Chegg Skills

A health informatics grad student's review of a data analytics 6 month long online bootcamp for improving one's analytical skills.

I love Thinkful and really enjoyed my experience with this group immensely. I learned skills that were more relevant to the jobs I am looking for than at grad school. All the mentors and tutors are really nice, the management staff are very flexible and answer all of the student's questions. The curriculum is set at a flexible pace that students can finish at a reasonable time. 

Since everyone worries about this, let me clarify. You are getting a great deal on the education and training you'll receive with excellent job assistance afterwards to help you find the job you want for the fees you are paying. I highly recommend Thinkful to anyone wanting to improve their technical data skills and more 'soft-skills' presentation, networking, and interview skills. It was a life changing experience for me. 

Let me start by saying that be VERY CAREFUL before you sign up for any course with Thinkful. I work as a Stock Broker at Wall Street. I was planning to learn to code and later write my own program to trade stocks. I registered for the Web Developer/Software Engineer course with them back in April 2019. It was Bloc which later was acquired by Thinkful. During the admission process, I was never told that the course has to be finished within 8 months. In fact, I was told that I can learn to code according to my own schedule. Due to my hectic work schedule, I was putting only few hours a week. I was not in a rush. It was my understanding that I will finish it at my own pace. I had no idea that my clock was ticking and I am running out of time. No one from Thinkful or my mentor reach out to me and warned me about the course timeline. After reading the fine prints I reached out to the support team and spoke to Taylor Alexandra, she couldn't help me. I asked for supervisor, Lauren Jacobson was the supervisor who flatly refused to extend the time period so I can finish the course. I explained to her everything in detail about the miscommunication. She did not even care about my situation. Keep in mind that I have paid over $6,000 for this course. I got so upset and turn off by their staff that I lost interest in the course and lost all my money. If someone wants to learn to code, there are many many sites those offer to teach for free. There is no difference. Please save yourself your hard-earned money and use free sites or go to at least someone who truly care about students.

My nights and weekends engineering program at Thinkful has been great so far. The curriculum is compact, focused, and well organized. My main mentor was very knowledgeable technically and helpful in directing me towards the right direction. Initially, I mostly self taught and built my portfolio with simple personal projects. I struggled to find jobs in New York city as a front end developer, so I decided to give Thinkful bootcamp a try. I was impressed! The program keeps me on track and solidified my ability to write clean code, test, and collaborate in team. 

There are some suggestions for improvement. Instead of lengthy and tedious text ( especially in the server node and algorithms), it's easier to digest the materials with more visual materials or interactive coding. I usually get bored and lost in the very long and boring reading. I am more of a visual learner. Also, the instructors (other than my main mentor) sometimes were not prepared on the material and explained it rather ambiguously. 

Other than that, I am satisfied with the way Thinkful runs. The clean, straightforward front page of curriculum inspire me to write even better layout and code. I hope you like my reviews! Cheers and happy coding :) 

I stumbled upon Thinkful mostly by chance than anything else. I had a buddy who found out about the program and sent me the link. The more I read the more it seemed to check off every internal box that I had set in order for me to enroll in a school/course. After much consideration I decided to take the leap and enroll in the Data Analytics Immersion program, and I am very glad I did. Every step of the way they have been both supporting and encouraging. As I discovered more about the analytics field, I felt like this was something that I should have gotten into a long time ago. The coursework and the curriculum are both challenging and thorough, and I have been learning so much! The instructor I have, Walter, is a data genius who has a knack for explaining complex topics as well as being an all around supportive coach. The mentor and academic success manager I was given have both done nothing but encourage me and make me all the more excited for what's coming up ahead. I would highly reccomend Thinkful to anyone who is at all interested in breaking into the Tech field or learning new skills that will prove to be valuable. My life has taken some major changes, thanks to Thinkful, and they have made every step of the process easy and fun!

 

I just graduated from the program and was able to complete the would-be 6 month course in under 3 months. I come from a completely different career field (left dental school after 1 year, only about 1 months worth of programming experience). It is pretty extensive in the topics covered, so far including Excel, SQL, Tableau, Python with Pandas, Seaborn, and Matplotlib. Your experience can vary depending on your mentor, mine was a very experienced and helpful guide who focused mainly on the Python aspect in our sessions. I would say the assignments will challenge you enough to test your independent skills while the Capstones will be what you make of it. The more in depth you go, the better your eventual portfolio will be. Do not phone it in if you are doing the flex as your skills you build will be dependent on the work you put in, and my interviewers for job positions have been pretty excited about the projects in my portfolio because of this.  My only gripe: the grading team seems to be either in need of more members or be better organized. I had them cancel my presentations 5 times, delaying my graduation. While the academic team was helpful in remedying this, it was a major frustration for me and remains a huge problem for an online course that employs remote contractors.

Thinkful is a great way how to change your career within less than a year. I have quit my full-time job, found a part-time job and started Product Design Flex.

The curriculum includes the whole process that every UX/UI Designer should have. From research to code. You get a mentor session twice a week with a senior designer. 7-day week support on slack in case you are stuck in your projects. Thinkful also offers multiple online workshops every day. After you graduate you get a coach that supports you while looking for a career.

The most valuable thing for me was a relationship with my mentor. He helped me to build my confidence in talking about the industry and being able to talk about my projects out loud and receive feedback. He also provided a lot of extra resources, such as books, podcasts, events and people in my area. 

Thinkful was an incredible experience! I was offered a UX/UI position before graduation. 

I went into this program looking for:

• External accountability to learn the skills
• 1-on-1 mentorship
• A curriculum that would give me the skills needed to land a job

I have not gone through the careers portion yet, so can not say from personal experience whether it's done that, but the working data analysts and scientists I've talked to all agreed it was a great base to land that first entry level data analyst job.

On the other above criteria, I would also say that Thinkful came through. I loved my mentor, Alex, who went above and beyond to help me out with my comprehension and my capstone projects. Paying into a program and having an academic success manager and, again, the mentor, helped with that external accountability too. My academic success manager, Cali, was great too.

I found the technical coaching, which is supposed to fill in the gaps between the twice a week mentor sessions, was a little lacking. While I did find a few tech coaches that were extremely helpful and willing help me understand, sometimes I was frustrated feeling like no one wanted to spend time to help me comprehend.

The curriculum, overall, did what it was supposed to. Since it's the newest program that Thinkful has, there's some bumps in it still that were kind of irritating, but they're very open to feedback and I believe they will continue to improve it. Be prepared to take your education in your own hands (as you should do anyway) and look online for alternative explanations when the curriculum isn't making sense to you.

I was reluctant to do the mock interviews at first but now that I'm finished I'm really glad that I did them-- they were great practice.

Due to the flexibility of the program, I worked on it part time for two months and then full time for two months and was able to finish it in 4 months instead of 6, so I'll only be paying for 4 months, which is cool.

Overall, my goal was to bridge the gap to help me get a job in a new field ASAP. I feel conifident in the skills I acquired through the program, and confidence is everything going into a job search! Thinkful did the job I wanted it to and I would recommend it to anyone who's looking for a similar outcome as well.

Hello! If you're on Course Report reading up reviews on various bootcamps, you're likely where I was several months ago: curious and considering a change in pathway for your careerpath because you're seeking to build a better life for yourself. Considering the fact that majority of the jobs out there are to be obsolete in the near future, you're indeed wise to be searching bootcamps to better secure yourself. While everyone else I know are sitting around complaining about being unable to find a job or unhappy about their pay, you've decided to not be one of them. Good for you!

I considered going back to a university and commiting myself to learning material for the next few years, but quickly learned that the things taught could be outdated by the time I complete another degree. While accepted into Berkeley's Extension Program after a placement test, I saw that reviews were either REALLY good or REALLY bad- that's a red flag. You want to see some level of consistency in reviews. Also, it is smart to read up on reviews for the course you're interested in- some bootcamps may be stronger for certain career sectors or courses than others. Meanwhile, you'll want to avoid certain bootcamps that don't offer you adequate support. In this sense, I chose Thinkful. While bootcamps like General Assembly are reputable for accepting anyone and everyone (many people compare them to McDonald's- "fast food" but doesn't keep you "full"), Thinkful requires you take the time to reflect and apply with WHY you want to bootcamp. They not only have someone to speak to you by phone while going through the admission process, but equip you with a program manager, mentor, 24-7 support on Slack, support on the Thinkful dashboard where your materials and assignments will be, and much more. YES you have to be willing to put in the time and effort and do your work, but YES you're also held accountable and there are no excuses not to complete bootcamp into succession. The learning material and assignments are well organized so it's easy for you to follow along and follow through. I'm about 1/3 through my course in Data Analytics and am loving it! My mentor has been more than just a mentor- he's been my "punching bag" to vent all of life's miseries and hurdles, to which he has had great wisdom and sense of humor to share with me. The team behind this bootcamp consist of individuals who WANT to help and support you, and not those with just "jobs" to do...and that, my friend, makes a world of a difference. 

I'm a little more than halfway thru my Product Design Flex bootcamp. Thinkful does a great job with the curriculum and teaching the fundamentals, and then portfolio-creation, but what I've been benefitting from the most are the resources and the support. They have one-on-one technical mentorships with working professionals, online groups, slack support, and student discussion threads. Then they have a program manager that basically acts as your coach to ensure you graduate and job seek on the planned timeline. Anytime you feel stuck in the process, there are a team of people there to help you. 

I am about half way through the engineering flex program (previously full stack flex), and it's just ok. 

The major issues for me are threefold, as a total newbie to coding.

1. With the flex you are just being given a ton of information, not being taught it. Even if you are really applying yourself, its just a massive info dump with little to aid you in terms of actual teaching. You have to spend a ton of time researching outside resources in order to really teach yourself. I found they are very lacking in drills (and so I sprang and paid for Udemy courses and for the pro CodeCademy). 

 

2. There is a massive, MASSIVE, lack of peer group/less formal options for when you get stuck. It seemed like no one every really used the spreadsheet for peer work, and the online 'class' type things are often later in the day  (5-8pm) which I couldn't attend. My first mentor and I did not gel at all and that was actualyl horrible, but I then swtiched. The slack channels also don't seem to encourage people further along helping, probably as they are incredibly swamped in work, but it means you often just get help from the teacher on duty and that really slowed me down. 

 

3. The 6 month goal is great....but not personalized at all. All the projects that are given, aside from capstones, are really bland and generic, and it felt like as soon as we had completed one area, we just jumped to something totally new so it was really hard to retain the information. I felt like we rushed through HTML, CSS, JS, JQ and so on, and not really got any kind of solid foundation before we were onto the next, leaving me feeling like I was just passable in each area. 

 

Im considering moving into an immersion program, either with Thinkful if I can sort that, but if not then with another company in Phoenix, as I don't feel like the flex will give me the solid foundation needed to join the work force or work freelance right now. 

 

Overall, I'm very glad I did this program. Not having much experience in SQL, Tableau or Python, the curriculum takes you through these (and Excel) at a good pace and involves projects to help you practice your new skills. Also, it gives you proof of your skills (instead of being self-taught) for future employers to get your foot in the door for interviews. 

That being said, I do think it depends on what you put into the program for what you get out of it. Because it's all online, you have to be very resourceful for finding answers and ideas of how to solve problems. Yes, your mentor and Slack are provided as resources also but sometimes they are slow/busy so it's beneficial to get used to looking for answers yourself. 

The Data Analyst track is still pretty new so I would find errors or mispellings in some of the modules. They didn't prevent me from progressing but it was noticeable at times. However, I do think the way this track builds on itself - from Excel, to SQL to Tableau to Python - was very well-structured and I would highlight that for anyone interested in this program. 

Also, who you have as your mentor makes a BIG deal. My first mentor was very disengaged and didn't feel very supportive. Luckily, Thinkful is happy to work with you and find you a new mentor. And wow, I'm glad I did! The mentor that I finished the program with is what made it so worth it for me - and she is still my professional mentor after the program!

I am currently looking for a job and the career services is a huge benefit to have after you graduate. I've learned some things about the job search I never knew before and it's nice to connect with someone every week to stay motivated throughout my search. Plus, they send you great resources!

 

FINAL THOUGHTS - I think Thinkful is a great option for people who want something self-paced, online or part-time and the price point is fair. Also, if you graduate early, they give you some of your money back - I haven't heard of any other program that does that! Check out their 2-week free trial option to try out the track you're interested in and if you like it, I say go for it!