Springboard

The question I always ask myself when providing a review is - could my words make a positive impact in someone's life? I consider concept of Springboard as a leader and pioneers of mentor led UX programs. More than the educational program itself, a genuine and experienced mentor can make all the difference in the world. @Midlife I needed to make the right decision, I did not feel like taking a gamble with time or money.

After 4 months of deep research around the country and even outside of the USA, my resounding selection was the Springboard UX program. Although I did not have the best experience with the first mentor pairing, the immediate correction made all the difference in the world for me. I hit a homerun with an incredible UX professional as a mentor (Andre) for my Springboard UX program. To make it even better was the amazing student support team that was always available to… yes! Great support it’s students.

Pro’s:
- Program Content is very complete.
- Course work can be heavy at times, for good reasons as you immediately get to practice hands-on what’s important.
- Perks as a Springboard Student are excellent and add incredible value.
- Mentor concept and support is probably one of the best features and differentiators this UX Design program.

-  The program has certain custom flexibilities if you are pressed on time or maybe due to other obligations.
- Student support is very agile! They actually listen to students needs.

- Cost is not high nor low. It’s right in the middle. Monthly payments are manageable if you plan ahead and make good use of your time.

- Student community is an asset, it can be slow at times as most students are in fact busy.

Con’s:

• I found none!

What would I make better if I could? The student community could use a more engaging and more dynamic collaboration tool. Is good today, but It can be amazing with the quality of the Mentors/Program and student community the Springboard programs have.

If I would do it again? Absolutely yes!

Robert R  

Overall, the content of the boot camp was directly useful in preparing for data science interviews. I accepted a full-time data science position in the Bay Area recently after 3 months of searching while also having a full-time job. Obviously, you must keep your expectations realistic and be honest about your skill level when transitioning to data science. I had to work on more coding problems via Leet Code and gain speed in completing data science challenges, which was beyond what the course could help me on.

I would certainly recommend the course to those who have technical degrees (I had two engineering degrees up to the masters level) already and just need the extra bump in skills to break into data science. For those from less technical backgrounds, a traditional academic program might be a better alternative because it may be harder to convince those in the industry that you're capable of deeply understanding how the machine learning models actually work from what I've heard.

I attended the springboard data science career track. I chose it b/c it's much cheaper compared to other bootcamps (almost half the price). The most rewarding part is the mentorship and make sure you are connected to a mentor whom you like. The level of expertise of mentors vary in their network and you will have to be proactive in reaching out to student adviser to find a good match. The curriculum is very organized and covers the majority of things you will need for a entry data scientist job. But I end up taking extra MOOC to go deeper.

This was a great program. The course work was pretty easy to follow. There were only a few times that I got bound up and the mentor (everyone is matched with a mentor from the start) helped me work through it. The problem was so much Springboard as it was on my side because the process I'd used for over ten years was different than the one Springboard requested. But that's a selling point of the program, you are paired with a mentor that helps you through that stuff!

The content is solid and there're so many optional pieces that you can go through if you want to learn more about any particular part of the UX Design process.

The only "negative" for me personally was that the timeline to complete the program was longer than I had hoped. The 2-3 months that Springboard touts is pretty ambitious for some. I think that timeline is for someone who is doing this program full-time or has no other commitments (ft job, kids, etc.). I have kids and a full-time freelance job so the program took longer for me, but I will tell anyone who listens that it was absolutely worth it.

I joined the data science career track last summer and completed the whole program in March 2019. The experience with their career coach is really great and helpful. I learned a lot of skills about how to approach the companies and cultivate myself to be a strong candidate in the job market. The courses provided by the program are not really the best for people who have not a lot of experience with data science area. Also, some of the courses are not really up to date and the materials of the courses are not easy to be found. Besides the courses from the program, I need to find other resources instead. As for the mentor, I think it is also a great sell from the program. It is great to have a 1:1 personal mentor. I learned a lot of industrial experience and how to become a data scientist what companies are looking for. Just a tiny complaint about the mentor experience is that a well-experienced industrial expert sometimes is hard to understand why an entry-level person would be stuck in a simple question (to them).  Overall, I like the program a lot because I have a schedule to follow and it is pretty organized.

Overall a very strong course that teaches you the many different facets of Data Science. As someone who was very new to computer science, I felt the course was well balanced and not too overwhelming though difficult at points. The Capstone Projects were key in me putting all of this knowledge together and really understanding the data science process. Both my normal mentor and career mentor were very helpful throughout the course and I would recommend it for anyone looking into a change in careers.

(I wrote a review on another site about Springboard using the same title as this review - rather than just copy/paste, I'll start again from scratch here. If it seems fishy to you that they have the exact same title and similar themes, it's because they were written by the exact same dude.)

Do a lot of research into which bootcamp is the best for you. Springboard will be at or near the top of your list. It's everything that you need, without a bunch of stuff that you don't.

Some reasons that Springboard may not be right for you:

- If you absolutely need to learn R. (You don't right now.  You'll be learning so many other things that you're better off learning just one language, Python, even if you already know Python.)

- If you need an in-person boot camp.  (They may have one, I don't know, I did it online because I'm in Cleveland)

- If you don't want to do a 6-month boot camp. (They probably have shorter ones; I don't know because I knew I needed to learn a ton.)

Some reasons that Springboard was right for me:

- It allowed me to have confidence to go to employers and say "Yes I'm still learning, but I can add value to your organization from Day 1. Besides all the things that I can explain to make that case, here are two projects that I designed and implemented myself."

- I checked out the curriculum, and it was credible, complete, and focused on what I really needed to know. (Having gone through the course, I can say the curriculum was accurately represented - I got out of it what I expected to get out of it.)

- The financing options/payment plan were reasonable, and they have a job guarantee, which gave me confidence that they stand behind their product.

I think you can see my name here on this review - if so, feel free to reach out to me if you have questions. As long as I'm not totally inundated with requests, I'll do my best to set up a time where we can talk if you have questions.