Springboard

I took the Foundations in Data Science course from Springboard. I have had some introduction to statistics and programming (quite a bit of stats in my MBA program and took many datacamp certificates for R and Python programming).

Really enjoyed the foundations course from Springboard. Have tried using many MOOC`s (massive online open courseware) to learn data science but to no use. Springboard`s mentor driven and community driven coursework is a lot better. Setting up the R Studio environment, Github, writing code on R, R markdown etc, all take quite some effort, if you are from a non computer science background (I am not a CS major but had some coding in high school and undergrad). This is where the mentor and community are most useful. 

The $ 500 per month fee is very reasonable for the community, mentor interactions and curriculum that you get in the course. 

My advice to prospective students who have no background in statistics and programming is as follows:

1) First learn statistics from online resources like Khan Academy, Saylor.org etc. Topics may include descriptive statistics (mean, median, mode, variance, standard deviation, types of distributions, probability), inferential statistics (p-value, Z-scores, hypothesis test, t-test) and machine learning (linear regression, logistic regression, some simple classification algorithms etc). Even datacamp.com has many good coding courses built around statistics.    

2) Learn some R, Python and SQL from datacamp.com. Take a total of 10 certificate courses from datacamp in these 3 programming languages. This will really help develop your coding skills. In R, take introduction to R, intermediate R, dplyr, ggplot, statistics with R etc. In Python, learn numpy, pandas, seaborn etc. 

3) After you have finished above 2 points, you can move to Springboard. You may think that Springboard is also about the first 2 points. Yes, it is. But the most important part of Springboard is the capstone project. Once you have completed point 1 and 2, you can enter the Springboard foundations course confidently and spend most of your time thinking and working on your capstone project. Remember that nothing matches the skills you develop while completing an end to end capstone project. This is only possible on Springboard at a very reasonable price.

Lots of effort and motivation + Springboard + Datacamp is the best formula for becoming a quantitative analyst/junior data scientist, if you do not already have a background in statistics and computer science.

I recently completed the  Foundations of Data Science course. It took me a little less than 3 months to complete the curriculum and  capstone project. 

The best part about Springboard is the mentoring. I loved my mentor--she was extremely generous with her time and knowledge and her interests and mine aligned very well. She was always quick to respond and really encouraged me to push forward with coding and analytics that I felt usure about. I really miss my mentor!

I came to Springboard with no coding background , but with a graduate degree and some knowledge of statistics. Springboard does not make ANY of their own curriculum and they don't craft any tie-ins or connections between the different lessons. A large part of the curriculum is based off of Data Camp to learn R. Learning through Data Camp has it's own set of challenges and none of these are addressed by Springboard. Other components of the course include the EdX Analytics series and dplyr videos through Data School. Many of these resources are good on their own, but none is complete enough to give the student (or at least one w/o a coding background) sufficient foundation to tackle the assignments. Often the assignments are so disconnected from the curriculum, that they are difficult to complete w/o help for your mentor--which is OK to a degree, but given that each mentor session is 30 minutes--often time runs out before addressing the capstone and other project concerns. I really feel that more attention should be paid to the curriculum---it is certainly OK to use resources from other sites, but there should be reinforcement of key concepts like..writing functions...through either supplemental videos created by Springboard, or focus lessons during the office hours.

With regard to job assistance--there is none and the career materials provided, again are brief You Tube video clips or books that are not presented in any kind of way to give the student a view of the field, options for careers or even guidance in terms of moving forward with skills, once one completes the course. In fact, after completing the course, there is zero follow up or transition. I never received any certificate or any kind of "next steps  if you want to keep learning" email. Once I finished and got my rubric from my mentor (and stopped paying the monthly fee), Springboard went off the radar.

 

 

 

The curriculum is a bunch of curated resources from various web sites (Udacity, Lynda, and other web sources). They also do provide articles and suggested books. While I found the videos helpful, the suggested books hold the key information. Also just a note a lot of the resources you will want have short trials and you will end up having to pay for. I found Sketch, Flinto, and UXPin to be the most helpful for completing the projects. 

The projects all build a good porfolio to break into the field of UX including the classic Timebank exercise. I did this course to get a better background in UX as a developer and it did help me get a lot better ideas for planning, layout, and repsonsiveness. I cannot speak for Job Assistance as I am not looking to break into the field but there are a number of people taking the course looking to do so. (You would probably get the most assistance from your mentor). The course does have GREAT office hours ranging in topics from breaking into UX to specific concepts that relate to your projects. 

The best part is your mentor. Springboard seems to do a good job with matching you with a mentor that matches what you really want to get out of the course. My mentor has been nothing short of amazing. That is what you really pay for with this course, not the materials, but the mentorship. You get a weekly phone call with your mentor and mine would answer emails with feedback in betweek sessions. 

Overall the course is inexpensive if you're looking to get a solid background and understanding of UX. I am more of a back-end developer so this actually helped me understand a lot of things about the Front-End side of development. I am not trying to break into the field of UX, BUT the mentorship is awesome and I'm sure you and your mentor would develop a plan to break into the field if you are looking to. 

Hi guys
Today I am here to review my experience with Springboard as a alumni of its Data science Career Track
Just one sentence - Don't take it. Company is Fraud.
I pursued this course because of  their title of Job guarantee and wondered that if they are so sure about job guarantee then they must have content worthy and detailed enough to land me a job. But after completing it about 50% I realised that none of their content is original. It's just scrambled from internet and piled in their curriculum. Also they use Data Camp  premium package of Data Science Course which is just a fill in the blanks for its users. You will know what is it about the topic taught but never will be able to bring it to use because coding doesn't work this way. IF YOU WANT TO ACCESS SPRINGBOARD MATERIAL JUST GO TO GOOGLE AND TYPE SPRINGBOARD EXERCISES GIT-HUB. There you are with access to full curriculum which is again a borrowed material from different free websites of data science.

Other than this before taking the course I was promised by their team that springboard will place interviews for me with different companies when I will complete 70% of curriculum which is a lie because when I discussed this with there ex career coaches, they told me that you have to apply yourself. Springboard don't place interviews for you.

Coming to their Mentor assistance thats just a 5 min call in a week . Just a formality which mentors do. In real they don't care about your doubts, progress, growth. I felt that mentor didn't knew anything about my learning and the assignments that I submitted maybe not even reviews my work on Capstone projects. Me personally was told to look up to google and youtube whenever I asked doubt from my mentor. And why will they when the organization itself doesn't care about you. Springboard support team is filled with lazy and sleepyheads.

Office hours in which they acquire some data scientist working professional to discuss a topic is a utter waste of time. Session is filled with student who know a lot already and newbies. So the discussion in call deviates from the topic everytime to unrelated answering of literally stupid questions. Leaves you with self-doubt.

Specialized ML track gives you options to select between Advance ML topics, NLP, Deep Learning. Again a pile of unstructured and irrelevant content and I think all the tracks have same content almost no matter what you take.

Those who are from non technical background turn back spare yourself.1

My advice as a victim of Springboard- If you are looking to join Springboard to learn data science and get a job after investing 2 lakhs. Dont do it. Utter waste of your time, money and effort. There are plenty of cheap ways to learn data science . SAY NO TO SPRINGBOARD.

You might be wondering how someone with no background in tech decided to enroll in a UX design course. I was an Area Manager with Costco for 5 years, 9 years with them in total, and I just started to get desperate; looking for a way out. One of my close friends has been successful in his career, and he is now a Talent Coordinator (or something like that. it doesn't even sound like a real job). We were hanging out and I was venting about my dislike for my career choice, then he suggested that I look into UX design. We went to college together, and we both have a degree in visual arts, so he knew I had creativity in me. He even recommended Springboard. 

The more I read about UX, the more I felt like I was already doing it, in a way. I worked in an area where I was consistently redisigning the customer's shopping experience... physically. The concept came very naturally to me, and I felt confident that I could apply it to mobile and web design, so I enrolled. 

It seems that the staff at Springboard are very open and very helpful. I never had an email that went unanswered. My mentor was very positive, encouraging and understanding. Through the first half of the course, I was very motivated. I didn't fully understand the first project, a harvard design challenge, which was to "redesign the gift-giving experience." I thought to myself, "Aren't gifts supposed to be a surprise? Why would I interview someone about the gift they want?" It wasn't until I forced myself through the project that I got a clearer understanding of what to do. When I moved on to my own project idea is when the wheels started to really turn. 

There are a lot of articles to read and a lot of videos to watch; all with important information, most are very boring and monotone. I suppose it's tough to find highly skilled UX designers with a lot of charisma... Anyway, I always had questions, and I always emailed my mentor about them. He always replied with an answer, but sometimes it was better to discuss on our weekly video chat. 

The process of UX was new to me, so even though I really didn't like it, I was excited about it. There were so many new terms and unfamiliar ideas, so it was a challenge. At some points, I felt like many aspects of UX were a bit pretentious or unnecessary, but that's coming from me; a person who is new to this world. 

I've never been fully motivated to do research, conduct interviews or gather data. I have done these things in the past, but only because they were part of the job. In UX, that IS the job. Still, I went ahead and spoke with family, friends, co-workers and even posted in the Springboard Community on Google+ for help. It turned out that I enjoyed creating surveys and gathering data. I just don't like talking to people (haha). Even in the Springboard Community I felt somewhat uncomfortable because it seemed like all the members where overwhelmingly positive. It was either that, or they were faking it, and both ideas were a turn-off to me. However, I can't complain too much because many of them did participate in my surveys and things and even provided feedback. So, if I ever didn't thank you, then just let me do it now. 

My favorite part of this course was the actual designing. I enjoy sketching, and it turns out that I love the Sketch program (I paid $100 for it, one time payment, worth it). I've never used it before, but I picked it up really quick. My mentor was legitimately impressed with my first round of wireframes. This part of the course is where I put the most effort in, where I spent the most time, and somehow where I started to lose motivation. The work became very tedious and repetitive, but I suppose that is the case with most things. Again, I pushed through. I eventually had a testable wireframe flow that I uploaded to InVision. Once I started to get feedback from that, my motivation went back up. I guess it's nice to see some sort of result after putting in a lot of work. 

I designed two flows for my mobile app project, my mentor approved them, and then I moved on to create a presentation. You can view my Capstone Project here. 

Where am I now?

Well, just before I started the course I had demoted myself from my management position. I was headed that direction regardless, because I was unhappy/unfulfilled, but it would've been really tough to work a 10-hour day, come home exhausted, and focus even harder on my course work. So now I was in a position with much less stress and more energy to dedicate to the course.

Things just seemed to fall into place. In my last week with Springboard, I was brought into a new position. It wasn't exactly a promotion, but it was new and I enjoyed the work. It was an undiscovered territory for Costco, so it was up to me to figure out what the position entailed. It turns out that my newfound UX knowledge played a big part in my new position. I was creating spreadsheets, gathering data, talking to members about their needs and just doing a lot of brainstorming in general. I've been in this positions for 3 months so far, and I'm actually enjoying it. 

I was the Merchandising Manager in my warehouse, which is senior level. My annual salary was $68,500, my shift started at 2:00am, and I my days off were Wednesday and Sunday. I am now the Volume Sales Coordinator, I make $24/hour with a bi-annual bonus of $2,500, and I work Monday-Friday starting at 5:00am. I make less money, but I'm much happier.

In the end, I am glad I took this course, and I'm glad I have this experience under my belt. However, I don't see myself applying for jobs in UX. I just don't think I can be a functional part of that type of work environment. Although, I think this course would be exponentially better if it helped to get you actual experience in the field; even an unpaid part-time internship. My idea of the work environment is a total assumption. I, and most students, would benefit greatly from a real-world experience in the field without a full committment on the student's part, as well as the employer's. Regardless, the experience that I gained here is something that I hope to use if/when one of my creative endeavors come to fruition.  

 

 ·       If you accept starting with Springboard be ready for 
 -- No job assistance(You will have to find job yourself)
 -- 6 months job guarantee is a liar.
 -- There are lots of unemployment Spring board alumni.
 -- 30 min mentor time once a week is not sufficient and satisfying.  ·       it’s not worth at all, simply i can say waste of your hard-earned money and waste of time as well. So called mentors will be not available as per the schedules and they don’t spend much time with the students in explaining their doubts or explaining the concept. ·       Next coming to so called office hours, coding support sessions it’s just for the name sake they fix up the sessions without even asking/discussing our availability time, i can they do as per their need. ·       They force you to enrol for the course by paying 1.95 Lakhs and they also provide you easy EMI/Loan by third party finance company, after your enrolment they don’t even care/bother about you concerns related to course. ·       Most imp thing is, they state you like 100%per job guarantee after the successful completion of your course in 6 months but the hard fact is you can’t complete the course within the stipulated time as they mentioned since you don’t get proper support from mentors/support team after your enrolment in any manner and course is not easy at all as they state you while enrolling. ·       Whenever you try to reach support team/student adviser to discuss your concerns they don’t pick your call many times and if they receive the call they just say will come back to you in few min/EOD or will solve within EOD but you don’t get any solutions on time or they try to convince you as per their needs. ·       whenever you try to raise your concerns regarding the course, you will get only one statement/answer like you are not attending sessions properly, not following the mentor instructions or you are not spending your time. They will never ever agree their mistakes and listen you concerns as well. ·       Most pathetic part - When you say i am not satisfied with the course or if you ask for the cancellation and your money back, they simply say we don’t have refund policy at all and they will again try to convince you to the fullest with the flashy words/statements. It’s like mental harassment. ·       My suggestions please don’t waste your hard money and time as well. ·       if you are interested to learn data science and to make career transition, we have many institute in Bangalore who offer data science course, ML, AI course with very minimum fee ranges like 15–45k with excellent course structure so please don’t get fool y enrolling Springboard. ·       All the videos/materials provided by springboard are available for free in YouTube. ·       When the entire course material is free resources why they are charging 1.95 Lakhs I don’t understand ·       Mentor ship (mentor call) is something they make as a star of the program. But you will get to interact with your mentor once in a week only for half an hour. ·       I never got a chance to discuss in detail with my mentor as there was a time constraint (mentor is be not available after 30min) ·       Springboard is not helpful at all, all they are doing now, are blaming the students. ·       Whatever the things/words which i explained above, it’s my pathetic experience and wasted money as well.   ·       Now for the curriculum. This was sadly most dissappointing. The course mainly revolves around data camp courses. And then these are supplemented by youtube lectures from Harvard or other institutions that would talk about the subject with the impression that you have intermediate knowledge of the subject matter, despite it being a beginners intro video to a concept. I have had much better success with the self study resources available on the internet, such as youtube tutorials etc. There was no feel of an actual boot camp teaching you, they basically link you to external sources that aren’t theirs.  ·       The whole curriculum is just stuff taken off of the internet or LinkedIn learning. Very little original content. A lot of the content can be found by just doing a basic Google search. Overall this course did not live up to its hype.  ·       I was told that these things do not matter and that you can easily land a job after you get both your projects done. I had done very detailed projects and posted them on github and did everything the career coaches suggested I do. Unfortunately, not a single data science position had reached out to me.   ·       The program is a complete waste of money and time, one more thing, right after I completed my course, got the certification, In certification also they made blunder mistakes they added advanced ML track concepts like time series Analysis and Recommendation systems which is not an part of my NLP track. 
 
 ·       They dont know how to deal with students in a cordial way, I will not recommend this to anyone who is serious about learning Datascience, you can find their course on youtube for free  ·       Frankly, I wish that I could get my money back.  ·       I recommend staying away from wasting your money with them.  ·       Don’t fall for false advertising.  ·       I definitely made a wrong decision by joining Springboard. 

 I joined Spring board india Data science Career track in june 2019. here is my experience :

I joined spring board india data science career track 2019. here is my experince:

If you accept starting with Springboard be ready for
-- No job assistance(You will have to find job yourself)
-- 6 months job guarantee is a liar.
-- There are lots of unemployment Spring board alumni.
-- 30 min mentor time once a week is not sufficient and satisfying.

·

it’s not worth at all, simply i can say waste of your hard-earned money and waste of time as well. So called mentors will be not available as per the schedules and they don’t spend much time with the students in explaining their doubts or explaining the concept.

·

Next coming to so called office hours, coding support sessions it’s just for the name sake they fix up the sessions without even asking/discussing our availability time, i can they do as per their need.

·

They force you to enrol for the course by paying 1.95 Lakhs and they also provide you easy EMI/Loan by third party finance company, after your enrolment they don’t even care/bother about you concerns related to course.

·

Most imp thing is, they state you like 100%per job guarantee after the successful completion of your course in 6 months but the hard fact is you can’t complete the course within the stipulated time as they mentioned since you don’t get proper support from mentors/support team after your enrolment in any manner and course is not easy at all as they state you while enrolling.

·

Whenever you try to reach support team/student adviser to discuss your concerns they don’t pick your call many times and if they receive the call they just say will come back to you in few min/EOD or will solve within EOD but you don’t get any solutions on time or they try to convince you as per their needs.

·

whenever you try to raise your concerns regarding the course, you will get only one statement/answer like you are not attending sessions properly, not following the mentor instructions or you are not spending your time. They will never ever agree their mistakes and listen you concerns as well.

·

Most pathetic part - When you say i am not satisfied with the course or if you ask for the cancellation and your money back, they simply say we don’t have refund policy at all and they will again try to convince you to the fullest with the flashy words/statements. It’s like mental harassment.

·

My suggestions please don’t waste your hard money and time as well.

·

if you are interested to learn data science and to make career transition, we have many institute in Bangalore who offer data science course, ML, AI course with very minimum fee ranges like 15–45k with excellent course structure so please don’t get fool y enrolling Springboard.

·

All the videos/materials provided by springboard are available for free in YouTube.

·

When the entire course material is free resources why they are charging 1.95 Lakhs I don’t understand

·

Mentor ship (mentor call) is something they make as a star of the program. But you will get to interact with your mentor once in a week only for half an hour.

·

I never got a chance to discuss in detail with my mentor as there was a time constraint (mentor is be not available after 30min)

·

Springboard is not helpful at all, all they are doing now, are blaming the students.

·

Whatever the things/words which i explained above, it’s my pathetic experience and wasted money as well.

·

Now for the curriculum. This was sadly most dissappointing. The course mainly revolves around data camp courses. And then these are supplemented by youtube lectures from Harvard or other institutions that would talk about the subject with the impression that you have intermediate knowledge of the subject matter, despite it being a beginners intro video to a concept. I have had much better success with the self study resources available on the internet, such as youtube tutorials etc. There was no feel of an actual boot camp teaching you, they basically link you to external sources that aren’t theirs.

·

The whole curriculum is just stuff taken off of the internet or LinkedIn learning. Very little original content. A lot of the content can be found by just doing a basic Google search. Overall this course did not live up to its hype.

·

I was told that these things do not matter and that you can easily land a job after you get both your projects done. I had done very detailed projects and posted them on github and did everything the career coaches suggested I do. Unfortunately, not a single data science position had reached out to me.

·

The program is a complete waste of money and time, one more thing, right after I completed my course, got the certification, In certification also they made blunder mistakes they added advanced ML track concepts like time series Analysis and Recommendation systems which is not an part of my NLP track.

·

They dont know how to deal with students in a cordial way, I will not recommend this to anyone who is serious about learning Datascience, you can find their course on youtube for free

·

Frankly, I wish that I could get my money back.

·

I recommend staying away from wasting your money with them.

·

Don’t fall for false advertising. 

Most of what I have learned about Data Science, I have learned online through free MOOC's. I enjoy this method of learning because I can really learn at my own pace, and I believe it nurtures free-thinking and problem solving in a way that more structured environments (i.e. univeristy) do not. After about a month of working through Springboard's Data Science Intensive course, I really like their unique learning environment. The coursework is curated from a pretty large variatey of websites across the internet, and I would have never found all of this material on my own. I feel much more comfortable discussing complex data science topics and using analytics tools after only of month of coursework. Unlike the other reviewer, I have not spent any additional money on the curated coursework. The mentorship program is a key component to my success thus far in the course, and he has really helped me through my capstone project. Finally, Springboard nurtures a pretty vibrant community of students and mentors that communicate through a private forum. 

Overall, I am feel like the course was money well-spent, and I am excited to get a lot more practice with my newly acquired skills.

I've been a visual designer (mostly web) for about 10 years. I've done aspects of UX in many of my jobs/projects. But there were a lot of best practices in research and prep that I'd never properly learned to be an official UX designer. I learned and practiced all these textbook need-to-knows and quickly got my portfolio updated to prove it through this course in a matter of a few months. I saved $1000's from avoiding full-time courses that I didn't need since I had quite a lot of on the job training already. Since completing the course I've gotten messages weekly to daily from recruiters on LinkedIn looking to place me in new exciting roles at big and small companies. TOTALLY WORTH IT.

My UX project from the curriculum: https://www.jennlindeman.com/ux-project