Metis

I took the d3.js/data science course at Metis with Mollie Petit. 

Mollie was really helpful and positive throughout the course. She provided a ton of resources for us to learn throughout the classes as well as after. I learned a lot both about data science as well as the practical application of d3.js. 

The only thing I wish was that we had a bit more time and/or the class was more spread out so as to allow for a slower learning pace. 

The course overall was great. Mollie was an enthusiastic, positive teacher who was always available for help. I would highly recommend the class for anyone interested in data science or d3.js specifically. 

Prior to enrolling in Metis I was a PhD candidate in a subject matter that is generally not seen as related to data science. While I was confident in my statistics background I had only coded sparingly and was completely new to machine learning concepts. On a whim I decided it was time to leave academia and stumbled upon data science as a career option. After debating whether or not to enroll in a bootcamp or teach myself the curriciulum I quickly found Metis and decided to apply, was accepted, and enrolled soon thereafter.

Having received a PhD I was no stranger to learning and was happy to discover that the Metis program design and curriculum was exactly what I was looking for. It was the perfect combination of fun, knowledge, and rigor. Given that the course is only 12 weeks the pace can be relatively quick at times; that said, I felt confident in the material I was learning and truly engaged in the projects I was delivering. At times I felt stressed, afraid, and overwhelmed that the work I was doing wasn't up to par but was continually validated and supported by my classmates, instructors, program manager, and career staff. And for my final project I was able to create an app that combined my PhD expertise with data science and was elated to find merging the two fields was a relatively easy task.

Within about a month after I completed the bootcamp, with the help of the career team, I had multiple job interviews under my belt and received a job offer as a Senior Data Scientist. I can't say enough good things about the careers staff both on site and around the country. In my experience, they were constantly on my side on my job hunt, during negotiations, and even after I accepted the offer.

Without a doubt I am confident that Metis was the right choice for me. While I'm certain I could teach myself to code and some overarching machine learning concepts, I found the classroom experience to be invaluable for me. The opportunity to engage with peers, ask questions, and of course the career support could not be self-taught. If you're on the fence about whether or not Metis is the right choice for you I strongly suggest that you take the leap!

Metis is an absolute gem. The bootcamp was an amazing experience and extremely worthwhile. I felt like I got more out of it than any other educational program I've been in.

What made Metis stand out for me was the support that students received at every step of the way. From the coursework, to the projects, to career help- Metis truly has every student's back. It feels amazing to know that you have someone to turn to who will actually help (or try very hard even if they don't know how). The focus on employability is also very refreshing. It seemed at times that Metis was more urgently trying to get us employed than we were- which I loved! Like a pushing parent- it was what we all needed.

My thoughts in summary: the coursework leaves your thoroughly prepared for a position in data science, the speakers introduce you to an amazing array of applications and directions to head in after the course, and the career help is extremely thorough and personal.

I'm a fulltime software engineering manager with 3 kids.  It's challenging to find time at home to level up on a new language so every couple of years I look for a short-term night class to force it.  I maintain a metrics pipeline at work and I chose D3 because I was looking to take my visualizations to the next level.

My first impression is that Metis has a very high bar for instructors.  This course was taught by Michael Freeman who is a University of Washington professor and a widely recognized expert in the data visualization community.

His creds:  https://ischool.uw.edu/people/faculty/mikefree

Michael is someone who can write 300 lines of D3 from memory in 10 to 15 minutes while verbally explaining every detail to the class along the way.  By the end of the 15 minute session he's manipuated a huge dataset into a beautiful visualization, answered all of your questions along the way, and taught it in a way where *everyone* in the class could start working on in it in their next lab.  For me the teacher makes the class.  By the end of the course I felt like it was money well spent.

I am happy to say that I got a lot out of this course -- not only in knowledge and practical application but in inspiration and critical thought. In my experience this class was successful in what it set out to accomplish and I would very much recommend it to a friend or colleague.

It is important to note that the origin of my praise is the teacher himself, Kevin Quealy. His approach to teaching was interactive, casual and paced to maintain the inclusion of those who quickly understood as well as those who needed a bit more time to comprehend. I found myself on both sides of the spectrum throughout the course and felt confident that my questions would be addressed.

I recently finished the Metis Introduction to Data Science class in NYC and I have nothing but good things to say about it. I have been interested in Data Science for a while so I decided to go to a Metis meetup where they went over the curriculum of the class. I found it very interesting but what sold me was the teacher, Sergey Folgelson. He is an excellent and energetic teacher.

The class is intense and moves quickly. At the time of this review it runs every Tuesday and Thursday from 6:30pm to 9:30pm. You may be tired after a long day of work but Sergey will wake you up. There will be exercises thrown in at different portions of the lecture. You will learn a lot if you put in the work. I found that reviewing the notebooks after class on my own and completing the exercises really helped me retain the information. If you expect to just go to class and not do any homework then you might not get much out of it. As with most things you learn by doing. 

For me it was a perfect introduction to the field and just made me want to learn more. I loved it so much I applied to the 3 month intensive.If you work with data and are curious about what all the fuss is about Data Science then I cannot recommend this class enough. Best investment I have made in a long time.

I completed the data science bootcamp at Metis 2 weeks ago, and I am already missing the rigor and flow that I had gotten into. It is no doubt an intensive program, but the way Metis has structured it, you kind of start loving and enjoying the hard work. These are some of the highlights from my experience:

  1) Structure - It takes a few days to get used to the structure but once you do, you realize how powerful it is. Every thing they have planned in the day helps you learn something: 

• The pair programming challenge at the start of each day pumps up your brain in the morning. This also gives you a chance to work with different smart people from the class every day. 
• The lectures after that helps you learn a new topic. 
• The longer lunch time (1.5 hrs) helps you catch up on some work, or just chat and interact with your peers. 
• The investigative presentations that students give after lunch are also very interesting. Knowing your turn will come forces you to think about new and interesting topics -  research them and present when its your turn. 
• The practice time in the afternoon gives you lot of time to work on your projects and interact with the instructors and TA's one on one. 
• The weekly guest lectures give you an insight into the real world. You get to meet real data scientists from different industries, know their stories, how they work and and build networks. 
• The project presentations at the end of the weeks/end of every other week were the most interesting part. While you get to experience presenting and sharing your projects with the rest of the class and get feedback from the instructors, you also get to enjoy the projects built by others and overall it becomes an enriching experience. 

Homework/Challenges!. - Yes, expect this. While sometimes optional, the exercises helped solidify your understanding of topics covered in class.  The structure of the program was the best part for me.     2)  Staff support - I think the instructors are the most important players of any education system. We had very good instructors which complimented each other by being stronger in different areas. I have spent hours with my instructor Julia during practice time. Everyone was always available to help - the TA's, instructors, program manager.   3) Resources - Today, a simple search on anything related to data science turns up hundreds of hits. The curated content was awesome and helped us get the best possible detail on a given topic. They also had clear instructions on setup part for git, aws etc. which was great. The alumni slack channel is another amazing resource.    4) Career Support - They have amazing career support and are genuinely invested in helping everyone find their dream job. I enjoyed the career support sessions we had during the class. However, I found that we spent more time on the final project presentation than I would have liked. Given the short amount of time we had to cover all the important topics, I would have liked to spend more time with the instructors to learn/practice more about the algorithms than preparing for the final presentations.    All in all - its a great course and I am very happy I went for it!

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 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!!!

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.