Thinkful

An introduction to the data science space that under delivers and leaves a lot to be desired. Would I do the program again knowing what I do now? Absolutely not. Most of this material can be found online for free and what you get from the program does not justify the cost at all. If you are the type of person who needs to be pushed to make it through course work or to learn new material, there may be some value here for you. But on that note, I'd suggest taking courses at a local community college or through a larger FANG company's free/paid coursework. Google & Amazon in particular has some interesting courses cover data science and analytics that I think would be looked favorably upon by potential employers.

Thinkful's name holds weight to a very limited number of employers. All of my interviews required me to pitch the 6 month course I paid for just as much as myself. Honestly, during my job search I noticed entry level positions for data science and analytics were flooded by new boot camp graduates. Will you find a job leveraging what you put together in this boot camp and by searching? Probably yes - all my cohort members are currently working, though it took many of them over 6 months to find a job. Some even took unpaid internships to help boost their resume. For best results, expect to spend 40 hours a week applying and trying to actively network over LinkedIn. Would these people have gotten the same jobs even if they didn't do the boot camp? Speaking for myself and 2 others, absolutely. I checked on another cohort member's job today and he works in HR in a non-technical capacity.

My biggest issue here is the ongoing cost of this program is not worth it to me. Due to the program being full-time and me not having enough savings, I signed up for the ISA with a living stipend ($1k a month). Since the cost of the program is ~$6k up front, I figured I was in the hole about $12k. It's humiliating to admit I didn't read the contract carefully - I discovered after the fact it would be 15% of my gross income (which makes a HUGE difference vs net). Thinkful did not make what I was getting into abundantly clear. Now I'm saddled with a monthly debt where the total lifetime payment cap comes out to $40k, which I'll end up paying the entirety of. This eclipses how much student loans I currently have from my accredited bachelors degree by 4x.

The big kicker here? My current job was offered because of my experience prior to the Thinkful program. I've moved into product space because of my background in writing and real estate. I'm using none of the skills I picked up in the program, nor did they help me score this job. But I'm still paying 15% of my GROSS paycheck monthly to Thinkful. After taxes and deductions this turns into roughly 1/3 of my take home. I'll be paying this 15% for the next 3 years. It's honestly nightmarish and shameful. It gives me massive stress every night thinking about how am I going to pay this and afford a home / car / child. My other option is to make under the threshold ($40k GROSS annually) for another 15 months to have the contract dissolved (24 months total, I went 8 months after graduating without any job offers). Even though that decision would heavily impact my career growth, it's one I'm actively entertaining.

The administrative aspect of Thinkful was also very disappointing. It feels like course progression is just a checkbox for most of the academic outcomes team and they aren't interested in if you retained the material, only if you got through the graded portions completely in a fixed timeframe. This fed into the whole job assistance aspect which is covered in my bullet list of details below. Prior to writing this review, I reached out to Thinkful airing some of my grievances but received no response from their team.


Program details:

• Instructors - I was happy with both instructors provided to me during the course. They were knowledgeable and experienced in the industry, very intelligent, and generous with their time in terms of helping. I have good relationships with both and honestly this is the best thing that came out of this program for me.
• Mentors - went from bad to good. Initially they set me up with someone located in India. The gentleman was very nice and responsive, however I could hardly understand anything he was saying. The language barrier was so severe (plus his schedule was 12 hours separated from me) that I had to request a mentor change. I was given a new mentor who was US based and I liked them quite a bit.
• Job Placement - Terrible and disappointing. This is what I initially signed up for the most help with but I felt this process was rushed and I wasn't really provided with any real job opportunities that matched what I was aiming for. I signed up for the data science program to get help finding a job as a data scientist. This didn't happen. Most of the "help" provided was management of my time applying and filling out a job tracking spreadsheet. I came in expecting more industry partnerships - especially given how much this program cost. I honestly don't think the job placement aspect is carefully considered. It was "encouraged" that I list Thinkful as a place I worked at in my resume to help boost my qualifications, but this didn't seem to have much of an impact. After 8 months in the program they had helped schedule 3 interviews for data analyst / technical writer positions - none of which I got. Finally after 9 months, out of desperation and my own efforts, I got a $50k a year job as an analyst at a mortgage loan servicer. The program skills applied? A tiny amount of SQL I could have learned on my own.
• Current Career Prospects - much better than when I started, however my current position has little to do with what I was "schooled" for. Due to my past real estate experience and my bachelors in English, a recruiter for my current company reached out and interviewed me. Luckily, this job paid substantially more than the previous analyst position and I have great job prospects going forward.
• Cost of Course: I believe the refundable portion is $6k for the full time course. I am paying (all in all) $40,000 over the next four years on my GROSS salary. Why am I paying this much from a course I got so little from? I signed up (out of desperation) for the ISA living stipend program because I was literally starving while taking this course full time. The deep irony? One of my cohort members was able to get his initial payment fully refunded because they were unable to provide him with a job in 6 months. 2 months later he got a job (through his own hard work and network connections) paying over $100k a year. I'm saddled with an absurd amount of debt working a job that has nothing to do with what I learned from this immersion course. My salary will be docked 15% for the next 3 years, heavily impacting my day to day life. I'm paying roughly $1k a month to this ISA and it's really crippling. I'd have much less of a problem with it if Thinkful provided me with ongoing resources for better paying positions or remotely contributed to the acquisition of my current job. But alas, they didn't. Honestly after that 6month period they kind of dumped me off to a recruiter (who no longer works for them) and completely stopped checking in once I got the $50k a year job even though I expressed a strong desire to have more jobs sent my way.
• Curriculum - Mediocre with some good and some alarming. In general, It's nice I can access the material online it at any time, and it seems they are making quality of life upgrades with a new inclusion of videos. I'm not sure if an actual educator put together the form and flow of the course, as I often felt overwhelmed and scrambling to find external resources that made more sense. I'd honestly say the majority of my learning came from external resources with some feedback from the professor / my mentor. The hosted jupyter notebooks are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the material presented; the vast majority of the information and detail was provided directly by the professor with assistance from their slides. I do not have access to the instructors videos if they were even recorded. I do have the slides but they are fairly vague and do not hold up well stand alone. The alarming from the curriculum? Grading is a subjective experience depending on the grader - some were more lenient than others. Some made absolutely no sense in their feedback and it was clear English was not their first language. Even more alarming? I found some gradable material on the site that was completely plagiarized from another Data Scientist's blog. I made this clear to my instructor who was incensed about that occurring and worked to have it removed. 

In terms of support staff, Thinkful is a great community of people that want you to succeed in this field. The majority of instructors are understanding of your position and are patient in trying to help or direct you to people who can help. My mentor was nice and I gained some insights into the field. The career services staff are also very knowledgeable about current hiring practices and are a great resource as well!

As someone who attended business school and had experience in Excel and Python, I felt a little underwhelmed with the Python portion of the curriculum. That was one of my main reasons for going through the program. Python is at the very end, and you spend only 15% of your time working with it. A good portion of the curriculum is spent on learning "soft skills" as they say, which means your assignments are building a resume, networking on LinkedIn, practicing interviewing, and presenting PowerPoints. 

The other main reason I chose this program is because of the tuition refund guarantee. WARNING: in order to fully qualify for the guarantee, you must jump through all their requirements for the learning course AND the careers course (6 months after graduation). This is a total of 10 months following their policies, which are quite restrictive. To me, it seems they built their policies so that you could be hired ASAP rather than working with you to find a quality job in your desired industry. Most of the jobs you will see are startup tech companies, or big names in business, tech, or finance (because everyone is hiring "data analysts").

Also, the cost of this program is very high and you're not getting the campus experience that they had before the pandemic. So, if you already have a bachelor's/business experience, I would recommend looking into other self-taught programs that are cheaper or W3 schools' online tutorials until they start offering in-person again.

A year ago I never would have imagined that I would be landing UX Designer interviews with tech companies and now I've not only interviewed with multiple companies but I've also accepted an offer for an amazing position. I wouldn't have been able to do it without Thinkful but I also wouldn't have been able to do it without grit. This is a tough program but it pays off. If you're interested I would go for it but you have to be prepared to put in a lot of work. 

The course material is more text heavy than I anticipated, so be prepared to read a lot. Something Thinkful does really well is provide a very detailed prep course that you must pass to be accepted into the program. This gives you great insight into how the curriculum is structured and gives you an idea of if you'd mesh well with the learning style. At times I felt burnt out and that I could have used more structure in the lectures. But if you leverage your contact with the instructors, TA's and your mentor you will get an A+ education. 

The best thing about this program in my opinion is the post-graduate support. I cannot stress enough how important it is to accept the critiques and redirections from your career coach. They have job searching down to a science. At times I felt uncomfortable with networking and cold outreach during the job search process, but with the help of my career coach I was able to overcome these hurdles and land an amazing role as a Product Owner. If you're not sure about your path and your direction I would say that you still have a lot to gain from this program. I studied UX/UI Design with Thinkful and landed in a different role that I'm even more happy with, and studying UX was how I ended up there. I learned technical skills in the program, but I also learned how to work in a new industry which opened doors for me that I wouldn't have thought possible.

Sometimes the curriculum seemed backwards or just not planned quite right but I wouldn't let that deter you. Nothing is perfect and if you make the most of this program you can change your life and they will help you at every step along your journey.

Hello!

I graduated from Thinkful in March 2021 and found work by September 2021. 

There's a lot to like about the Thinkful Data Science program. 

Pro:
I was paired with a fantastic instructor who wanted to see me become successful and was passionate about it. They have a host of other very talented technical staff that can help you with code. 

Con:
They were using a "Free-meium" version of slack for students while I was there. This means to you as a student if you ask for advice/help on Slack, that conversation is only available for a limited amount of time. I recommend you save all communications you want to refer back to in a file on your computer. 

Pro: 
The job assistance wasn't what I expected, but made the program worth it. I was paired with a career coach who was a recruiter in the tech sector for about five years. She was pivotal to capping off the Thinkful experience as an overall positive one. Be prepared to work hard, though and you make it. 

Con (Kinda):
The curriculum was all free stuff you could find online on your own and for a lot of the projects/work I did in the program, I had to look up things outside of the curriculum. There is something to be said and appreciated about all of this information being formulated and put together in one place, which is an activity that could take a long time on its own and if you're not already data science-savvy you will likely find a hard time figuring out where to start. 

Pro: 
The community Thinkful creates is great. Reaching out to alumni after program graduation was easy (once you mustered the strength to reach out) and you make great connections that way. Plus, the workshops they have are informative and great ways to learn about how you can apply the concepts you're learning/trying to wrap your head around. 

Con:
Communication with the actual Thinkful staff was always a mystery. My mentor and I often found that with procedural program items, we were in the dark. But once you get a hold of someone, it's friendly and you can get your questions answered. 

Overall, Thinkful is a fantastic program that proved to be an incredibly valuable investment for me.

The pros:
• Mentors - the individuals who assisted me were all incredibly informative and supportive of me.  Scherry offered me fantastic feedback and moral support through the program.
• Academic Success Advisor - Taylor was very empathetic and easy to talk to. She was very compassionate during my time at Thinkful due to several major life events that occurred. Very easy to work with.
• Career Coaching - Tom was a great career coach who works diligently to provide as many resources and chances to improve individuals' experiences as humanly possibly. He was very helpful throughout the job hunt and I've been incredibly grateful for his assistance.
• Assessment Graders - All of the individuals who graded major assessments provided invaluable feedback. They went above and beyond the call of duty for how to improve and grow.
• The resources available to me throughout the program were invaluable.

Needs work:
• I feel like the communication between departments and enrolled students could have been better. Oftentimes there were issues that were occurring with the program that I had to find out the hard way after I'd wasted countless hours working off of a rubric or assignment - only to find out that the rubric was either incorrect, or the assignment wasn't even applicable anymore.

•CHECKPOINT ASSIGNMENTS: I strongly feel that the checkpoint assignments need a serious overview. There were not nearly enough human-graded assignments to ensure that I was properly learning the material.
- There were also numerous assignments where the checkpoint hadn't been updated with the current course material. Thus what I was trying to work on proved to be irrelevant and, again, a waste of my time.
• Grading of checkpoint assignments: When checkpoints were graded by humans versus automatically checked off by the system, the turnaround time was very frustrating. Thinkful promises that assignments would be graded w/in 48 hours of submittal. However, that rarely happened. Oftentimes I would have to reach out about when I could expect my assignments to be graded so I could move forward.
-There were also a few times where the graders hadn't reviewed the assignment they were grading and would fail or provide feedback that wasn't relevant.


Things to Consider:
• Isolation: The flex plan is very isolating. I definitely urge students to utilize the slack channel. Find a buddy to work with. Even if you aren't at the same point in the curriculum as you, just having someone who understands what you're going through can really enhance your experience. 
• This course is very difficult. But it's worth it. You need to be able to have the self-discipline to get through it, but also the self-compassion to give yourself a realistic pace and allow for breaks when you can. This isn't a sprint, it's like hiking the AT mentally. You don't really know what to expect, but you know that if you keep on pushing - you'll make it through. 
• Always look for new ways to learn and forget about the best. Everybody is different and has different interests. Listen to the feedback that you're given and follow through - even if you don't always agree. :)  

I completed the Engineering flex program in August 2021. I came in with no programming experience and working a full-time job and part-time job. My goal was to go through this program and get a job in the field ASAP. There are a lot of pros to this program and some cons.
 
Pros:

• You are able to do this during your free time (about 20-25 hours a week).
• The program went through both frontend (React, JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and backend (Node.js, Express)
•  It started from scratch which helps those who don't have any background
• The mentors were good
• You come away with 4-5 good portfolio pieces
• The timeline they give you helps to keep on pace for graduation

Cons:

• Make sure you gel with your mentor. I had 3 different ones throughout my time. I chose to get a new one after the first month. He didn't help me at all and didn't really care that he wasn't helpful. The second mentor got a new job and left. The third mentor was great
• The mentor sessions were twice a week for only 30 min. This was good that we met twice a week but sometimes it wasn't enough time to cover what I was hoping to cover.
• The projects are the same for all of the students which doesn't set you apart 
• They had support called ThinkChat that helped when you were stuck, however, half the time they just wrote the code for me without any explanation and the other half of the time they didn't know how to solve it.
• They only had videos for about 30-40% of the material. This was a con for me because I learn best when someone explains it to me (like a video). So the other 60-70% I had a very hard time understanding because I just read the material and then was supposed to understand it at a level where I could implement it on a deeper level. 

It was very challenging and times where I wanted to quit. I kept going and finished it up. When choosing a bootcamp, I would definitely think through how you learn best. This program is great for those who can learn by reading and doing. If you learn in different ways you can definitely do this program, but you may not learn as well. I look forward to finding a job and using the skills I learned in this program.

I begin this course with Bloc, which had been acquired by Thinkful in 2018, and by the time I graduated my program had been discontinued. It would have been nice to have some official communication about this transition but no statement was issued. Further frustrations of being a student in that period were that some provided resources became inaccessible, parts of the curriculum had not been updated (hooks in React for example), and some features like office hours were discontinued and replaced with underdeveloped resources.

That being said, the Thinkful resources I gained access to seemed far superior and much better maintained than the Bloc ones. The Discord channel was quite active and Thinkful staff participated and fielded questions with speedy replies. Academic success was quick to respond and helpful with any part of your program outside of technical issues.
 
1-on-1 mentor sessions are extremely brief, so I would encourage students to change mentors if they feel they don't have an excellent match. Additionally I encourage students to come well-prepared (have all questions written out and prioritized from high to low) and to dictate the pace of you meetings.

One other thing I would mention is you should expect to utilize (and possibly even pay for) a lot of resources outside of the curriculum. They would probably say that this is supposed to train you for what a developer's process of learning new technologies is like and this is certainly true, if a bit jarring. It's important to realize that you're paying less for the curriculum and more for the timeline to keep you moving/motivated and the community of other students, your academic success team, your 1-on-1 mentoring, and the career services.

Which brings me to the last point and for me the real high point of the program, the career services. This is what will really help you convert those skills into a meaningful career. My career coach has been truly amazing, and they provide you with more resources than you could even consume. While you could conceivably learn coding and build a portfolio on your own, finding a first job is extremely challenging and where I think the value of Thinkful's program really shines.

In summation, though my experience was a little strange and frustrating going through the Bloc transition, I would not hesitate to recommend the Thinkful program. Their resources are vast and if you are highly motivated (which you will need to be) they will provide you the tools necessary to succeed. 

My time at Thinkful definitely served its purpose. I wanted to get a job that was remote, would utilize my talents, increase my earning potential, and reduce the amount of time spent in school and student debt. This program provided me with the tools to achieve just this. I recently was hired in my field for a full-time position and am excited to see where it takes me! The pros are the payment arrangements offered, which include a possible monthly stipend (dependent on certain criteria and approval) which allowed me to go to school without working for the duration of the program. The cost of the program is nothing compared to the cost of years of school I might’ve had to go through otherwise, and I consider the amount of money I’ll be making in the field to more than compensate for that. The program is intense and requires a lot of motivation on the student’s part, but worth it. You will come away with the skills needed to enter the field as long as you very seriously apply yourself and maintain attendance.

Cons would be the inconsistency in grading, which Thinkful is aware of and has been improving even throughout the program I attended. Thinkful will listen as long as you communicate if you come across an issue, so it wasn’t ever a major problem for me. Also, it’s important to note that the UX/UI field is not easy to break into as a brand new designer, so expect to put in a ton of applications, but to also be fully supported and guided throughout the process by your Thinkful career coach. I didn’t expect to be employed until 3-6 months of applying but I was hired within 2.5 months due to the assistance of my coach and my own hard work.

Don’t give up! It will be worth it in the end, and Thinkful will be there the entire way to help you succeed.