Springboard

I'm on my transition from academia to industrial where I need to enhance my hands-on experience on practical projects. I found out the Data Engineering Career Track program at Springboard is the best fit. The program has shown me what should I learn and... Read More where should I go. If you are a self-leaner like me and just want to fill the gap between academia and industry, then the Springboard program is a high recommendation.

I had a great experience at Springboard. What I find most valuable about the program is the professional UX portfolio that I came out with. Along with this is the support that I received from my mentor and the career coaches. There are many self-paced... Read More programs out there, but essentially what you get from this one, in particular, is the support that you need to feel ready for the world beyond it. When it became challenging, my weekly mentor calls helped keep me in check. The career coaches were wonderful and the Support and advisors were always available to help. It is truly the quality of the community that helped me also realize the self-motivating drive that you need to make it in the UX world.

I was genuinely pleased with my online experience in Springboard's Software Engineering Career Track. Even though people are potentially working in different time zones, the support is quick and reliable. The curriculum is of high quality and taught by... Read More an inspiring instructor who makes difficult concepts easy to understand. The only issue I ran into was communication within project guidelines and "commonly asked questions." By the time I emailed my student advisor to verify my understanding, a month and a half had passed. In other words, if you have questions, ask immediately. I would highly recommend this curriculum to anybody looking for a high quality software engineering bootcamp.

The thing I benefitted the most from my time at Springboard was its strong curriculum. We learned two prominent backend frameworks (Flask/Python and Express/NodeJS) and React for the front end. Learning the two programming languages Springboard covers... Read More really helped me understand how languages can differ but also just how similar they are. The instructor for the course is Colt Steele - and I believe he is one of the biggest reasons I enjoyed the course so much. He has a few free courses on Udemy and youtube so you can see there if his teaching style matches with how you learn. With regards to the career services, they do help you a lot and offer advice/best practices for how to succeed in your job search but ultimately it is up to you to find a job. This goes for all bootcamps. Still, it's great to have professional guidance for building your resume, reaching out to people on LinkedIn, etc. The downside I noticed with Springboard was that the assignments at the end of the unit could benefit from clearer instructions. This has been brought up to them and improvements to the assignment instructions for the later cohorts have been made. Their SWE track is still new so I think it's only normal to have these areas of opportunity.

I found Springboard through an online search of UX immersive boot camps. Springboard is one of the leading online boot camps, and while it is not the least expensive of the programs, I joined because it is more than just a UX/UI boot camp. They include... Read More in their course curriculum mentors with real UX professionals and career coaches, who not only help you develop the skills to become a UX/UI Designer but they work on all the other aspects needed to get a job; eg. network training, linked-in profiles, resumes, interviewing, etc. On top of that, they have a job placement program that helps you get a job once your course is completed. Because this is a self-directed online learning course, I would not recommend this course, if you are not able to motivate yourself to stay on track and on schedule. There is a lot of work and if you do not have the discipline to consistently complete the course work, this is not for you. But, if you can be self-directed, the program can be a great help to you landing a better job.

The customer services are awesome. My student advisor was amazing. He supported me all the way. They offer unlimited mentor calls which is a golden treasure, those mentors will help you and explain anything not clear. The curriculum covered a variety... Read More of important topics and skills. My only cons are the curriculum can be a bit deeper. Their course is good but they teach the essential skills so you can't expect to be an expert in Python for example after the course but you will be familiar with the environment and you will have enough skills to survive

Springboard had an excellent guided program. I started out only know a little CSS and HTMl and now I feel like I can actually make it somewhere in the Software Engineering world. This is due to their curriculum and the mentorship I received throughout... Read More the program. I really enjoyed that the program focuses not only on coding, but getting a job.

They obviously don't care about the prep courses. Mentor didn't help much past referring me to learn code for free on other websites. Curriculum is confusing and disorganized. Only had one project that wasn't really linked to anything we learned and barely... Read More any exercises or checks for knowledge. Mentor didn't give feedback for project at all kept saying he would email it, kept deferring it to later. Had a medical emergency and no one responded to reschedule our last meeting. Pretty cold. Emailed advising they don't answer. I have nothing to show for this course except an emptier bank account. Freecodecamp.com and Codecademy.com/ taught me way more than this waste of time.

The job guarantee, the price, and the 1o1 Mentorship were what led me to choose Springboard. Pros - Job Guarantee - Real world projects and a 1 month internship with a company - The price is definitely more affordable than other bootcamps I looked at... Read More - The mentorship was great! I learned a lot and all of the mentors are UX professionals themselves so they are full of wonderful insight into the process and profession Cons - Easy to get a bit off track with their timeline especially when you get to the design portions. Prepare to spend more time on certain project assignments to really make it stand out. Their recommended number of hours to complete units is based on what an average student would spend (roughly C+/B- work in my opinion) - Since your mentor will most likely be a working professional, they aren't always as responsive with replying to emails and also they most likely have up to 4 other mentees. So being able to self-direct and make design decisions is important. Plus, if you want to finish the course earlier than your track, your mentor might not be able to go over all of your assignments in the weekly 30 min call. Just something to think about.

I was initially thinking about going to graduate school vs taking bootcamp course and after researching for 3 months, I finally decided to go for the second option. The next was deciding on which bootcamp to sign up for since I've never taken online courses... Read More and there were way too many options out there. I did another 2 months of research and decided to go with Springboard because of three reasons: a self-paced curriculum for me to create a solid UX portfolio, 1:1 mentorship, and 6-month job guarantee policy. Looking back, I can confidently say that I'm happy with the choices I've made! I learned and enjoyed the past year at Springboard, made great friends, and will definitely recommend SB to others. PROS: -Great portfolio-worthy curriculum -Overall Springboard community is so supportive and friendly (Student Advisors, Career Coach, and Mentors). -SB platform is organized and easy to follow. It helps you visually see what you have completed and how much you have left. -I know that the tuition is high but with the experiences you will gain from SB, it's definitely worth the investment. CONS: I can't really think of any cons but if I had to choose, I would say it's a pretty rigorous course. They say you can finish UI/UX career track in 9 months but I think that only applies to full-time students. For me, I was working full-time and studying part-time so it took me about a year to finish! And I found myself studying most of my weekends, PTOs, summer fridays, after work hours (from 9 pm-4 am). It was intense but I feel really strong coming out of this course.