Metis

One of the best personal growth, and educational experiences of my life.  The instructors are incredibly dedicated to the success of their students, and are seasoned experts and practicioners in the Data Science field.  If you attend this course you will be among a very diverse cohort of students from wide ranging professional, educational, and cultural backgrounds.  About 1/3 of our cohort had Phd's.  Another 1/3 were fresh out of undergraduate with degrees in mathematics or comp sci.  The remaining 1/3 had left their jobs at finance or tech startups to deepen their knowledge in the field.  You can be certain that every student there will be incredibly intelligent and driven to succeed.  You will make great friends, build contacts in the community, and will get plenty of assistance and advice in the hiring process.

That being said, this is not for everyone by any means, and there are a few very important considerations to keep in mind before deciding on whether this course is right for you:

1. This is not college
   • Your success will not be measured in grades or a diploma, but rather in how well you understand the material, and whether or not you'll be able to walk out of Metis ready to apply the new knowledge.
   • Your skill level, competence, and employability in Data Science upon graduating is entirely on you.  If you aren't interested or capable of fully immersing yourself in the course in and out of class, practicing coding and wrangling on your own time, regularly staying up late reading anything and everything related to the material, or proactively seeking assistance or advice from instructors, students, or members of the data science community - don't bother.
2. 3 months is not a long time
   • You will not be a data science master in 3 months.
   • Becoming proficient at the industry standard data science toolkit is like anything else - playing guitar, learning Spanish, etc.  You need to commit to practicing constantly, or you simply will not build upon or retain the skills.
   • Every hour of every day counts over the 12 weeks.  Make the most of your time.
   • Be prepared to continue practicing after graduation.  At this point, it's all on you.  If you can't commit to practicing and staying engaged after leaving, you will forget this stuff fast.
3. Phd's and quantitative backgrounds may not be necessary for becoming a data scientist, but it certainly helps - especially in the job hunt.
   • Once on the job search you will quickly realize that the expectations of data science applicants are exceptionally high.  
   • The data scientist is still a very coveted profession and in spite of the increasing demand, companies are still incredibly selective about who they'll even consider.  There may not be an unlimited supply of Phd's out there with machine learning and database skills, but there are definitely enough for Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.
   • Ultimately, the Data Scientist archetype at the moment seems to be someone who is a master in their field, extremely good at math, and very competent programmers.  It is not a position for beginners.  Any level of expertise, research, or advanced academic background you have will be important.
4. Don't go into the course cold turkey
   • Practice ahead of time. Do the pre-course work. All of it.
   • I would highly suggest learning basic SQL before taking this course if you don't know it already.

I was part of the spring cohort at Metis Data Science Bootcamp and absolutely loved it. Everyday at Metis followed a similar schedule. We did pair programming in the mornings, followed by lectures, followed by coding. Over the 12 weeks we went through the basics of statistics, data science and data engineering, good programming practices, interview prep and much more. The instructors Bo Peng and Aaron Schumacher were both very experienced in the data science field and that wealth of knowledge definitely shown through in their lectures and their ability to field pretty much any question we could think of between the two of them. I also really appreciated all the assistance we got in the job hunt both in the application process. Lastly, I really loved my cohort. They came from such diverse backgrounds that everyone really added and brought value to the whole experience. 

Thanks to the bootcamp, I was able to find work within 2 weeks and am now working as a Data Scientist making a 6-figure salary doing what I love!

Prior to attending Metis I was a data analyst for a market research company. At the time, I was ready to leave my company for a new position, and so I conducted a search for new analyst or data scientist roles. I had trouble finding a good opportunity, and I found that I wasn't competitive for the data scientist positions to which I applied.

Metis helped me change that. After 3 months of bootcamp and a couple more of job searching, I got a GREAT data scientist position.

Metis is valuable because you learn a lot, and you apply that knowledge to concrete projects that show organizations what you can do. You should end the bootcamp with presentations, github repositories, and blog posts that form a portfolio to help you get hired as a data scientist.

The Metis network of alumni, staff, and companies that often hire Metis grads is also indispensable in hooking you into the data science scene and making opportunities known to you.

To comment on the day-to-day aspects of the bootcamp, the curriculum is full of useful material, and each morning's pair programming assignments really complement the material that we learn in the lectures. My one complaint here is that some of the algorithms and code examples were not explained very clearly in the lectures; I think specific lectures could have been a lot better. That said, lectures are where the learning starts, but then you continue by using the material and asking follow-up questions, so there's always opportunity to understand what you didn't before.

The instructors were great. They're very knowledgeable and always willing to help. During my job search, one of the instructors volunteered to help me prepare for a presentation that I had to give in an interview. Another instructor agreed to drill me on algorithm questions for an hour in preparation for another interview. I'm super grateful for their help.

Lastly, the individual career coaching was incredibly helpful. It's just great to have an experienced person giving you advice and helping you practice for interviews and whatnot. My only gripe here is that the career coach seems like she's got a few too many balls in the air at one time, so I had to be more aggressive about following up on certain things. On the upside, Metis seems to be very interested in feedback and making improvements, so I expect that issues will be ameliorated over time.

All in all, Metis was well worth the cost. I was able to make the career leap into data science that I wanted to make, as well as meet a great group of friends and colleagues!

I just graduated from Metis on April 7, 2017. Today is April 12th and I have already had a total of 5 interviews with 3 different companies - I have 3 more interviews with 3 more companies scheduled in the next two days. If it sounds too good to be true, you might be right. There was a lot of hard work getting to this point. But there is no doubt in my mind that I couldn't have gotten here without the help of everyone at Metis. Let me break down the what I think are the most important reasons to attend Metis:

1. What you will learn
   • Data science is massive. Machine learning is massive. You will actually spend most of your 12 weeks learning about how little you actually know. It's not until the last few weeks that you're able to look back and realize how much you learned. More importantly, you will know the things that you haven't learned yet. Metis sets you up to continue learning and growing for years to come. Before I attended Metis, I had an inkling of what Machine Learning is. Now, I am a full blown addict and couldn't be happier. I didn't even know 100% that it was "what I wanted to do", but now I can't imagine it being any other way. 
2. Who will instruct you
   • First off, Metis hires kick ass Senior Data Scientists to be your instructors. Every single one of them has an amazing background and a ton to offer you. The diversity of their team is really astounding and the domain expertise that instructors have, whether its from consulting, nuclear physics, banking, etc, all weaves its way into data science. My instructors really showed me what a wide open playing field Data Science is. Now that I've graduated, I couldn't be happier to have great mentors, contacts, and friends.
3. Who you will be in the trenches with
   • Everyone who is accepted to Metis is up to snuff. Your first week will inevitably be trying to gauge where you are at with other students and battling Impostor Sydrome, but the bottom line is that everyone there is there because they chose to do something different. I don't want to overtalk it, but attending Metis is a life-altering decision and you will always share that special bond with the people in your cohort. Not only will you spend hours and hours and hours together working on challenges and projects, but on a deeper level you know you all wanted something different and better for yourselves. That's a solid bedrock to build lasting relationships.  

So what did I leave out? Amazing career workshops, guest data scientist speakers almost every week, building a rock star portfolio of real-world problems, networking events, career day, food and drinks (sometimes but not always), and on and on and on. I didn't want to focus on the career aspect because honestly, if you do the work, if you attend the workshops, if you listen to your career advisor (shout out to Ashley!!), it will happen for you. Are there any downsides? Yes. Did I mention that there is a lot of hard work involved? Metis is a full-time commitment. And when I say that, I mean it. You will eat, sleep, and breath data science. You will bleed algorithms and you will sweat data and you will love it. 

I loved it.
The instructors were really really good, and I had a lot of fun learning all that material. The projects are well structured, and the syllabus is a very good overview of what happens in many (well, at least mine) data science companies. The coursework was a good mix of learning new topics, i.e. lectures, and hands-on work on programming challenges, projects, etc.

I had full career support throughout my job search, even after I graduated from the bootcamp, and I definitely couldn't have found my awesome job without taking this course.

Highly recommended.

Overall, I really enjoyed the Metis Data Science Bootcamp experience! I came away from the program with a more well-rounded skillset that gives me a starting point for solving data science problems and additional reach-back to a network of other data scientists. I highly recommend checking out Metis if you’re interested in data science!

If you're interested in more of my detailed thoughts on the Metis experience, including the people, curriculum, location, and resources, check out this post on my blog.

I just graduated from the 1st cohort of the Chicago Metis Data Science Bootcamp last week, and I am already getting interviews for these great Data Science positions that I would not be qualified for without the going through Metis at all! The 12 weeks were intense and sometimes even brutal, but I honestly could not have done this much on my own. We learned to code in Python, statistics related to Data Science, supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms, and even did 5 projects from collecting data, building models, to presenting the analysis in front of a large group of audiences in just a short period of time. The instructors cared very much about each student's success so we got a lot of support. The Metis staff, especially our career advisor Ashley, were also super helpful to ensure that we would land our dream job successfully after the Bootcamp. We would spend the time to polish our resume, practice interviews, network with companies so that we are ready for the real challenge after the Bootcamp. Overall, I highly recommend Metis to anyone interested in switching career path to Data Science!!!

Before attending Metis, I was a postdoctoral researcher in chemistry who was not feeling academic research anymore. I took some online classes in data science and thought it seemed like a cool and interesting field, but online courses can only take you so far. Also, I lacked enough connections to actual data scientists to really get a job in the field. I got into and applied to several different boot camps to help me bridge this gap, but I really appreciated that Metis did not try to oversell me on my prospects afterwards. Some of the other boot camps could really learn from this no nonsense approach.

Metis helped me bridge that gap between academia and the tech industry through both the data science cirriculum and career workshops. The cirriculum starts out much more lecture focused, but quickly turns to applying that knowledge to actual projects. Lectures include both descriptions of the math behind various algorithms and programming demonstrations showing practical programming/computing skills like web scraping, SQL, and using AWS. Career-wise, weekly workshops helped you to get started on improving your resume, LinkedIn profile, and networking strategies. I felt it was extremely focused and helpful, if a bit intense! (they don't call it a boot camp for no reason.)

By the end of the program, you have a portfolio of projects covering the major areas of data science (Supervised Learning: regression and classification, Unsupervised Learning/Natural Language Processing) and your final passion project. These let you start networking with other data scientists in the field and give you something to talk about! 

The other people in my cohort were also wonderful. It was a pleasure to interact with people of such diverse professional and personal backgrounds. I felt like I not only met a bunch of professional contacts but also some great new friends.

The boot camp just ended last week, but I have met so many new contacts that I don't think it will be too long to find the right position. The boot camp also offers indefnite career support and lets you return to the office as much as you need. Even a lot of the alumni who already found jobs come back on a regular basis and offer career/interview advice if you ask.

The only thing I think could be better about the curriculum is that there could have been more feedback about projects/challenges. It seemed like it came a bit late or inconsistently. Also, we went over the basics of Big Data tools like Hadoop/Spark, but it felt a little out of place since we never used it.

The one last thing I would add is that this is called a boot camp for a reason. Be sure that you are mentally and emotionally prepared, because while it was a wonderful experience, it was a very intense one. I'm glad that my cohort was such an amazing, positive, and passionate group of people to help me (and everyone else) get through this experience.