Level provided a strong foothold in R, SQL, Tableau, and statistics. The instructors were very professional and I enjoyed the relevant speakers. I felt more confident in my skills to move into an analytically driven job after I completed the program. 

The program does move fast and it can be hard sometimes to keep up. This is especially true for someone like me who had no previous coding background. A prospective student has to be prepared to spend time out of class to fully master the skills taught. 

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Pro's:  The Level Team was awesome to work with.  The highlight was the meaningful and relevant content.  Otherwise great engagement from all aspects of the course.

Con:  The courses are evolving, but I dont really consider this to be a detriment.  More a reflection of what is current.

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Level is a very intensive 8-week course focused on  teaching you data analytics and data science.

I really enjoyed my time at Level.  I believe I definitely got my money's worth and the capstone project was extremely useful. Though, ties with Northeastern and their resources proved to be a huge bonus as well.

I'll start with the capstone because that is the most important part of this class. You are paired up with a real company with a real problem that you have to solve. This is immensley motivating as I am very interested in  education and was paired up with Raising A Reader in MA. Working with real data and real employers is the best way to test the skills you learn.

The curriculum was very sound. Everything that you learn will be applicable and is exactly what employers are putting in job descriptions of their open Data positions.  I was especially taken in by the section on R. Once I started using R, it was  hard to turn away.  You should definitely have an idea of the  very basics of basics of programming.  It will help you learn much more while you are there.

My instructor was Dale Joachim, and I could not have asked for a more enthusiastic, professional person to lead the class.  I believe his curiousity made the lectures much more intruiging and helpful.

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Level provided me the skills needed to launch a new career in Data Analytics. It gave me the background needed in R and SQL to go into interviews with more confidence. It also introduced new ways of approaching problems and how to solve them through analysis. 

The capstone project allowed me to apply a few of the newly learned skills to a real world problem and eventually lead to a full time job. 

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The best part about Level is the networking opportunities, which isn’t surprising coming from Northeastern.  Anyone can learn the skills taught in this bootcamp online or by taking classes, but the connections through the in-person bootcamp are invaluable.  My cohort was great.  My classmates were constantly sending one another job postings they found based on our individual backgrounds.

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Level is a really great program for anybody who wishes to enter the growing field of data analytics.  The course consisted of 8 weeks (9 am - 5 pm) of lectures and labs as well as numerous guest speakers.  Students really get to learn the technial tools (R, SQL, Tableau, excel) as well as the statistical theories.  This personally was my first experience with a coding language.  The course ends with a Capstone project where students are paired with a company and given a real data set and are asked to solve a complex business problem.

I would recommend this course to anyone looking to advance their career in Analytics! 

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Great program helping gear participants the ability to work in the field of data analytics. Experiencial based learning.

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Level is a new data analytics bootcamp offered by Northeastern University in four different locations in the U.S.  We attended class full-time for 8 weeks, culminating in a capstone project that we did for an actual company (each student did a project for a different company...there were a wide variety of projects).  We focused on statistics, Excel, R, SQL, Tableau, regression and machine learning.

Overall, I had a good experience (great people in my class), but because the program is new there were some clear growing pains.  One of the main issues was that the program seemed to be trying to cover the full spectrum of data analytics to data science, but with the wide range of skills of the students in the course, among other things, it wasn't really possible in 8 weeks.  I know that Level took our feedback and will likely adjust the curriculum, possibly offering different levels (no pun intended) of bootcamp so that an advanced student could focus on data science, whereas someone with fewer math skills or just new to the field might focus more on SQL, etc. 

None of the students in my class had jobs by graduation, but a few of us had interviews.  It's still too early to say whether or not a bootcamp like this is the key to a job.  Level is expanding it's business contacts in our area, so that should help.  The course definitely helped solidify some of the things I'd been trying to learn from MOOCs and gave me a couple of projects to show potential employers.  It should be a five-star course after a some adjustments.

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Level is not worth the money you pay for it.  

The program does not fully live up to what it advertises itself as.

If you're self motivated and bootcamp worthy, my advice to you would be to go through Galvanize
if you can afford it and have the Python/Math knowledge or take the John Hopkins Data Science
specialization course on coursera.

Their web page leveledu.com advertises the program as having "Each day built around a real world
problem so you are gaining knowledge and skills. Build your portfolio and connect with top
employers to advance your career."  If it was experiential and based on portfolio building/real
world problems, they wouldn't have spent so much time lecturing.
About 40-50% of the time was allocated to instructor lecturing going over powerpoint 
slides that they obviously hadn't made, or obviously hadn't taken the time to review before class started. 
These slides always had errors in the R and MySQL code that was being used for learning exercises
and were not created with the goal of building up portfolios in mind.  Instructors were not well versed in using
R, SQL, and Tableau - which were the main tools being used for the course material.  

Any of the students who left the program and had a portfolio created, was because they created
it themselves from their own ideas outside of class.
 
They more or less faked a pre-screening to get into the program.  They had a 10 question
pre-screening test for basic statistics knowledge and sent out a handbook 3 weeks before hand
asking prospective students to cover Swirl Stats, Excel Exposure, and review over basic stats.
A very small portion of the students actually went over those materials before class.  
There was a frequent lack of accountability for students to actually do the work, which 
caused the self-motivated students to learn less.

The pace of the course was never at a 'bootcamp' level.  There were a handful of students
bringing the class down because they didn't have basic stats knowledge, didn't know their
way around working directories, or were unwilling to try things out / learn on their own.
The instructor lecturing frequently did not help with the pace of the course either.  There
was too much lecture, and not enough projects.  

The one redeeming factor of the course was the capstone project.  The capstone project was
a useful, worthwhile learning experience.  It was hard, messy, and the most practical thing that was
worked on in the course. 
But, the project descriptions that you make your decisions based off of were not correctly written out.  Also, there are
not enough projects in each city for each student to be working on a project based out of the
city they were taking the course in.  Charlotte, Silicon Valley, and Seattle all had shortages
of projects and Boston had a surplus.  They advertised the capstone projects as if students
were going to get a project from the city they were in.

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We initially had the most incompetent instructor. He was constantly late to class and annoyed by any question students would ask. During Labs he would be on his phone and do absolutely nothing to further our learning. It comical how bad he was and we noticed this pretty much the first or second day of classes. I am shocked they ebe hired this guy to begin with, which goes to show how much the admin cares. The program eventually fired him half way through, but did not do anything (anything!) to compensate for our time loss. They just continued as if nothing happened. We had two subs eventually; they were more competent, but the course overall was shit show afterwards. It just lacked any organization. Job assitance is a joke. I can do a much better job myself connecting with people at the company. The whole program is a joke. 

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I have a really bad experience of attending the level workshop. The one hosted at silicon valley. Not worth the time and money. They advertised the  5 weeks workshop of database  & dashboard very attractive. In reality it's just a very quick and basic intro to SQL and tabluea. I believe you can learn much more from Udemy for just $9.99. Not worth $600.  Their faculty and management people are also bad. Not really care your feedback. Bad attitude. SO SO BAD.

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Starting with the cons:

The people all come from very different backgrounds. That makes for very interesting interactions, but it also makes it hard to teach. There were points where I felt like the class was stalling because some people didn't have the built-up knowledge to grasp what came naturally for some of the rest of us. That said, that's probably a con for all boot camps more so than this particular one, since Level gets its name from its attempt to solve this problem by dividing people into separate levels.

The pros:

I came out of Level with confidence. I knew what I needed to be able to do, and I knew how to do them. Coming from a self-taught background, that was huge. Having a group of committed people to share the journey with, while it might warp your own timeline, is very encouraging. I ended up getting a job through a peer who attended the boot camp with me, so that turned out well, too.

Level has been taking more and more steps to connect students and alumni with job recruiters and hiring managers, which was very much appreciated. They do care, and I thank everyone involved for all they've been doing.

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I took the Level Set class (Level’s introductory program) in Boston as prep for grad school and it was fabulous. I had no statistics background and it definitely provided a strong foundation in statistics and also incorporated skills in Excel and a bit of SQL.

This is one of my favorite classes I’ve ever taken in all my years as a student. The professor was an expert at teaching stats and data analysis and was really dedicated to her students’ success.

My undergraduate degree was in fine art so I hadn’t taken advanced math classes. This class was really difficult for me but not overwhelmingly so. Students who had taken stats years ago and were using this course as a refresher found it too easy. If you’ve taken statistics before, even if it was years ago, I would recommend  jumping into the Level Core bootcamp vs. the Level Set program.

I was able to take this course seriously because of its association with Northeastern University. I’ve tried other bootcamp type courses from small, independent companies, and maybe it’s just a personal thing, but if I don’t want to put an institution’s name on my resume, I have trouble motivating myself to work.

Anyway, I highly recommend Level Set for people looking to get into data analytics who lack a stats background.

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This was one bizzare experience! This course is fairly new for the school, along with a teacher that just started teaching, along with a curriculum that tries to put too much into too short a period, along with a flawed method of pedagogy. 

I took this course because it was backed by Northeastern(or so I thought)? When I called them to ask about its location, the operator had to put me on hold and ask around before she got the right number to transfer(that's the first warning sign). They are so new that their own school doesnt know about them?

Then when I attended I found a STRENUOUS, DEMANDING, and RELENTLESS pace where they covered Statistics, and R and Machine Learning and SQL in about 5 months. Each of these subjects requires a semester or more by itself! I realize that this is a "bootcamp" but they should emphasize the basics more than advanced topics! Make people feel comfortable about the program instead of cramming as much material down your throat and seeing what sticks!

Now this course is at a fast pace but what makes it even worse is that they have no clue on how to teach this course. The instructor is a very nice guy and very patient but he just rambles on about this and that(he's totally new to teaching) and then surprise! Gives us a test. This course is non-accredited and yet they want you to take tests throughout the program. On top of the stress of this requirement, they will give you MASSIVE assignments for your projects. We had to learn an entirely new programming language called R and then within 3 weeks do a VERY difficult project about some bullshit baseball stat program called Stattleship. If I had 4 months worth of training I could've pulled it off but it was too much for me and most of the other students. 

This course gave me stomach upset and sleepless nights. I thought it was uncredited but apparently they want to "use your score" for the future when they do get accredited by Northeastern! What bullshit! They did put a lot of work into their online training materials but it was too much at one time! The instructor, again there was only one instructor, did not use the tools that we were supposed to learn because he was uncomfortable with them!! This guy would use the command line for just about everything when we had to use R studio, SQL workbench and more importantly Tableau! He didn't even teach Tableau because he knew nothing about it and then went on to slam it!!! Can you imagine being in a course where you are using one tool and the instructor is using another because he's scared of using what you're doing???!!!! 

OK. Some of the positives are that I did learn about data science to a certain extent. I did network with some of my fellow students. I was forced to deal with stress at an unbelievable level. These folks don't have any stats about job placement, or how many jobs are in the industry, or what the employment picture is in Boston. I did get some job assistance but not on PLACEMENT in the industry. They helped with my resume but not actually promoted it to people that were looking for data scientists? 

One thing they did which was interesting is that speakers came into class from time to time and gave speeches about their jobs..most were interesting. However, another failure of our meek and mild-mannered instructor is that he doesn't step up as a moderator. What shouldve been 45-55 minutes speech lasted an hour and half becuase he refused to interrupt the speaker. I think he was grateful for the time taken because he was exhausted from working during the day and didn't want to do this anymore? I rarely saw him prepare for class and he taught in a haphazard fashion? 

A teacher makes up 95% of the course....no matter how much hype that is given, if you have a medicore teacher then the whole course is a failure. I never saw any of the higher ups attend the course and we only had one substitute instructor who was a bit soft-spoken too...so not a very good teacher as well.

Teachers are good when they are loud! They need to take charge of the class and have a clear vision for what they are going to do for the next 4 hours! These folks are just stumbling around trying to leap from one subject to another. It's possible that this course may be revamped because they are on a learning curve. Their is nobody above 35 at this place and their lack of experience shows. They are getting their act together but for now I would hold on going to this school until a lot of deficiencies are straightened out?

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When I first learned of Level, I was very excited by the idea of an in-person part-time course. But the limited information available on Level made me realize that Northeastern isn't quite ready to break into the bootcamp business. Here's why:

1) The biggest red flag is that there is no information on Levels website, especially when it comes to statistics about the success of Level grads. Mind you, the level set and leve core total around 13k+. 

-  Job placement rate, average starting salary, and salary increase is nowhere to be found on the website. Go to Thinkfuls website for example which boasts a 95% job placement rate and a 20k increase in salary. No I am not a Thinkful student - but I just want to point out that there are other bootcamps that provide these statistics and its alarming that Northeastern does not. And for a course on data, its rather ironic isnt it? 

- Level Set does not offer a schedule for its course other than it begins in the last week of January. No information about when the classes meet and for how long. 

-  My application was ignored. I applied and was invited to schedule an interview with provided time-slots. No one called. 

- The curriculum is 4 LINES. Yes, if you request a curriculum via their website for Level Set, you will receive an unusually short email for a $5000 course, 20/hrs a week

Moral of the story is - if youre interested in attending a bootcamp, make sure you know what you're paying for and make sure that information is upfront. 

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I whole-heartedly recommend LEVEL to anyone who is looking to further their technical skills in regards to data analytics. You will learn a MASSIVE amount of information; I learned more in 8 weeks than I did in 3 years at my previous job!

A word of caution, do not sign up unless you are ABSOLUTELY sure you can commit atleast 50 hours/week to this program. If you plan to only attend the class, then I would not recommend signing up. You have to devote a good bit of your own time just to keep up with the pace; because the truth is, at one point or another, the classwork can and most likely will pile up on you. 

That being said, it is a wonderful program. You will meet A LOT people. Whether its through weekly guest lecutres or Career Day at the end of the program, LEVEL is an excellent way to rub shoulders with analytical-minded people across all industries. 

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I found that Level Edu offered enough context to help me understand data analytics and tools better than I would've expected given the time commitment. After completing the program I felt confident in my ability to understand the best tool for the job and use it adequately. It also prepared me to understand the tools that require further preparation like advanced machine learning. It's important to understand the limitations of your knowledge, it's a part of feeling confident using the skills for data applications. I can't say that Level is for everyone because it requires a big commitment with an intense schedule, but it was 100% the best decision for me, personally, to move forward with a leap in data analytics.

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