Galvanize

Here we are. One week after graduating from Galvanize / Hack Reactor and I have to say that I'm still in shock and awe as to what I just accomplished over the past three months (technically 7 months since I went through a prep course and a pre course... Read More prior to the boot camp). For those looking to have a big change in their lives with software engineering and / or data science and are curious about the pros and cons to each specific boot camp, I hope this review helps in your decision to look into Galvanize / HR. From the get-go, I knew I was in for a long and challenging road. I have absolutely no prior technical experience. My previous experience stems entirely from the arts, with music and film and a communications major from my college in 2012. Prior to late 2020, I had never written a line of code and I couldn't have even told you what a line of code would represent or how it worked. My first week of Hack Reactor was very tough to put it honestly. I considered dropping out the second day. I thought I would never be smart enough to learn this information. My self-doubt and 'imposter syndrome' was at an all-time high. It's also noteworthy to mention that I generally pick things up pretty quickly. Unfortunately I realized that coding was not one of these things. Through the current seniors (at the time, I was referred to as a junior), I was reminded and guided towards not giving up, not quitting and just pushing through. I was told that this feeling happens with practically everyone. Something that was actually later confirmed. I decided to stay in the boot camp and relentlessly study. Failure / dropping out wasn't an option. It's a reasonable assumption to think that I struggled as I went - this is true. While it felt like others were picking things up quicker than me, I used my hard work ethic to continue to do whatever I could to learn, absorb and grow, despite feeling like I wasn't learning quick enough. As time went on, I started to get into the flow of things and feel a bit more comfortable with the course. During the half-way mark about six weeks in, we had to take a gating assessment which allows us to move forward to the senior phase. I took the assessment and felt unsure about how I did. I found out that I passed and several days after, to my surprise, I found out I passed with flying colors. I started to get a little easier on myself with my self-doubt as I continued through the senior phase and towards graduation. **Don't let this gating assessment turn you away from HR. I've been told other boot camps have similar gating assessments as well, I think they're pretty common throughout the industry*** Along my journey, I realized numerous things that while I can't directly say whether or not other boot camps have this, I know that my experiences with them in Hack Reactor were some of the best of any schooling I've ever had (if not THE best). -The people - The group of people inside of my cohort were the most intelligent, humorous, kind, funny and well-rounded humans I've ever gotten to know. I was in awe every day jumping into our cohort and feeling the love and support and energy from this exceptional group of people. I don't think I could have (or would have wanted to) continue through the boot camp without this group. A group that I'm also proud to call friends. -The projects - I've been told some of the content that HR offers isn't offered anywhere else such as the SDC (systems design capstone), which is a project built entirely on the backend of a full-stack application, where you use databases, instances, load balancers, servers and much more to fully integrate the backend to a front-end website. I've also been told by further along HR alumni that this was the project that recruiters were the most interested in hearing about during interviews. -The community - I'm not sure exactly how this works at other bootcamps, but HR offers a wonderful opportunity for students who have recently graduated to stay another cycle of a future boot camp and be the "help desk" for current students, to assist them with questions and guide them towards their own coding discoveries (never directly giving them the answers). This is powerful for multiple reasons but a primary one being the continued growth and learning of recently alumni who may feel like they still have a lot to learn. -The goals - I attribute my success to this bullet point. HR is NOT just about your technical skills. It's much more than that. Generally they discuss the 'four pillars' including technical, social, hire-ability and self-management. As I mentioned that I have no technical background, what I do feel my strong points are include soft-skills with networking, hire-ability, self-management and social. This helped in my chance to actually shine in this course even though I wouldn't consider myself anywhere near my peers in the technical area. In summary, Hack Reactor of course may not be for everyone. Every boot camp I'm sure has something to offer everyone. But I can't say enough outstandingly wonderful and positive things about them. I'm sure I've left off a lot of information (even though I wrote a novel haha), but the gist is this - as I mentioned, I have no technical background. And to be honest, I still don't feel like the world's greatest engineer. I still have my self-doubts, I still have my imposter syndrome, I still wish aspects of what I code came to me easier, but the fact is, they don't and I've had to work twice as hard, if not 3 or 4 times as hard to have these concepts solidify for me vs others. But what's so incredible here is that if you're willing to work, work relentlessly and prove that you want it bad enough, you will succeed. Galvanize / HR saw this in me and after I applied, they offered me that position I mentioned above as a help desk staff, where I get the opportunity to continue to grow and sharpen my skills while helping educate students going through the program now. This proves their position that it's not all about the technical skills. Of course, those skills are important and I won't say I didn't work hard on them; I did and do every single day. But those skills are only half the battle into the workspace and into the interviews. Thus what I do offer is patience, fun energy and a desire to help students grow and learn in a fun yet challenging work environment, which is a sought after piece of the puzzle. YOU CAN DO THIS! LEARN FROM THE BEST AT GALVANIZE / HACK REACTOR :)

Came into the course with very little coding experience in Python but some good fundamentals in Math. The prep course was very useful and set me up really well to start the course. Once we began the actual course it help a very fast tempo and you really... Read More need to be focused to keep up with all of the material. Lucky for us, the instructors and assistant instructors are dedicated to helping you understand the material and complete your projects! The course, material, and instructors are top notch but you need to be dedicated to the course. Once the course is complete and your portfolio is ready its time for the job search. There is a dedicated employment advisor that prepares you for all aspects of the job search throughout the course and then is dedicating to helping you for a year after the course is over. This was such an important part of me finding a job and I could not say enough good things about them. This course was one of the best decisions I have made for breaking into Data Science. Thank you all so much!

Taking this immersive was one of the bet choices I’ve made during my academic career! I’ve learned so much about Data Science and not just theory like most University courses would be, but application too. I would 100% recommend this course to anyone... Read More trying to get into the Data Science field or people just interested in how to apply Data Science to what they already do. The instructional staff is extremely helpful and educated on the topics. They will assist you in any area that you feel that you fall short on. And where if they can’t explain it in the way you may understand, the DSR’s are there to pick up where they left off. The career advisor is very knowledgeable about the process; I highly recommend anyone taking the course who will be looking for work afterwards to take what they say and the skills they teach seriously. Almost every interview I had following graduating the course, a scenario that was covered occurred (whether it was about your elevator pitch, salary negotiations, etc.) and I used the techniques taught and they worked exactly how described! Helped me get a sign on bonus for the employment I ended up accepting! Overall, this course was well worth the time and resources put into it!

As someone who didn't finish college and didn't have a clear plan for my life beyond paying next month's rent, Galvanize has changed my whole life in so many ways. While studying here I not only learned and honed the essential skills necessary to be a... Read More data scientist, I also connected to a massive network of amazing people and did a number of awesome projects which I'll be able to put on my resume forever.

I'm a recent SF graduate w a background in consulting. I'm really impressed and in love with everything about the DSI! Organization and Structure: the organization of this program is insane. Every minute of every hour is designed with purpose. It's very... Read More structured and right from the beginning, you'll get a Google calendar detailing the agenda for every day of the program, and rarely do we ever deviate from the plan or even our punctuality. This structure and transparency really helped me as a student to know what to expect. Teaching Model: At the same time, I strongly support the daily model of learning they promote --which is non-grade based. You have 2 lectures a day and 2 assignments a day (one solo and one with a partner), but neither are ever turned in or graded. Some may critique that that then takes away the external pressure to complete the assignment, and to some degree, that's true, but I benefitted strongly from it in being much more concerned about understanding the concepts and improving myself, than just working towards a grade or idea of "completion". Quality of Instruction: Another huge positive was the quality of the instructors and the student to teacher ratio/staff to student ratio. Depending on which city you complete the DSI in, you may have a diff number of applicants/cohortmates. But the ratio of students to instructors are the same. For our cohort of 18 people, we had 2 instructors and 2 DSRs (like TA's). As for quality...yum prep offering, to its actual course. The course is extremely comprehensive and up to dateou know in college when you sometimes get professors who are clearly geniuses, but unfortunately really can't teach? Yeah, that didn't happen here. Concepts, problems, and solutions are explained thoroughly, and we were always encouraged to ask questions. The depth of knowledge our instructors had within them became very quickly apparent. Out of curiosity, I did some good old fashioned LinkedIn stalking and also found out they all have impressive work experience and credible backgrounds. You'd never know otherwise given they are so humble and never toot their own horn. How Students Get Help: I was initially really concerned about quality of instruction and help given the pandemic, we had to move everything online, but I was impressed by how adaptive the staff were in transitioning to an online format and develop an efficient way to offer help for each individual student when needed. Each day of the program, we typically have a solo assignment and a pair programming assignment. During pair programming, we shared our screen, one of us driving and one of us navigating. When we needed help, we messaged a helpdesk bot on slack, and usually within a few seconds to 2 min, a DSR or instructor would pop into our breakout room to assist. It was all a lot easier than I would have imagined it to be to get help. At the end of the assignments, we were given access to the solutions, which we’d typically go over on your own at the end of the day. Curriculum: I think Galvanize does a really good job of pulling the curriculum together, from its free basic prep offering, to its premi with the current Data Science and Machine Learning industries, ranging from coding, to stats, to ML techniques, building models, and a little beyond. The last topics we learned even covered advanced topics that the industry as a whole is still just dipping into. When I showed what I was learning to other data scientists and machine learning professionals, they were impressed w the amount of topics covered. Built into the curriculum, too, is your own dedicated career coach who will break down the steps to building your resume, cover letter, income negotiating, interviewing, networking, tailored to fit the Data Scientist job entry experience. You have access to the same career coach up to 6 months (and access to the Galvanize workspace in your city) after you graduate, too. Cost: Yea...it’s expensive. You have several options for payment. Here were the options I had: scholarship: You should apply for the scholarships they offer every cohort. During my time, they offered one full ride scholarship. Now I see they might be offering more? The process is: you fill out an application w an essay portion, pass the technical interview, and submit a video by a certain deadline. Ask staff for more info. early bird discount: during my cohort, they offered a 10% early bird discount off tuition if you completed passed the technical interview early. Not sure if it’s still ongoing, but again, check with staff. payment plans: I give Galvanize a lot of credit for being flexible. You can pay everything upfront, OR pay half first and then the other half when you’re halfway through the program, OR enroll in an Income Share Agreement where you either pay a percent of your income every month for x number of months and a CAP after you get a job, OR you can set up a sort of hybrid pay upfront/ISA hybrid payment plan, OR you go through some lending partners they have who will have a set interest amount. Process: complete prep work pass the technical interview (TI) complete the precourse work start the program. I would personally recommend taking the premium prep course ($495) which is deducted from the tuition of the program prior to taking the TI. Difficulty: Was it hard...yea. I came from a non-coding background and even before the program started, I had to put in serious work to meet a baseline for what you are expected to know before the program even starts. DON’T think of this as a “in-3-simple-months-I-can-totally-change-my-career get-rich-quick” scheme. You’re going to learn an incredible amount in the 3 months, yes, and I for example went from not even knowing what a terminal was, to building my own object detection machine learning model. And I am confident now in my grasp of concepts and in applying for jobs. BUT I had to really put in time to prep and learn the basics of python, git, pandas, basic stats, on my own, even before the program started. Not to mention, the full time program is on a M-F 8:30am-5:30pm schedule, but my cohortmates and I often found ourselves staying up until at least 10pm-1am working and reviewing. For me, the experience was really hard, not so much because of the complexity of the concepts, but because 1) the speed at which the material comes at you. 2) the number of topics you need to not only know, but be/become fluent in. 3) I came from a non-coding background, so while I was learning new concepts, I had to also translate them into code. I remember, for example, that the first week was supposed to be “review” on topics we did in the precourse material, but I was completely exhausted by end of week 1 and I realized I didn’t know as much as I thought! This is all to say...yea, it’s hard, but preparation, persistence, and practice will get you through! Critiques: There are some points I do wish we had more guided help from instructors. Galvanize does push us to be as independent as possible, given the necessity of independent problem solving and troubleshooting as Data Scientist. However I think the bootcamp experience and learning would benefit from a recorded demo of the case studies we completed every Friday. That way, after we attempt it ourselves, we can watch how an experienced Data Scientist would think through such an assignment. Overall: I’m such a big fan, because I came in as a skeptic but saw the quality of the instructors, comprehensiveness of the curriculum, got to do my own projects which I felt really excited about, and I came out of it feeling confident I can get my first job in this new industry. Along the way, Galvanize has truly demonstrated their support of my learning, and me as a student. They’ve been receptive to criticism (they beg for it, really…) and they do actually try to implement suggestions from students the best they can. Their ISA shows investment in me as an individual, and they are truly focused on churning out capable, quality Data Scientists. Opinion: If you have the flexibility, see if the winter time cohort is right for you. I like the winter cohort schedule because the holidays allows for more breaks that wouldn’t typically be in the other cohort timeframes. This gave me more time to self-study, review, digest what we learned and prep for projects!

Completing the Galvanize Data Science Immersive has been one of the most fulfilling and enriching experiences of my life. I really appreciated the quality of materials even electing the free Basic Prep, the guidance throughout the enrollment process,... Read More and the support of the staff/instructors as I did the program. In addition to the awesome proprietary materials and live instruction, I was amazed at the focus on career services (resume review, LinkedIn usage, mock interviews) from the very beginning (lest we forget, most of us are looking to get a data science job post-graduation). Not to mention the genuine care and advice I received after graduating as I navigate the job market. Definitely feels like I joined a community rather than just receiving a certificate and out the door. Would 10/10 recommend checking out Galvanize if you're even considering a career pivot into data science.

The remote, full-time DSI program at Galvanize was a worthwhile experience. I started the program with no background in programming. The curriculum is created with all skill levels in mind and works you from the ground up. The instructors and staff are... Read More friendly and approachable as well as dedicated to helping you understand concepts. There was a great balance between lecture-style material as well as hands-on practical application of concepts in the form of individual, group, or paired programming assignments. There is a good mix of teaching types for all learners. During and after graduation you are assigned a career coach to help you achieve your career goals which I found to be very helpful and supportive.

I had a wonderful experience during the Data Science Immersive at Galvanize. The course material introduces you to many concepts, tools, techniques, and other useful resources that will help you immensely as you continue your career as a data scientist.... Read More The teaching staff (Matt Z and Alex B) are super helpful when you are stuck and they provide very useful feedback during capstone projects as well as insight into industry standards and best practices. The program lead (Tim Asprec) provides the energy and logistics throughout the course, ensuring everyone is on the same page, performing at their best, and becoming an overall better data scientist. Tim really helps you develop your communication as well as presentation skills. As with any bootcamp, the best results will come from what you are able to put into it. If you dedicate yourself, put in the work, and prepare accordingly, you will learn a lot and develop new skills that will help you in your data science career. The staff are always there to guide and help you along the way. I personally learned and took a lot away from this experience. I will say that finding a job is its own endeavor, so make sure you also plan and prepare for networking and building connections. Due to the pandemic, it is a bit more difficult to have in person networking opportunities, but I am sure we will find ways to have virtual networking opportunities.

First of all, I was impressed by preparatory step prior the course. For the long time I was looking for such a constructive and structured python tutorial with lot's of practice. It helped to become toned and prepared for the bootcamp. The week 0 and... Read More 13 following weeks have been very intense in knowledge and experience. Curriculum was well constructed, team followed the plan minute-by-minute. Emotional aspect was treated well. We had time for retrospective thoughts and could share them. To my opinion this part is as important as the rest, as it helped to be 100% focused on materials during the bootcamp. All the interpersonal aspects were carefully managed. Curriculum and team was very professional, covering practical and fundamental concepts of data science topics. Lot's materials and references were given for future progress. As I had a PhD in physics prior to course, it was important for me to go deep enough in maths and statistics, and my curiosity was satisfied. Also I was looking for pretty profound practical outcome. That was as well satisfied and I ended up with cool projects allowing me to discuss them during the following interviewing process. My programming skills improved a lot during the precourse and the bootcamp. And on the top of that, professional team of job search coaches helped with the job search and all of my frustrations and fears. I didn't work for a long time after my PhD graduation and I am happy to be on board now. This is what I wanted and I got it. Thanks to Galvanize team.

Galvanize Data Science Immersive was an amazing opportunity and experience. The staff did a great job at every aspect of the course. Matt and Alex did really excellent at providing professional and relevant course material to the students. With the material... Read More relating to the work currently being done by the industry. The Data Science Residents Lu and Mitch were there with us every step of the way providing support when required. Ben did and is still doing great at providing career services ensuring that we find job placement in a relevant field. Tim Asprec is the maestro that guides the way and puts all of the programs' functions together delivering a complete product. Really grateful to the staff and I am confident in my ability to perform in the job market.