Galvanize

The Galvanize’s admission counseling has been super helpful to me. I was trying to apply for MS Perfume Sciences in France , since it’s a niche course I was finding it a little difficult. But I trusted Galvanize with their process and they helped me at every step, from preparing my application documents till visa process , when and where required. I would like to thank Galvanize for their services, particularly Manasa Kavuluri for being available all the time.

Some points on why to choose Galvanize-

They help in preparing LOR , Resume , SOP and all the necessary documents based upon inputs from us.

They have a separate portal for accessing recorded classes, assessments and Academic counselling documents , the portal is user friendly and easy to navigate.

They help us choose the best fit for us and provide help for visa application, loan and scholarship if applicable.

Background:
I attended the Data science immersive in Austin from December of 2019 to March 2020. I have a psychology degree from a foreign university, which i graduated from relatively recently, and had a large amount of trouble finding work after university. I interviewed for several data analyst positions, but had hit a wall in terms of knowledge base. I found Galvanize after getting a good recommendation from a hack reactor alumnus and friend. 

Experience:
 I really enjoyed the experience, from start to finish. in terms of rigor, it was quite intense. Most days, starting at 8:30 and ending around 5:30, we would cover two different lecture topics, and follow these with a series of questions and challenges meant to reinforce the lessons from the lecture. We also had more long form projects in the form of capstones, which taught me a lot about making professional level projects that i to this day use on my resume. These topics covered every subject I needed to know in order to get employed.  More to that point, there was a comprehensive career services assistance program that was very helpful with securing my first job after the program, and i was even able to get hired during the peak of the pandemic. 

Community: 
the best part of studying at Galvanize is the huge alumni community. Using the connections i made at Galvanize has lead to landing several opportunities that i wouldn't have managed to achieve without them. It was partially through the connections i made while at Galvanize that led to my first job. 

Overall:
I highly recommend it for anyone with a background in statistics, math, or computer science. it was a transformative educational experience, helped me build confidence i needed to succeed professionally both in myself and my skills, and introduced me to a number of both personal and business relationships. 
 

The Data Analyst Training Accelerator has been the most impactful education I've received in my adult life. Transitioning from a career in finance, it was difficult to land a role in data without working experience. What this program will give you is so much more than a slide deck.

From Day One, you are a Data Analyst. Per the curriculum, you can expect intensive, hands-on coding learned in an open forum format. There is no such thing as a silly question. After all, you have to be curious to be an effective analyst. There is both group and solo work, capstone projects, peer review, supplemental resources & materials (for extracurricular study) Lunch & Learns with industry experts, and professional development administered by a team of instructors who want to invest in the students and see you grow! The team is incredibly patient and skilled. Trust them, because they know their stuff!

The curriculum will give you experience with tools like SQL, Python, Excel, Tableau, and Statistics. While this is a lot to take in during the 18-weeks, the team goes above and beyond to make sure you aren't falling behind with office hours, review sessions, and e-learning opportunities. 

Besides learning code, there are plenty of opportunities for personal and professional growth. From the onset, you'll be developing a growth mindset, and tackling issues like imposter syndrome head-on. An effective analyst must trust in their own ability in order for key business stakeholders to trust in their insights, and you will certainly develop this confidence in your own abilities. Lunch & Learn sessions are a great way to get a snapshot of where your career trajectory can take you. All throughout the program, you will become the ideal job candidate through career development services. The team at Galvanize will help you with your resume, cover letter, LinkedIn, networking, interview prep, and salary negotiation. Note that this support does not end at graduation; the team helps you get your foot in the door, but YOU will have the confidence and technical ability to step through that door. 

I am so grateful to have been a part of this program. As part of the second cohort, all learnings were done digitally during the pandemic, but it was managed flawlessly. The learnings this program instilled within me helped me land my first data role as a Data Strategy Analyst, and I hope this review can help be the deciding factor that pushes you to apply to DATA. Whether you're fresh out of college or looking to transition careers, the DATA program at Galvanize is the positive change you've been looking for.

Having just learned python, specifically to get into this program, I was excited yet apprehensive about starting this course.  Now looking back, taking this course was an incredibly worthwhile and valuable experience.  Sure you can find similar content online and learn by yourself.  However, the real value I found in Galvanize was the structure, live-setting, accountability, instructors, classmates, career services, and networking opportunities.  I found my current position through the galvanize network.  Kristen, the Austin program manager, was incredibly supportive and encouraging.  Thanks to her hard work the program rolled out and wrapped up without a hitch allowing the students to focus on learning.  The instructors, Juliana and Dan, were very knowledgeable, patient, and extremely hard working.  Laura, the career services manager, is very good at what she does.  Galvanize is lucky to have her.  The DSI is not easy.  The drain of long hours, seemingly impossible projects, and many moments of confusion can be overcome with the support of your classmates and staff.  The course wouldn't be great if you didn't have to work hard for it. Overall, a great experience.     

Taking this immersive was one of the bet choices I’ve made during my academic career! I’ve learned so much about Data Science and not just theory like most University courses would be, but application too. I would 100% recommend this course to anyone trying to get into the Data Science field or people just interested in how to apply Data Science to what they already do. 

The instructional staff is extremely helpful and educated on the topics. They will assist you in any area that you feel that you fall short on. And where if they can’t explain it in the way you may understand, the DSR’s are there to pick up where they left off. 

The career advisor is very knowledgeable about the process; I highly recommend anyone taking the course who will be looking for work afterwards to take what they say and the skills they teach seriously. Almost every interview I had following graduating the course, a scenario that was covered occurred (whether it was about your elevator pitch, salary negotiations, etc.) and I used the techniques taught and they worked exactly how described! Helped me get a sign on bonus for the employment I ended up accepting!

Overall, this course was well worth the time and resources put into it!

I'm a recent SF graduate w a background in consulting. I'm really impressed and in love with everything about the DSI! 
Organization and Structure: the organization of this program is insane. Every minute of every hour is designed with purpose. It's very structured and right from the beginning, you'll get a Google calendar detailing the agenda for every day of the program, and rarely do we ever deviate from the plan or even our punctuality. This structure and transparency really helped me as a student to know what to expect. 
Teaching Model: At the same time, I strongly support the daily model of learning they promote --which is  non-grade based. You have 2 lectures a day and 2 assignments a day (one solo and one with a partner), but neither are ever turned in or graded. Some may critique that that then takes away the external pressure to complete the assignment, and to some degree, that's true, but I benefitted strongly from it in being much more concerned about understanding the concepts and improving myself, than just working towards a grade or idea of "completion". 
Quality of Instruction: Another huge positive was the quality of the instructors and the student to teacher ratio/staff to student ratio. Depending on which city you complete the DSI in, you may have a diff number of applicants/cohortmates. But the ratio of students to instructors are the same. For our cohort of 18 people, we had 2 instructors and 2 DSRs (like TA's). As for quality...you know in college when you sometimes get professors who are clearly geniuses, but unfortunately really can't teach? Yeah, that didn't happen here. Concepts, problems, and solutions are explained thoroughly, and we were always encouraged to ask questions. The depth of knowledge our instructors had within them became very quickly apparent. Out of curiosity, I did some good old fashioned LinkedIn stalking and also found out they all have impressive work experience and credible backgrounds. You'd never know otherwise given they are so humble and never toot their own horn. 
How Students Get Help: I was initially really concerned about quality of instruction and help given the pandemic, we had to move everything online, but I was impressed by how adaptive the staff were in transitioning to an online format and develop an efficient way to offer help for each individual student when needed. Each day of the program, we typically have a solo assignment and a pair programming assignment. During pair programming, we shared our screen, one of us driving and one of us navigating. When we needed help, we messaged a helpdesk bot on slack, and usually within a few seconds to 2 min, a DSR or instructor would pop into our breakout room to assist. It was all a lot easier than I would have imagined it to be to get help. At the end of the assignments, we were given access to the solutions, which we’d typically go over on your own at the end of the day.
Curriculum: I think Galvanize does a really good job of pulling the curriculum together, from its free basic prep offering, to its premium prep offering, to its actual course. The course is extremely comprehensive and up to date with the current Data Science and Machine Learning industries, ranging from coding, to stats, to ML techniques, building models, and a little beyond. The last topics we learned even covered advanced topics that the industry as a whole is still just dipping into. When I showed what I was learning to other data scientists and machine learning professionals, they were impressed w the amount of topics covered. Built into the curriculum, too, is your own dedicated career coach who will break down the steps to building your resume, cover letter, income negotiating, interviewing, networking, tailored to fit the Data Scientist job entry experience. You have access to the same career coach up to 6 months (and access to the Galvanize workspace in your city) after you graduate, too.
Cost: Yea...it’s expensive. You have several options for payment. Here were the options I had:

1. scholarship: You should apply for the scholarships they offer every cohort. During my time, they offered one full ride scholarship. Now I see they might be offering more? The process is: you fill out an application w an essay portion, pass the technical interview, and submit a video by a certain deadline. Ask staff for more info.
2. early bird discount: during my cohort, they offered a 10% early bird discount off tuition if you completed passed the technical interview early. Not sure if it’s still ongoing, but again, check with staff.
3. payment plans: I give Galvanize a lot of credit for being flexible. You can pay everything upfront, OR pay half first and then the other half when you’re halfway through the program, OR enroll in an Income Share Agreement where you either pay a percent of your income every month for x number of months and a CAP after you get a job, OR you can set up a sort of hybrid pay upfront/ISA hybrid payment plan, OR you go through some lending partners they have who will have a set interest amount. 

Process:

1. complete prep work
2. pass the technical interview (TI) 
3. complete the precourse work
4. start the program. 

I would personally recommend taking the premium prep course ($495) which is deducted from the tuition of the program prior to taking the TI. 
Difficulty: Was it hard...yea. I came from a non-coding background and even before the program started, I had to put in serious work to meet a baseline for what you are expected to know before the program even starts. DON’T think of this as a “in-3-simple-months-I-can-totally-change-my-career get-rich-quick” scheme. You’re going to learn an incredible amount in the 3 months, yes, and I for example went from not even knowing what a terminal was, to building my own object detection machine learning model. And I am confident now in my grasp of concepts and in applying for jobs. BUT I had to really put in time to prep and learn the basics of python, git, pandas, basic stats, on my own, even before the program started. Not to mention, the full time program is on a M-F 8:30am-5:30pm schedule, but my cohortmates and I often found ourselves staying up until at least 10pm-1am working and reviewing. For me, the experience was really hard, not so much because of the complexity of the concepts, but because 1) the speed at which the material comes at you. 2) the number of topics you need to not only know, but be/become fluent in. 3) I came from a non-coding background, so while I was learning new concepts, I had to also translate them into code. I remember, for example, that the first week was supposed to be “review” on topics we did in the precourse material, but I was completely exhausted by end of week 1 and I realized I didn’t know as much as I thought! This is all to say...yea, it’s hard, but preparation, persistence, and practice will get you through!
Critiques:There are some points I do wish we had more guided help from instructors. Galvanize does push us to be as independent as possible, given the necessity of independent problem solving and troubleshooting as Data Scientist. However I think the bootcamp experience and learning would benefit from a recorded demo of the case studies we completed every Friday. That way, after we attempt it ourselves, we can watch how an experienced Data Scientist would think through such an assignment.
Overall: I’m such a big fan, because I came in as a skeptic but saw the quality of the instructors, comprehensiveness of the curriculum, got to do my own projects which I felt really excited about, and I came out of it feeling confident I can get my first job in this new industry. Along the way, Galvanize has truly demonstrated their support of my learning, and me as a student. They’ve been receptive to criticism (they beg for it, really…) and they do actually try to implement suggestions from students the best they can. Their ISA shows investment in me as an individual, and they are truly focused on churning out capable, quality Data Scientists.
Opinion:If you have the flexibility, see if the winter time cohort is right for you. I like the winter cohort schedule because the holidays allows for more breaks that wouldn’t typically be in the other cohort timeframes. This gave me more time to self-study, review, digest what we learned and prep for projects!

Completing the Galvanize Data Science Immersive has been one of the most fulfilling and enriching experiences of my life. I really appreciated the quality of materials even electing the free Basic Prep, the guidance throughout the enrollment process, and the support of the staff/instructors as I did the program. In addition to the awesome proprietary materials and live instruction, I was amazed at the focus on career services (resume review, LinkedIn usage, mock interviews) from the very beginning (lest we forget, most of us are looking to get a data science job post-graduation). Not to mention the genuine care and advice I received after graduating as I navigate the job market. Definitely feels like I joined a community rather than just receiving a certificate and out the door. Would 10/10 recommend checking out Galvanize if you're even considering a career pivot into data science.

The course was a challenging but a rewarding experience. I barely knew python the year prior to starting the course, however using their prep material I was able to get to a level that prepared me for the course. The course does not waste time teaching python, it is taught in python so the better prepared you are the more material you will be able to follow. However the amount of coding you will be doing will definitely improve your python and problem solving skills. The course is very hands on, every lecture is followed by practical application and there are plenty of case study’s and capstones for applying all the different things you are learning. Regardless of the pace of the course the professors are always willing to field questions and in my experience there was sufficient instructors ready to answer questions and troubleshoot any barriers you might come across that prevent you from moving forward in the practical application. 

First of all, I was impressed by preparatory step prior the course. For the long time I was looking for such a constructive and structured python tutorial with lot's of practice. It helped to become toned and prepared for the bootcamp. The week 0 and 13 following weeks have been very intense in knowledge and experience. Curriculum was well constructed, team followed the plan  minute-by-minute. Emotional aspect was treated well. We had time for retrospective thoughts and could share them. To my opinion this part is as important as the rest, as it helped to be 100% focused on materials during the bootcamp. All the interpersonal aspects were carefully managed. Curriculum and team was very professional, covering practical and fundamental concepts of data science topics. Lot's materials and references were given for future progress. As I had a PhD in physics prior to course, it was important for me to go deep enough in maths and statistics, and my curiosity was satisfied. Also I was looking for pretty profound practical outcome. That was as well satisfied and I ended up with cool projects allowing me to discuss them during the following interviewing process. My programming skills improved a lot during the precourse and the bootcamp. And on the top of that, professional team of job search coaches helped with the job search and all of my frustrations and fears. I didn't work for a long time after my PhD graduation and I am happy to be on board now. This is what I wanted and I got it. Thanks to Galvanize team.

I had an incredible experience taking the Galvanize Data Science Immersive program (remote campus).  For reference, I came to the program with a strong technical background, but with very little programming experience.  
What sets Galvanize apart is the rigorous instruction and career support.  
My two instructors had a wealth of industry experience, so they were able to make real-world connections for each topic.  The daily assignments (more like mini projects), weekly case-studies, and capstone projects were extremely rigorous, in that they were relatively open-ended and required students to develop intuition and problem solving skills while applying new concepts.  Throughout these tasks, I had the opportunity to pair program, work in small groups, and work independently, all of which were beneficial to my personal and academic growth.
In addition to receiving excellent instruction, we also had weekly lectures from a career coach, who continues to work with us after the program is over.  My coach set us up for success by focusing on actionable skills such as resume/linkedin building, job search strategies, and mock interviews.  When the program ended, I was able to hit the ground running in my job search, with confidence.
The program itself is a lot of work; it is impossible to learn everything the first time, so it requires a high level of grit and determination. However, I would recommend it to anyone who is willing to take on a challenge and is interested in diving into the world of data science! Galvanize truly has an amazing program.