| | Sunny Lee | Before thinking about any kind of bootcamp, my background was in finance and I wanted to brush up on coding skills and my statistics knowledge. Once I decided I wanted to explore careers in data, I spent an insane amount of hours researching and talking people. I was scared to leave my job without any guarantee of getting a new job. Ultimately, I chose NYCDSA, and looking back, I am very grateful that I did. The people that I talked to from admissions were friendly, informative, and helpful. They were empathetic about the fact that this was a big step and they were not pushy or sales-y at all, which was very refreshing compared to some of the other bootcamps. During the bootcamp, the instructors and TAs were very invested in the students. They helped me think through project ideas, review concepts, fix a bug, and all of the above. I came out of the bootcamp with Python, R, and SQL skills along with a portfolio of projects that I wasn't embarrassed to talk about in interviews. The hard part of networking, interviewing, and studying for a new job doesn't go away - but NYCDSA gave me the tools and the job support to feel confident that I can do it. I've learned so much more in the 3 months than in the one year I tried self-studying for a career pivot. I've also met a great group of friends and people while doing so. Even with COVID, which forced our cohort to go online for the last 2-3 weeks, I was able to get a handful of data scientist and data analyst interviews. I went in with the goal of making a successful career pivot and they've helped me accomplish exactly that as I accepted an offer at a new firm which I'm very excited about. |
