My Reflection on FlatIron School Online Data Science Boot Camp
I want to go over my experience at Flatiron School, with online data science boot camp. I hope that this blog posting would help those who’re considering taking this online program.
Below link was my initial thought about starting out my online boot camp. I basically wanted to change my career path from mechanical test engineer to data scientist. And I decided to take this program to take first step toward the transition. Since I’m done with the program, my goal now is to get a full time job or paid internship.
For the online data science program, there are three different paces for online boot camp, which is full time, half time, and self-pace. Full time classes are aimed for very face paced, 5month for start to finish, self paced is 10 month long, and self paced is for 15 month duration. Full time and half time has very similar structure with a lead instructor and cohort, with regular meeting times for the lectures and one on one couching sessions with instructor, but self-paced doesn’t have cohorts, but or normal lecture times. It has self-paced slack community instead. Students can ask questions on slack for assistant from peers or online instructor.
I started taking full time class at the beginning. Even though I have a full time job, I was very eager to get it over with the program and get the job as soon as possible. I also thought that it was possible for me to do it because of my previous experience with computer science class from Old Dominion University. Bootcamp prep coding material was easy to follow as well. With full-time pace, it was indeed very fast pace. I had to spend lots of time studying and catching up on materials. There were two hours of lecture times per week, and I didn’t feel like it helped me much. I am a student who can learn from textbooks or articles. Lectures helped me through the college years only because professors would give some hits for what would be on the tests. After taking three weeks or so of full time course, I started to feel like getting rushed to learn materials and having actual understandings of them. I could keep up with the pace if I wanted to but I felt like I would not be ready for the technical portion of interviews later on during job search. I decided to switch to part time. Even though I was very eager to finish within 5 month time frame, It is very important to obtain and digest all the new knowledges from the course. I would get five extra month to finish. For having cohort and weekly meeting with instructor, in my opinion, it didn’t really help me either. I feel like I’m a very strong independent learner as I stated earlier. If I hit a road block for some learning material, I would try my best to resolve the problem myself by reading textbooks or looking up on google and such, and most o them get resolved until I even have to reach out to my instructor. I would recommend people to go with self-paced if they are learner like myself. I ended up switching to part time and to self-paced course only because I didn’t feel like having an instructor helped me much. By switching to self-paced program, because it was cheaper in price, I could get money back for the difference, and ended up having longer time to finish the project. I think that it worked out nicely for me. Through slack self paced community, I could get my questions answered by instructor fast and my instructor always welcomed any questions.
Other than different paces and learning strategies, Flatiorn data science boot camp course had great materials for core programming skills, many different python library knowledges, and SQL and other required program knowledges to lean. It had good simple explanations for the theories and visualizations for beginner programmers or statistician to build up their knowledge.
As a student who completed online program, I would recommend other students who’s interested in taking this boot camp. Especially, I highly recommend the self-paced program, because it still has instructor support and opportunity to meet with peers and collaborate through slack channel, and you can finish it within 5month like full-time program as long as you can handle the fast learning pace or finish within 15 month, all up to you. It is very flexible and most affordable option that also has career service. I’m glad that I got opportunity to go through all different paces of online school and have complete experience of it. I’m so happy that I got through and ready for job search!
