to quickly gather data analysis skills and confidence to apply them in their day job. 

I took the month long data science bootcamp at Brainstation( NYC soho campus) and loved every moment of it. The instructor was very knowledgeable and introduced the topic really well. This is NOT an intro to programming class so if you register, make sure you understand how to code. The instructor did a fantastic job helping people who had no prior coding experience and I felt that took time off the main topic: Data Science.
After this bootcamp, you will have all the tools to work for a data science position and to dive deeper into the world of data science. This bootcamp really changed my career path and I am grateful for that.

“Thanks to the course, I met many incredible designers, who today work on social impact projects, people who in one way or another influence trends, solutions and guide me as inspiration. The support of the people in charge of coordination was excellent, even after leaving the academy they continue to support and encourage learning initiatives.” - Ana Maria 

I learned so much in just one month at brain station. Highly recommend to anyone looking to acquire new skills in a short amount of time!

I just completed my second BrainStation course. Last summer I took the Product Management course on campus in Vancouver, BC and this summer I took the User Interface course online. They were both one night a week for 10 weeks. 

The quality of both courses was excellent. I like the 10 week format because I need time to really absorb what I am learning. The product management course is offered over 5 full time days (or was last year anyway) and I really don't think I would have learned as much. With the 10 week format there was enough time to actually do the homework each week. If you keep up with it one night a week of doing homework is enough, but for me it is hard to find time. I actually tried to do a 5 week accelerated program, the User Experience Design course, but I got sick and only went to 2 classes. Still that was almost half of the course and it was way too fast. I just barely got the homework done but didn't really spend enough time to absorb what I was doing. If you are used to taking courses and/or are not working full time you should look at the 5 week accelerated programs though. They are the exact same material as the 10 week ones, just twice as fast.

My teacher in both of the courses I finished were really great. They were both working industry professionals with a ton of experience. One is a VP even! This was the part that I liked the best, they both shared a LOT of information in addition to the slides such as showing us real documents/designs/roadmaps/etc that they had worked on for various projects. Being able to see what the real work looks like really helped me understand the topics we covered in each lesson and also gave me confidence at work that what I was producing was the correct thing or in the correct format. Also both courses had teaching assistants and I liked both of them a lot too. It was good having two different instructors available because we got to hear two different experiences. 

The only downsides I can share is that the online course just had way too many people in my class but that is probably because it was the first session after the pandemic started. The 5 week course I started was also online but had 2/3 the number of students. But overall everyone is really great there. In fact I withdrew from that 5 week course halfway through and then was allowed to register in the UI course instead once I was no longer sick and that was 

As far as diversity goes I had 2 white instructors, an Indian instructor, a Black instructor, and an Asian instructor. All my instructors were men but in each of the classes I would guess half of the class was female. I know that there are female instructors also as I know a couple but my instructors were all men. All of the BrainStation employees I interacted with aside from teachers for all 3 courses were women. So I would say I interacted with an equal number of male and female employees at Brainstation and of all ethnicities. 

I really learned a lot in both courses and I 10000% have used stuff from these courses at work! I had to take on the role of Product Manager for 6 months at the planning phase of a new product while we looked for a full time PM and I was completely armed and prepared to do that. There were some bumps along the way, especially as I learned to translate the "student project" level of my knowledge into real business deliverables -- and learned how to make slide decks from scratch! (BrainStation final projects come with a template you can use if you want so you don't have to be great at that stuff to do the course) I can safely say that I outperformed expectations of me and I owe the credit completely to the Product Management course!

The User Interface Design course that I took I finished it just recently after handing off the role of PM to our new permanent product manager. I took this one for me, not for work. I always had this mental block against graphics, I was convinced I couldn't do anything that involved graphics. So I decided to force myself through it by taking this course. Don't get me wrong, I struggled. This design stuff does not come to me naturally and although the software is pretty straight forward when there was something that I couldn't figure out it was really hard. Plus my designs were not great. But by the end of the course I was using the software and my designs were pretty good! I am not a natural talent, I'll need to keep working on it if I really want to get to a professional level, but where I'm at now is pretty good! The app I designed looked better than a lot of apps I've seen. I was pretty happy with what I learned and how much I grew and got over my fears in this course. 

There isn't a lot of instruction on how to use the programs nor how-to's on making designs/graphics themselves but instead the course teaches a lot about the theory of User Interface Design and you do designs as the course goes, working on your final project a bit each week, applying what you have learned. For some people that worked out well. For me it was hard because I spent a lot of time trying to learn the software. I ended up buying a $15 Udemy course on how to use sketch and I spent a week watching that. After I did that I found I was able to really apply what I was learning and doing the designs wasn't as frustrating (or pointless) as before.

I am a mobile developer so I already had the code part but whenever I tried to make an app it was always extremely ugly. I'm really looking forward to using my design skills and product management knowledge to plan some apps! 

It was a super practical course. I liked that they covered Excel, SQL and also Tableau, super helpful for my job and future opportunities!

It was a great course from which i could learn from scratch to build an app with guidance. It was very useful and informative at the same time. I completely recommend this course from Brainstation.

Such a great experience! Ryan (our instructor) was very knowledgeable and supportive throughout the entire course. I have no design experience and with his help I was able to build something I am very proud of. Highly recommend!