Springboard

It took me almost a year to find a boot camp. I landed on Springboard as it was the only one that was self-paced and online which allowed me to maintain my current employment. It wasn't easy but the support system in place helped me be successful and... Read More finish the boot camp ahead of the 9 month timeline.

Enrolling in Springboard's software engineering career track has been one of the best decisions of my life. I started with nothing and ended up doing four capstone projects which were completely designed and developed by me. I would recommend this course... Read More to anyone who wants a change in their career path.

Prior joining Springboard, I had some technical background and experience with Data Science but struggled to actually get a job. After going through the process judiciously and with great dedication, I can confidently say Springboard has helped me build... Read More a robust and very competitive portfolio. The curriculum typically covers everything needed to succeed. My favorite part of Springboard is the one-on-one mentorship where you could brainstorm, learn and typically create a connection with a professional who is willed to help you succeed. Also, the career coaches are really helpful. The underestimated section where many students miss out is the Springboard slack community where you get all the answers, motivation and collaborations on almost any topic. However, I would suggest Springboard encourage collaborations between students by adding a group capstone project. This would benefit on many levels -- technical skill like git usage and soft skills like teamwork, collaboration etc.

After doing a ton of research on UX bootcamps, I chose Springboard because it met the most criteria. Overall, I am happy with the education I got from this program. However, I was fortunate to be involved with 2 study groups of great individuals (one... Read More I was invited to, one I started) that met weekly for 1 hour on skype and were great about sharing resources. I also had a good mentor that I got along well with, and began meeting with career coaches early and often. Pros of this program: • The curriculum is well-structured and covers a wide expanse of UX methodology • The program is set up to give you some breathing room - although it is structured for 9 months, it actually allows for almost 12 months to complete • The mentoring and career coaching pieces are really valuable, and each student will have a unique mentor along with access to unlimited mentors • Your student advisor will support and advocate for you • I feel very confident in what I have learned and have gotten confirmation that I'm adding value to the company I'm working for now • You will get out of this program what you are willing to put in - if you are smart and strategic about the methods you use and the work you make, it will work for you Cons of this program: • The impetus is totally on the student to be responsible for their own learning - if you are someone that needs a teacher to walk you through new ideas, tools, and techniques, this is not the program for you • The estimated 17 hrs work/week is unrealistic if you are working full-time, have a family, or other life obligations beyond this program. The program does work with you so you can complete, but it probably won't be in 9 months (think about this with your payment structure) • There are some poorly structured deliverables that definitely feel like working harder, not smarter. Look ahead at the curriculum, especially once you start putting together your case studies, and build toward your portfolio (not google documents). • Some of the resources are outdated • It can be difficult to find any available times to schedule meetings with career coaches and/or unlimited mentors Springboard isn't perfect - nothing is. However, though there is room for improvement, I feel good about my decision to complete this bootcamp and what I have to show for my time and learning.

Springboard has a an amazing coursework, it also provides great mentor support and student advising team support. their Career coaching was exceptional and they helped me in every stage of job search. Would recommend it to all aspirant Data scientist..... Read More

I had a very thorough learning experience with Springboard. They provided diverse content to prepare me for every aspect of the UX/UI career path with challenging projects. The unlimited mentorship meetings and Springboard staff were amazing guides along... Read More my learning journey. The curriculum was presented in an easy to follow program and I liked that it was also easy to go back to earlier content if I needed to review. The curriculum was a mix of reading and videos content, although I would've preferred more video content for my learning style. I also prefer a classroom type environment but learning from home was much better for my complex schedule. The draw back is if I had a question with the content I could not get an immediate answer although Springboard does provide various avenues of support to get your questions answered asap. Springboard also provided very thorough career support by way of mock interviews, resume support and general career guidance calls.

Pros: a lot of resources: your weekly mentor, TA support live chat, TA email, on-demand mentor calls, office hours, and the slack community. All of these can be utilized for help to progress through the course. The course cover topics that other boot... Read More camps do not cover, such as data structures and algorithms, testing your code, git control, and more. A well-structured course with an excellent person who does the course videos, I found his voice to be pleasant to listen to and humorous sometimes. Cons: At the end of the course, if you're going for a job guarantee from the program, you're required to pass all 4 mock interviews and you're allowed 3 attempts each. I didn't find their resource to be that helpful in terms of preparing for the coding and whiteboard mock interviews. These are still doable, but expect to do most of the heavy lifting yourself when it comes to doing the mock technical interviews.

I began Springboard largely due to the 1 on 1 mentoring and had an overall great experience for this reason. While the curriculum is good, the two independent capstone projects is where I learned the vast majority of the skills and knowledge I needed... Read More to be a data scientist. I am not sure I would have been able to do these projects without the aid of my mentor. I was truly surprised by how much I learned, and at about 2/3 of the way through the course, I was able to apply what I learned to my current job by developing all kinds of machine learning applications. The career coaching was also a huge benefit in teaching me how to look for jobs, network, as well as develop resumes, Linkedin profile, and cover letters.

Pros: Datacamp resource - I really liked in-browser coding paired with short lecture videos to be very effective to get practice with the key parts of data science problem solving. There were lots of practice exercises that helped give me a better understanding... Read More of the concepts. Mentorship - I really liked my mentor, he was very experienced and had lots of industry knowledge, and it was obvious he had a strong grasp of the subject matter. As a part of the curriculum you work on 2 Capstone projects, and several other ad-hoc projects with the guidance of your mentor. My mentor provided helpful feedback and advice for lot of the machine learning methods I tried and gave me a starting point to work on the project. Cons: Many parts of Springboard curriculum is just reading articles on data science or youtube recordings which can be find online. The video/audio quality was not the best. I think it would have been much better for Springboard to make some videos covering perhaps similar material but improve audio and video quality and create a more cohesive curriculum instead of many seemingly unrelated videos. Also, none of the assignments have answer keys provided to students, so there are not many ways to check your work. The machine learning unit's videos and assignments are almost entirely taken from a college class. The ad hoc projects were useful to get practical examples to refer to, but a few lectures from the class did not feel adequately sufficient to develop a good understanding of machine learning concepts and AI techniques.

To me, the most valuable part of this software engineering bootcamp was the mentorship. I was matched with a senior software engineer who had followed a similar track. She graduated from a software bootcamp which was very insightful when determining the... Read More best outcomes for me. She was also extremely knowledgeable about the curriculum and even provided further insight into newer technologies in the industry.