Springboard

It took me a bit longer than the estimated 6 months to complete my course with Springboard, but it was worth the time. Rigorous curriculum, challenging tasks, and one-on-one mentor support would be good enough reason to choose Springboard. But on top of all that they offer excellent career services. Highly recommended!

Great mentor support.  Career support is good, but can improve. Need more original course contents, and provide data close or like the data you get in a real job for projects.

 Strengths about the Springboard UX Design career track:
- A great overview of important topics to help you think like a UX designer
- A mentor to keep you focused on the curriculum and to help navigate the UX industry and process
- Incredible career coaches who will help you devise strategies for your job search efforts
- 2 UX projects that follow the ideal UX design process and a real-world project with an organization that allows you to flex those new design skills
- Flexibility with the course and target finish dates during difficult times

Don't expect that a 6 month bootcamp will land you a UX job right now. This should be seen as more of an introductory to UX design. The bootcamp is easy but time consuming. The real work happens after you finish. 

The springboard Machine Learning course was fun and my 1-on-1 with the mentor was superb and the career coaches they give you access to are amazingly helpful. Though the course is extremely hard and requires a lot of time to dedicate if you want to keep up with their study plan that they give you to suggest the pace you should take the course

Highly recommend Springboard UX Career course!  The curriculum is well structured and the biggest reason for my recommendation would be having a privilege to have unlimited (1 and 1) mentor calls to exceed my UX skills throughout my project.

I did exhaustive research before picking a Data Science Bootcamp. I looked online, in-person -- even considered the DIY route. I landed at Springboard, and I was so pleased with (even surprised by) my experience. 

Springboard excels at combining a solid curriculum with hands-on learning, but what set them apart (and what surprised me) were their weekly 1-on-1 mentor meetings and rigorous career coaching focus. I wasn't alone simply learning how to become a data scientist. I was part of an encouraging community that prepared me to confidently create machine learning projects, network with the data science community and apply for jobs the day I left the program. Would highly recommend.

The courses are very well put together with a lot of great content from different sources. Everyone I interacted with was very kind and helpful. I learned a lot from my time spent in it! And while I was taking courses I was paid to design a website! These are very marketable skills. A con would probably be that it is a bootcamp, so you really need to make sure you have the time, energy, and mental capacity to put the work into it. I personally found that working while trying to do the courses was very difficult.

Pros:
- The course work is extensive and to me seemed to be equivalent to a Masters Degree.
- EXCELLENT mentor support and without which I would have given up. This is a key factor in my completion. Previously I tried the pathetic Udacity Business Analytics course and they lacked mentor and course work support.

Cons:
- Timeline is very aggressive.
- Would love to have placement support as part of the course (this is now being offered due the covid situation).
- Job interviews guaranteed but placement is extremely difficult if you dont have a PhD or Masters.

The program was very beneficial. It allowed me to see various aspects within the world of Data Science. The course offered a little bit of everything to at least get me familiar with what I may see once I am able to dive into my career. Considering there are many avenues to pursue from a career prescriptive, myself (or someone ) will probably need to find outside resources to dive deeper depending on what they'd like to fully immerse themselves in.  Coming out of the program, I feel that I have a strong understanding of Python, SQL, as well as machine learning techniques. The main wealth of knowledge came from working on my 2 capstone projects. It was within these 2 projects that I was able to use information learned from the coursework as well as learn to properly research other techniques and/or look for deeper learning. All the while, I was able to work with my mentor as I made mistakes and more importantly learned from them. A suggestion I would have for future students of the program is to work with a networking coach early on in the process. I spoke with a mentor on a weekly basis but I somewhat slacked on the network side of things as I feared I wasn't ready to "talk the talk". Looking back on it, I should have bunch more effort into this aspect, earlier on instead of leaving a majority of it to the end. The networking coaching if very beneficial to help prepare for life after the course. They offer very good networking tips. I truly enjoyed my experience!

I have applied to Springboards Data analytics program early this January and I must say that it is amazing. From the mentors to the career coaches, they do there best for you to succeed and be able to launch a new career. Every week I would have a one on one meeting with my mentor who doesn't give me answers but guild me on the right path to get to correct solution to the hypothesis we are trying to solve for that week. It is not only tools for programing but Springboard offers you the tools and inside knowledge on how to land a great job in the outside world. This is a great program and I would highly recommend anyone who wants a change in their career to choose springboard. 

Loved my experience!! Would absolutely recommend. 

Great Experience. Great mentorship! Awesome Program! 

It sounds like a cliche, but you get out what you put in. The curriculum is robust, however there are many opportunities to do extra reading and projects, and I would highly suggest doing this.  Springboard provides you with infinite amount of resources!   

I have started the Data Science Career Track in October 2019. It is basically a 6-month Data Science program with 4 mock interviews and 2 Capstone Projects. Even if you can work at your own pace, you need to put the dedication of 15/24 hours per week to finish the course within 6 months. However, there are options of a break from 1 to 3 weeks and a three month extension for free if you managed to finish at least 50% of your course during the original 6-month period. You have two attempts to pass each mock interview if you want to maintain your job guarantee at the end of the course. Career coaches however are very supportive and informative, especially on how to ace your interviews and how to build your portfolio and network in finding a job.  Customer service is also excellent in answering your inquiries in an informative and timely manner. 

Pros:
- Offers unlimited mentor advice through the curriculum
- Excellent on how to build your job portfolio and network as well as how to ace your interviews

Cons:
- Some assignment instructions are vague. Needed extra guidance from mentor and Google search to understand how to complete some assignments.

UX, the wild wild west of the tech world. The field carries much different weight depending on who you ask. But, I am here to tell you that UX matters, and Springboard teaches it in a manner that leaves you prepared to take the next step in your career transition. What I loved most was the support I got from Springboard instructors, career coaches, and the student advisors. They truly cared about my success. There's even a Slack group dedicated to the cohorts.

My end date was initially in April, and COVID was wreaking havoc in the US. I was also in a bit of a pinch with my capstone project because my initial iteration was very poor and I needed to do a total redesign (my visual design skills were still amateurish). In the end, Springboard gave me a 3-month extension on the coursework, and then extended my completion date by another few weeks to give me time to complete missing assignments as I was preparing for my final mock interviews (which are effectively the final exams).

The best way to learn something is by doing, and Springboard encourages that mentality in its students. UX bootcamps are in a controversial period because there is no clear standard for UX education. In my opinion, Springboard is high quality and one of the closest you can get to some kind of UX 'higher education.' As UX continues to evolve, Springboard will need to keep up. Some of the course materials are a few years old, but Springboard is careful to bring to light the many nuances in the industry, even if it's just briefly. The course teaches design thinking, just one of the many UX frameworks. It's hard to include everything UX has to offer and make an effort to keep students on a 6-month graduation track. There is much more to learn, but so long as you remain aware of that, I think Springboard is well worth your time if you are looking for a well structured curriculum that gives you plenty of support.

The UX career track combined with books that have become UX staples such as The Elements of User Experience, Rocket Surgery Made Easy, and the Design of Everyday Things is a great basis for anyone with a designer's mind to feel confident in the field. 

Overall, I think it's a great program to learn the fundamentals and basics of UX. But I especially really liked the mentorship they provided along with the course. For someone who's transitioning into the field it was nice having a mentor who, not only gave me constructive feedback on my projects, but gave me practical industry related advice as well. Their student advisors are also very helpful and offer great support!

And yes, the curriculum consists of a lot of articles and videos that you can find yourself online. And I also wish that they offered more videos than articles because it's definitely is a lot of reading. But Springboard's UX curriculum is formatted in a way that offers the structure that I really needed. Without this structure, I wouldn't have known where to start when learning about the field of UX.

But here's my overall review in summary: Pros:
- Offers unlimited mentor advice through the curriculum
- Complete 3 portfolio ready projects
- Work at your own pace
- Mini-internship experience with an actual company that you can add to your portfolio and resume
- A cheaper option compared to other bootcamps

Cons:
- There's a lot of reading and not enough video instruction
- Some assignment instructions are vague and I needed extra guidance from my mentor to understand how to complete some assignments
(These are minor complaints tho, I really had a good experience with Springboard overall. 10/10 would recommend!!)

Message me on Linkedin if you have more questions!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/carmela-rebancos/

I reviewed a lot of bootcamps before I ended up with a Springboard and I’m absolutely  happy with it.
Wonderful customer service and career coaches, great curriculum, studying at your own path,  3 portfolio projects and lots of connections at the end of the course. Best decision I could make. Definitely recommend if you would like to make a career change

Overall, this was a really good, solid program. I am a trained graphic designer but have been UX-curious for several years. I had done a few Lynda/LinkedIn courses as well as joined the Interactive Design Foundation and felt like this course would be a piece of cake. It wasn't. 
The course plan was excellent: it covered a LOT - far more than in any of the courses I had taken until that point. My mentor was rigorous, too. I have been a designer for 20+ years and have a fantastic work ethic. But he pushed back on me and challenged my decisions (all in a good way). 
There were only 2 negatives: you will NOT complete this course in 6 months. Even if you were a full time student, there will be interviews and other logistics that you will have to set up where you are at the mercy of external factors. And, most important, because this is a *currated* course that draws mostly from other's work, it can at times lack consistency. It can be minor, but I felt that if you pay attention, you can read 2 pieces that may contradict each other. Without recognition from Springboard and guidance, it can be a little confusing. 

The course material was to the point and easy to understand. I learned at an amazing pace, and took some extra time with the material I was having difficulty with, but still stayed head of schedule.