SpringboardReviews of springboard.com

Springboard helped me get a better understanding of the full ML stack. It goes beyond just what you can learn from other specialization like deeplearning.ai or fast.ai. You get to look at all of the tools involved, such as pyspark and dask for data handling, XGBOOST, scikit-learn and tensorflow for modeling and docker and AWS for deployment. The 1:1 mentorship aspect of the course is also extremely valuable as you get direct access with industry professionals to help you through difficult course components and your capstone project. While I do wish the NLP portion of the course went into a little bit more applicational depth, the tools you learn from the course making learning specific NLP applications much easier.

Positives: • Mentorship By far the biggest strength of Springboard, so big that others have copied it. My mentor was just the person I had craved for a long time in my educational career: smart, good people skills, and accountable. I learned as much from him as I did in my Master’s program. The 30 minutes a week were invaluable and gave me insights I would not have found on my own. • Curriculum For the most part, the curriculum is very good. It’s a combination of online resources Springboard doesn’t create themselves, but if I had to learn data science all over again, I would rather learn from these resources than random Google searches. Save the Google searches for the projects, where most of the learning comes from anyway. The curriculum is also more up-to-date than an in-person program. The projects stretched me to my limits, and I came out a much better data scientist because of it. • Course Support There has been an increase in course support over my time at Springboard. There is an option to have an additional mentorship meeting with a different mentor just to work on non-Capstone projects. Springboard also hosts an annual conference at their headquarters that is worth attending if you are a student. Negatives: • Job Support Springboard is by no means a silver bullet to a dream data science job, but it’s close. You have to put in the work to landing a job to get that job afterwards. I found there were times where the career advisors were booked months in advance, but they seemed to have hired new staff. I have no doubt if you complete the course in six months that you would be ready for a data science role, but it’s an intense six months. • Completion Time I took much longer than expected and was given extensions to finish. This was more a human error than a Springboard error, and if I felt mentally the way I do now compared to when I started Springboard, I could have easily finished in the allotted time. Just be careful with grandiose capstone projects. • Feedback Outside of my mentor, I found feedback tough to get when handing in coursework. Overall: Great experience, would do again. The positives far outweigh the negatives and I found it paid for itself in salary raises, even with the extensions. This is the direction education is going, and I look forward to watching what Springboard does next.

I now have a job I love! There's not enough room here for a full review, but here goes. 1) the curriculum provides enough info/experience to give you the tools needed for a data science career. 2) the mentoring really helps for many reasons. 3) the career coaching and mock interviews help you get a job. 4) the salary increase I've received more than paid for the course.

Always get the response from career coach and other team members. Great experience.

I loved Springboard from beginning to end. The company really cares about its students and it shows through their constant mentorship. If you have a question, it will be answered within a day. If you need support and encouragement, there are plenty of Springboarders ready to take action. It has been a very fulfilling learning experience - you get what you put in!

Best experience in online learning. I learned so many real-life, applicable UX aspects. I am fully prepared for a job!

Springboard is amazing. It's crazy how much I'm learning despite it being online. Mentorship is what truly helps and the accountability throughout the course.

I had a great experience with Springboard so far. The career service is incredibly helpful! How they reacted to COVID-19 also shows their care to students.