BrainStation

I've had good experiences with Brainstation. I've now taken both their Data Science and Machine Learning certificate programs, and I'll be commenting on the Data Science one here.

First off, the instructors I've had have been top notch. Andrew was my instructor this go round, and it was evident that this guy works data science for a living. You can tell by the way he codes, changes code on the fly at such speed, and debugs code when it's not working. He also seems to be genuinely enchanted with Data Science as a whole. He answered all questions, even my dumb questions, clearly and cleanly.

The course content itself is solid. I highly recommend you know Python prior to taking this course, rather than just knowing a programming language in general. Everything is coded in Python from day 1, to include using some more "advanced" features like list comprehensions, so having a good grasp of Python I think is integral to your experience with these courses. The only thing I really wasn't high on in the course content was the Statistics section; it's simply too large and broad of a topic to cover in the scope of this course. In my opinion, a basic statistics background should already be had before jumping into Data Science. Most classes and topics are like that, but the statistics portion really stuck out to me.

Jupyter notebooks are provided, so the material is flexible and easy to work with. The instructors provide solutions-included notebooks after the lessons, which is handy for someone like me that wants to watch them work the problems and then figure them out in my own manner later.

Due to the nature of these part-time courses, and the material covered in such a short time, don't expect to just listen to lectures and be good at Data Science. You will need to work through the Jupyter notebooks on your own time, and do additional research on your own as well. This should be expected for anyone who has ever coded before, but for those who might think it's a sit back and learn it all class, it's not that easy.

A hanging point for some people is that there's no 'job guarantee' or assistance with BrainStation. To those folks, I ask you do you truly believe that you're going to get a dream job out of a bootcamp's career assistance or guarantees? I think it's a worthless perk for the average student because you're going to have to know your stuff to be successful in the field anyway, and if you don't know your stuff, you're probably not going to stay in that job long even if it's given to you. It may work out for some, but I didn't see it as a requirement.

Overall, I would recommend BrainStation to others, particularly if your company is willing to help with the tuition.

An in-demand skill, taking this course has grounded me the foundations in search marketing along with practical learning experienced in the classroom. Completing the course has helped me step into the marketing industry

I came to the Web Development program at BrainStation from a design background. I had some experience with HTML and CSS, but no broader or deeper understandings of web technologies. The pace of the program is fast, and there were moments of feeling like I wouldn't be able to keep up. However, whenever I would stop to reflect on where I was the week before, I was consistently amazed at how much ground I had covered in such a short amount of time.

There are so many technologies and ideologies out there. It would be impossible for programs like those delivered at BrainStation to cover it all. The beauty of BrainStation is that it reveals to you just how much you can do. After completing the program, I now have the confidence to know that if I need to learn a new web technology quickly, I absolutely can.

Pros

Community mindset, confidence in independent learning, rich resources

Cons

There will be more than a few late nights / early mornings depending on your sleep schedule.