Practicum by Yandex

I'm a Marketing Data Analyst, and I found Practicum one of the best online programs for those, like myself, who want to give the next step in the Data Science field. The program has great content, challenging exercises, and real-world projects. But those... Read More aren't what makes Yandex one of the best online programs I have attended so far. Yandex's major advantage is how its tutors, project reviewers, and community managers deal with students' questions. First, they are professionals with real-world experience in the field, and, second and most important, all explanations or articles recommended by them are straight to the point and accurate. That said, I recommend Practicum by Yandex for anyone who wants to get into the Data Science field or brush up her/his skills.

While its possible to find all the information you would need to know on the internet (Udemy, Coursera, Youtube), bootcamps like this are for those who would prefer a little more structure and guidance. The curriculum covers the MERN stack in enough detail... Read More to help you become proficient in each technology and the projects they have you do are a step (or two) above those you'll find in a lot of other bootcamps. They just look more professional, they are well thought out, and you spend enough time on them to make them both fully-functional and polished. No hastily put-together, poorly designed projects here. Also, the entire team is so caring and thoughtful, and are willing to help in any way they can. They really make the program feel personal. Having completed the web dev course, I feel I have all the skills to be a React Developer, FrontEnd Dev, or Web Developer, and have already had several interviews this month. I will say though, if you truly want to succeed, you still need to put in work outside the class. You need to practice coding and make more projects, create a portfolio, and apply to a ton of jobs. This is not a golden ticket in the tech industry, but it is a very effective guiding hand into a new career.

I really like Practicum offers hand on experience at coding. Though I self learned some coding before the program but never feel like I could break into the field. In Practicum web developer program, I not only learned the coding skill, but also the way... Read More how developer works. I am especially impressed by the hard working code reviewers. My coding structures and logic improved every time I got back my feedback. I now can build websites on a scratch all by myself, feel confident and am finally ready. Highly recommended!

I enjoyed the program very much. I already have a mathematical background and very familiar with data analysis,even though, gladly I have learned so many new professional ways to solve problems, new different aspects and machine learning algorithms explained... Read More in a very useful way. Thank you so much!

I started my journey on web development a while back, I tried many courses on my own and even lost money on online Platforms and other online bootcamps... it was so disappointing, the outdated curriculum, the lack of support, the constant sales and promotions... Read More to “upgrade” and get more for your buck.... ugh.. When I found Practicum, right from their introductory course, I realized I had found a true gem. I was hooked. These are the reasons why they are the best learning program in my book: -The learning experience is really engaging, they show practical examples as to the implementation of everything we learn. And that is something very hard to do. How can you keep students interested or motivated with very abstract and sometimes very difficult concepts? Well... the Practicum team has nailed the student experience. I am super motivated, happy and excited to learn, they make hard concepts digestible. -The team is constantly improving, they care about us, they support us, they listen to us. When I’ve encountered roadblocks, there has always been a human being on the other side, be it support inside the platform, or in slack, with the tutors, other senior students, the managers... even the code reviewers are there to help you. I love that I’m not alone in this journey. -The other thing I truly love about Practicum is the skill assessment. We get our projects reviewed every two weeks by industry professionals. THAT was a game changer for me, reviewers don’t tell you what to do. They explain why something is wrong, we have to put the effort to figure it out on our own. I find that very challenging at times, but at the same time is super rewarding. -We work on REAL projects from scratch. Moreover, we learn how to optimize them, how to scale them and the industry standards on how to do things. -We learn version control and even have sections dedicated to Git. -They won’t sell you stuff you don’t need. In fact they don’t sell you anything! -They don’t make promises they won’t fulfill. For me it is very important to get the value I seek. And Practicum has gone over and beyond anything I had expected. When they say they will teach you, they mean it! -Not everything is rainbows and unicorns... by this I mean the Program will really push you to improve, be it time management, project management, hard and soft skills. There have been times I’ve been in the verge of tears and exhaustion... but that is exactly why this program is truly worth it. Because it means you are growing. When I look back at the “easy” programs, I realized I didn’t know anything and my code was a complete joke.. all over the place. Now my programming is intentional and I’m amazed at how much I’ve grown. -There is structure and guidance every step of the way. Unlike other “bootcamps”, the team at Practicum really wants you to succeed, really wants you to participate, to ask questions, to challenge, to mentor others, to learn from others, to collaborate and communicate. That tells you the team at Practicum really cares. Give a try to their free introductory courses, you have nothing to lose and really much to gain.

In the end of November, I decided to enroll for the Practicum by Yandex Data Science bootcamp. I started the introductory course and I got hooked. So much, that I completed the first three chapters in 2 days. It did not take me long either to complete... Read More the rest 5 chapters of the course. It was not my knowledge and skills that enabled me to finish everything in such a short time, but the interesting content, and the help of the Yandex team. I must say that is not the first time I am doing online Python lessons, but it is the first time where I feel challenged (rather than discouraged) to solve tasks and problems. I really like the concise content of the lessons - structured around solving a particular problem and I love the message window that pops up after getting the right solution. How well thought that these messages are not saying the same thing over and over again, such as 'Correct' or 'Well done', but they make reference to the topic I study at that moment and summarize the results in a creative way. These messages put smile on my face. I also like that there are diverse range of examples for the tasks, so there is something of interest for everyone (regardless whether you are a movie fan, marketing analyst, or social media devote, there is something you have knowledge on, so that motivates you more to solve the tasks and see what the results are). In addition, I feel that I am part of a great community that is always there to help. I have asked for help on fb, on slack, directly on the learning platform and the whole team is so friendly and makes me feel that I am not bothering them and that they are always available for the students. I am so excited about everything on this course, that I find myself studying late at night, or whenever I find a free time during my day job. I genuinely enjoy my learning journey with Yandex. Thank you Yandex team, you are all wonderful!

Saw some nice reviews on the website and decide to give it a try. But upon completing the free introductory program, I learned that they more than doubled their course price from 1600 to 4000 (on Dec 7th,2020) without any substantial improvement in the... Read More curriculum. For this price I think it might be better off to just go with udacity instead, since they are a lot more established and recognized. Please definitely be aware before joining!

Like many other novice developers, I've found myself stuck in a tutorial loop which felt inescapable. I had been trying to make a career switch, but was frustrated with the endless "beginner" codecamps which often resulted in just copying and pasting... Read More code. I had even completed a FullStack Javascript program from a competitor and felt abandoned the moment I got my certificate. Luckily, I didn't give up and I found Practicum. The course lessons are very interesting and tend to dive a bit deeper than most other programs to ensure you learn the "Why" behind the code. They even sprinkle lessons throughout the curriculum dedicated to helping transfer careers! I've made some great relationships with my instructors who I'm glad to call my mentor. Thank you Practicum for helping me break into my dream career!

For a long time I felt that I need a career change but I wasn't sure where to go. I tries various courses on Coursera and Udemy but without much success. In the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, I saw a Yandex Practicum ad on Facebook and decided to... Read More try the Data Analyst program. In the beginning, I wasn't even sure that I will be able to finish it because the whole topic was pretty new to me. But as I was doing it, I got more and more interested and involved in the program. The main program starts with a lesson about mindset and it really helped me improve my attitude. The course is structured in just the right way to involve students and keep it interesting. There are tons of practice tasks from the very beginning with increasing difficulty. The theoretical parts are clearly written and followed by exercises and real life projects. All exercises and projects pretty challenging so you can feel the growing confidence after completing it. All projects are get checked by an industry professionals. They provide really valuable feedback. Sometime you may need to correct and resubmit the project several times until it is done correctly and accepted by reviewer. During the program, I completed 12 projects and one additional project, so the portfolio is pretty impressing. Another great part of the program are biweekly webinars. During the webinar, students could see the how the data analyst works on different real life problems and real time coding sessions. The webinars give more live interactions to the program.
The program teaches all technical and soft skills needed to junior data analyst:
- Python programming language with libraries like Pandas, Matplotlib, Seaborn, Plotly, etc.
- Jupiter Notebook
- SQL queries and data processing
- Data preprocessing with Python
- Exploratory and statistical data analysis
- Business analytics and A/B test
- Data visualization (graphs and dashboards) with Python libraries and Tableau
- Automation and machine learning basics
As a student, I feel constant support from the Practicum team: community managers, mentor, technical support and from fellow students. You can ask any question in the chat and get needed help pretty fast. Sometimes there could be some time lag because the team can be located in the other part of the world but technical support helps really fast anyway.
I also need to mention the career support program where student can get various help with resume writing, portfolio preparation, attend webinars with technical recruiters and career couches and much more.
To make the program even more appealing, I would make some suggests:
* I would add kind of "tutor-on-duty" to answer the questions of the students from the different time zones. Sometimes, I got stuck in some tasks and could not move forward. I had to wait the help from my tutor till the next day because of the time difference. It could be pretty annoying for people with the packed schedules.
* It would be very useful to have both way communication with the reviewer.
* Also, after completion of the projects, it would be very interesting to see other students' projects or best projects from the previous cohorts.
Thank you Yandex Practicum Team for the great program, for the opportunity to be part of the great community, and opportunity to grow as a professional.

The breadth and depth of the material will prepare anyone for today's workforce.
I felt cared for and supported throughout the learning process.
We completed lessons on the platform and projects on our own. The projects were reviewed and approved or returned... Read More for improvements. Every improvement was worth while and significantly increased the quality of my work.
I went from feeling a bit overwhelmed to feeling excited about the next task.
“How does this work?” became “I know I can do this!”