Metis

I found my time in Metis to be challenging but incredibly rewarding. Prior to Metis, I worked in management consulting so I had very little background in data science. The skills I gained through the programme enabled me to get a data science role a month... Read More after graduating from the bootcamp. ADMISSIONS: Rigorous process but the Admissions team was supportive throughout the process. They provide guidance on what to expect for the testing / interview process as well as materials to help you prepare. PROGRAMME: The curriculum was robust and well structured. Each module built on top of skills learned in the previous module to deliver a strong, incremental learning process. The instructors were amazing - I thoroughly enjoyed learning from and engaging with Vinny and Leon. Fortunately, you were able to book 1:1 time with instructors for as much as you needed, which really helps the learning process. The Teaching Assistants were also incredibly engaged and supportive. The peer element in the programme is also so important! Because of the programme's focus on skill level and cultural fit (collaborative, not competitive), you really feel like you are a part of an awesome community of smart, kind and supportive people! CAREERS / POST BOOTCAMP: Engaging with Careers for input on my CV, interviews, and negotiating process was so helpful! Ashley provided a lot of advice and insight on what to expect as I progressed through my job search until I received the offer.

After several years in finance, I wanted to pivot my career towards data and decided a bootcamp would be the fastest and most direct path to that goal. I think the core benefits of a program like this are (a) outsourcing the time and decision-making of... Read More curating a curriculum, (b) cultivating a data science community, and (c) making a commitment in terms of time and finance to learning the material, getting hands on practice, and finding that next job. While evaluating different programs, Metis really stood out from the others. Here's an unordered list of things I learned throughout my experience that may help you decide if this program is right for you: - Admissions process was the most rigorous, which means you'll spend more time in the program learning and implementing advanced concepts. - Similarly, your cohort will be filled with highly intelligent, driven students to collaborate with. Metis is highly selective and prefers collaborative over competitive. I found my fellow students to be extremely generous with their time and ideas - we formed study groups outside of class hours, and supported each other in any way we could during the job search after. - The faculty is truly amazing - the teachers, program managers, and career advisors are all invested in your progress. - The capstone projects really stood out to me when I was comparing different programs. There are some really exceptional projects all around, but those from Metis students were on average more captivating . - You'll get access to a large network of alumni and hiring partners. I found alumni to be very supportive -- reach out to folks on slack or linkedin, have a conversation, they'll often make referrals. Again, it's a very collaborative community! - While I was evaluating different programs, I reached out to alumni from each. Look at their career progression, ask about their experiences. I found Metis folks on average to be more enthusiastic about their bootcamp experiences than those at other programs. There's plenty more I could say, but I think this captures the main ideas. I found Metis to be an integral part of my career transition and would highly recommend it to those with the means. Please feel free to reach out via linkedin if you want to chat more or have any questions!

I enrolled in Metis data science bootcamp in January 2021, to expand my skillsets in predictive modeling and to build a portfolio for job searching after I graduated with a master’s degree in Biostatistics. The curriculum of the bootcamp was very thoughtfully... Read More designed so that students would end up with a portfolio with five projects upon graduation. Each project focused on different machine learning techniques, from exploratory data analysis, linear regression, classification, natural language processing, to potentially deep learning depending on what the students decided to do in their final/passion project. Instructors taught the concepts in the morning, and students would spend the afternoon to apply what they learned on the projects they designed. The instructors and teaching assistants were knowledgeable and supportive, so if students had questions about lectures or projects, they could schedule meetings with the instructors or the TAs. What I liked most about the bootcamp experience were my peers. We came from very different backgrounds (from college graduate to mid-career switcher, from biologist to physicist, etc.), it’s an invaluable experience to learn from different perspectives. Our cohort even formed a post bootcamp group to work on job searching together. We shared our interview experiences with each other and practiced technical interview problems together. The Metis alumni were amazingly helpful—not only that they posted jobs in the alum slack channel, but they were also willing to spend their time to guide us on interview preparation with their experiences. With all that said, the bootcamp covered a lot of materials and it required a tremendous amount of work to learn, review, and solidify what you learned by applying them in projects. If you are determined and are ready to do the hard work, Metis is the right choice for you!

Most of the reviews on here give great detail about the actual bootcamp experience, so I’m going to focus a bit more on my reasoning for choosing Metis and how they met my expectations. There are a ton of bootcamps out there, and I definitely did thorough... Read More research on my fair share of programs. I eliminated options based on what I was looking for in terms of support, rigor, and post-graduation success of alumni. After graduating Metis’ bootcamp and landing a job, I can say without a doubt that Metis was the best choice for me. My background for reference: I got a degree in Math but struggled to find a job due to my lack of “industry” skills. I tried self-studying data science before ultimately deciding to go the bootcamp route (which was 1000% the right move). In no particular order, I chose Metis over other bootcamps for these reasons: I liked that you get career support until you find a job. There’s no “you only get job search support for X months after bootcamp,” or “if you don’t find a job in Y months you get your money back.” I didn’t want to go through a bootcamp and be left with no support if I couldn’t find a job within a certain amount of time. Career support was amazing, and luckily, I landed a job offer, that was a good fit for me, approximately 4 months after graduation. My career advisor helped me navigate every part of the job search process, from reviewing cover letters, to offer negotiation (I was able to successfully negotiate a 7% increase on the initial base salary). In terms of rigor, I wanted a bootcamp that was going to challenge me, and really help me grow. Metis definitely exceeded my expectations here. The number of projects alone was more than any other bootcamp I saw, and the premise of each project was something I never would have thought of on my own. As someone who tried self-studying before enrolling in a bootcamp, I can say without a doubt, I never would have accomplished the same without Metis, especially not within the same time frame. I talked in detail about my projects in every interview I had during my job search, and every single one of my projects came up in at least one interview. Another thing that led me to choose Metis, was the success I saw Metis alumni have post-bootcamp, short and long-term. When researching bootcamps, I did some creeping on LinkedIn profiles of alumni from each program I was considering. Metis alumni impressed me the most, by far. Each Metis alumnus I saw on LinkedIn had landed a (subjectively) desirable role shortly after bootcamp and had strong long-term career progression as well. This was also consistent for my cohort. Many of my colleagues also landed roles at companies that they are excited about within 4 months after bootcamp. One additional thing that led me to choose Metis, was the transparency when it came to the stats for job placement post-bootcamp. When researching programs, I saw multiple bootcamps claiming up to 99% placement rates without making the details of how they calculated that number available. I liked that Metis explicitly told me what is included in their stats. I’m paraphrasing a bit but only grads that went into data adjacent roles within 6 months of completing bootcamp are counted as "successful" placement. Also, big bonus points for Metis’ $3,000 scholarship for people traditionally underrepresented in DS! Anyway, I am beyond happy that I made the choice to enroll in Metis! Of course, bootcamp wasn’t easy, as others pointed out in their reviews, Metis is extremely demanding. However, you will have a ton of support from your instructors, TAs, and your colleagues. I cannot recommend Metis enough, it quite literally changed my life.

Metis delivered on all my expectations. I decided to explore making a career transition to Data Science after working as a postdoc for 3 years after completing my PhD in Political Science at Cornell and feeling less than satisfied with my academic career... Read More prospects. After teaching myself some basic Python and brushing up on my linear algebra, probability and statistics (I had done a minor in Math in undergrad just for fun but that was over a decade ago and all my Poli Sci research was super qualitative) I decided to enroll in the Intro to Data Science course in June 2020 to get a better sense of my aptitude and whether or not I would like this kind of work. The Intro to DS course provided me with a nice overview of the field and the opportunity to complete an end to end project which gave me the confidence to apply to the full-time 12 week bootcamp starting September 2020. Metis was the only program I applied to as I was most impressed by the fact that they are the only accredited DS bootcamp, have very high quality instructors, a robust alumni network, and career support until you land your first job-and even after! I found the program both incredibly rigorous and wonderfully supportive. Honestly, the coursework was as demanding as my busiest times in grad school, however, two things were really different about bootcamp. One was the number of opportunities I had for 1:1 support. I had at least one weekly meeting with an instructor (often twice a week!) plus another with a TA. This definitely exceeded my expectations and left me reassured that even if I felt in over my head at the deep end of the swimming pool, there was always someone there to help me refine my project ideas, better understand a new library or just reassure me that I was on the right track. The second was that the breakneck pace actually protected my from going into perfectionist mode. Metis really drives home the concept of the MVP (minimum viable product) which was something I had not previously been familiar with and totally revolutionized the way I thought about my work. Yes, I still spent many a late night and weekend trying to make each of my projects the best it could be, but with only two weeks to complete each one, I was so focused on making sure that I had something complete that there was no time to waste worrying about the ways that it wasn’t perfect and in the end I am incredibly proud of the portfolio I built. I would absolutely recommend this program to anyone interested in transitioning to Data Science but you absolutely must be ready to put in the work and take ownership over your own success. Enrolling in Metis makes an incredible breadth of resources available to you, but its up to you to actually use them, sign up for 1:1’s, ask for help etc. Trust in the program! Also, the time investment is no joke, I worked about 3 additional hours a day after the day formally ended and put in time on the weekends too so do make sure that you have a good support system in place to keep on top of ‘life stuff’, making dinner etc. In my cohort I was among a small handful of people who hadn’t previously worked in *some* form of data/analytics role or STEM background. However, given Metis’s rigorous admissions standards, I knew that I had what it would take to succeed . That said, there was a learning curve and being so new to coding I never felt totally comfortable with pair programming (which is something Metis could do better to manage in the online format tbh) but I did come to better appreciate strengths of mine that I had previously taken for granted like knowing how to give a good presentation or not being afraid to ask a question during lecture. Bootcamp is often described as ‘drinking from a fire hose’ and this is apt, but, the great thing about Metis is that you still have access lecture recordings for 6 months after bootcamp if you want to review material that you didn’t fully grasp the first time around (which has been super helpful while gearing up for technical interviews) as well as lifetime access to all the course material that is on GitHub. The instructors provide such a wealth of required and supplemental materials that I have had the opportunity to further dive into as needed in the months since bootcamp and feel like I am continuing to get extra bang for my buck! My fellow students were also an incredible asset. Despite doing everything virtually, we still had the chance to really bond and after bootcamp ended I’ve stayed in touch with a number of classmates to give each other support on the job search. Likewise, I have found Metis alum to be incredibly generous, willing to take informational interviews and provide referrals for a number of job leads. I also want to give a *big* shout out to the careers team. In my first meeting with my advisor, she asked me what I wanted to get out of working with her and I said, honestly, I’m committed to doing whatever work I need to do to get a job but I’ve never applied to a non-academic job, I feel so out of my comfort zone and really just need someone to hold my hand through the process. And boy did she ever! After graduating in December and taking a little time off, once I was ready to begin searching for jobs full time we had weekly checkins over Zoom where I could ask all of my questions and felt so supported and encouraged through the inevitable ups and downs. Additionally the other careers counselor was also available to for guidance while my assigned counselor was away and she would even periodically check in to see how I was doing. Now I can proudly report that only 12 months after I first started learning Python and about 4 months of job searching post-bootcamp I landed an incredible job as a Senior Data Analyst making a salary 3 times higher that I did as a postdoc. There is no way that I could achieved these results on my own, and probably not at another bootcamp program either. The investment I made in myself enrolling in the Metis bootcamp has paid for itself many times over.

The setup of Metis was rigorous, with an accelerated, project-based curriculum. We learned data science and machine learning concepts through a sequential series of lectures accompanied by coding exercises and challenges. In concert with this material,... Read More we worked on five distinct data science projects, each exploring a different facet of the subject matter, including machine-learning algorithms, linear algebra, Python programming, version control, and a host of others. These focused, hands-on applications of the subject matter allowed us to synthesize our learning and produce a polished portfolio at the end that we could share with employers. In addition to the core subject matter, Metis provided us with a robust framework of employment resources, including resume guidance, networking best practices, rehearsal interviews (both technical and general), and, most importantly, a vast network of Metis alumni that we could leverage both for guidance and for potential job prospects and connections. This network stands out as one of the strongest reasons I would recommend Metis to anyone wishing to enter data science, and overall my experience at Metis prepared me for the data science job landscape.

If you're not sure which review to trust because you're not sure which shoes you fill out, hear me out for just a moment. I'm a bioengineering student. Coding, let alone data science, was a world away for me. I barely knew there was a science to data.... Read More But with the continuous support of the instructors, and then the diligent career advisors even well after the bootcamp had ended, I went from mean, median, mode, to creating full-fledged end-to-end projects, even in my own time. Metis is a revolutionary experience, but you'll have to put in the hard work to make the most of it.

Metis is on point. They are constantly updating their curriculum based on industry standards. They offer as much 1-1 support as one could desire. They support big ideas and help them come to life. I found a Data Scientist job within 30 days of graduating... Read More (it was with a company I'd worked for in the past, but never in data science/technical roles). They also help tailor resumes, and part of the daily routine is preparing students for technical interviews. The people I met at Metis - both instructors and fellow students, were outstanding and I now am part of an entire network of graduates in the Data Science world.

I attended the final traditional Metis Data Science Bootcamp before they separated it into four distinct tracks. TL;DR My experience was very positive in terms of the curriculum, sense of community, and level of instruction. Sure, there are issues with... Read More the very nature of bootcamps, and learning remotely is a challenge in itself, but if you are considering a data science bootcamp, Metis is the best. Before Metis I tried to hack my way into learning data science online. I spent nearly two years dabbling with free online resources to learn Python, SQL, stats, linear algebra, deep learning, you name it. I picked up some stuff but struggled to build a project portfolio or learn the material deeply, and I sacrificed a fair amount of my spare time outside of work seemingly getting nowhere. Metis provided a tightly curated curriculum that made me confident I was learning the right stuff, plus Metis instructors are quite knowledgeable and experienced in the field and are always willing to help. The social pressures cannot be understated either. Being in a group of likeminded individuals trying to learn the same material proved invaluable. I really appreciated the sense of community. Everyone was very nice and, to my surprise, I made lasting friendships with people I met on Zoom. The project-based curriculum ensured I had a robust project portfolio to show employers, and now I feel confident in creating projects from scratch using real data - an essential piece when interviewing and something I really struggled with while trying to learn this stuff on my own before Metis. My job search is going well so far, all things considered, and a few people from my cohort have already landed jobs! I started hustling before the bootcamp ended. I did not come from a technical background, but I did have a few years of work experience under my belt. I considered myself one of the least credentialed students in the cohort, but I learn quickly and have a certain amount of grit and resilience. Networking is key. The alumni network is vast and has been very helpful so far - lots of people up for informational interviews and willing to give referrals. Careers has been helpful. But you have to network. You have to hustle. No one's going to hold your hand after the bootcamp is over. The job search is messy and inefficient and unfair and systemically broken and all that, but it is what it is. I did a significant amount of research before enrolling, speaking to admissions and graduates of several bootcamps as well as hiring managers in the field. It is a big decision, not to be taken lightly, as you are investing a lot of money and time into learning new skills. But these skills are in high demand and are only growing in importance. It's a gamble. You need to be ready to invest in yourself and do even more work after you graduate. You need to be honest with yourself, driven, highly motivated, and ready to treat this experience like an actual bootcamp to get the most out of it. It's extremely fast-paced and intense. If you do it right, it will grind you up and spit you out, in the best way possible for personal and professional growth. You will be tested cognitively, emotionally, and probably physically (might need to invest in that standing desk after all.) You need to really know how to learn, which may sound obvious, but it's essential because the material is dense and difficult to absorb if it's not reflected on and consolidated through application. Data science is not meant to be easy. Doing Metis does not guarantee a ticket to a better life immediately. It will give you an excellent opportunity to learn valuable skills that will pay off down the road. I expect the next two years of my life to be tough - find a job, learn constantly, and replenish my savings. But again, this is an investment. In five years I will very likely be making A LOT more money than I would if I stayed in my previous career track, and I will be doing more meaningful and fulfilling work. In ten years I will look back on my decision to do Metis and probably think it was the best decision I ever made. But the key is to MAKE it the best decision you ever made.

I attended Metis at SF18 Spring cohort, and I was skeptical about it until I started the first day. It wasn't like a traditional Bootcamp, you made a choice to do it and you need to put all the time and effort into it. But Metis gave you the right environment... Read More and resources to make sure you are on track, and on top of what you need to be a Data Scientist. It has career coaching, resume review, interview practice, and every other thing that you need to be successful, I would highly recommend it.