Metis - CLOSED

I recently graduated from Data Science full-time Bootcamp. The Bootcamp opened my eyes to learning what is state of the art of Machine Learning and Deep Learning. I had a great experience with career coaches and instructors. Everyone deeply cares about... Read More the student's learning experience. I gained a good understanding of stats and all the machine learning models. I graduated two weeks ago and I got three requests for on-site interviews. Definitely open a lot of doors for me. It is sad that they are closing Seattle Metis office. Everyone there did a tremendous job.

The Decision

Deciding to transition my career from mechanical engineering and robotics to pursue data science was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made. Attending Metis made that process worlds easier than it could have been, however, and I haven't... Read More regretted it for a second.

Research

Before enrolling in Metis, I spent months considering all of the options available to me. I researched other local data science bootcamps like Galvanize and General Assembly, as well as online platforms like DataCamp, Dataquest, Udemy, Udacity, and others. I studied, I toured campuses and talked with instructors, career advisors, current and former data science students. I did my best to weigh all the options and make an informed decision, and the process led me to select Metis as the best option available to me to help me successfully transition from where I'd been to where I wanted to be.

Preparation

For personal reasons, I actually deferred starting at Metis by about 6 months after I applied, and in the grand scheme I'm glad that I did. Metis allows students enrolled in the full time data science immersive program to also take a part time online course of their choice for free, so during those 6 months I also took their Statistics for Data Scientists course, which was a great warm up for the challenges to come. I also used this time to complete the Data Scientist curriculum offered by dataquest.io, which I found to be an overall well designed and nicely presented overview of just about every topic that's covered by the Metis DS immersive (this took me about 5 months to complete, dedicating ~10 hours a week to the study on nights and weekends). This was a lot of upfront work, but quitting my job to move off in an uncertain direction seemed like a big risk so I took it seriously. This allowed me to gain a nice foundation of knowledge to build off of while still saving up for an extended period of unemployment, and definitely paid dividends once the bootcamp started.

To anybody thinking about enrolling in a DS bootcamp down the line, I strongly recommend completing an online course first, both to make sure you actually like the work and also to familiarize yourself with the content so you'll be even more successful in the bootcamp experience.

The Bootcamp

The Metis Data Science Immersive was great. My cohort had a particularly small class size, only 6 students with 2 full time instructors, 2 occasional visiting instructors, and a very talented and dedicated career advisor. The staff exceeded my expectations on a regular basis. They're knowledgeable about a wide range of material and are passionate about teaching their students the skills they'll need to succeed. The program is specific to data science, but designed to be flexible enough to approachable and valuable to students coming from a wide range of backgrounds and abilities. The material is taught with a nice combination of theoretical background and practical application, and the project-based nature of the course really makes the level of challenge a function of the student's appetite and ambition. Each project is as hard as you want it to be, you get out what you put in, and your peers and the instructors are there to help and support you every step of the way.

In terms of the level of challenge--everybody's experience and background are different, so I can only speak for myself--for me, it was challenging, but manageable. More than anything, it was intense. For the 12 weeks that the course lasted, I largely put the rest of my life on hold and worked ~80 hours/week on my projects and the curriculum. I was still able to maintain at least 6 hours of sleep most nights, but I was definitely dreaming about my work. The bootcamp was an endurance marathon, for sure. Not quite as bad as the worst parts of college, but close.

But then it ended and I was on the other side. Not only had I shored up my working knowledge of supervised and unsupervised learning, Pandas and scikit-learn, the difference between CNNs and RNNs and LSTMs and more, how to detect overfitting or design a metric or select a model, how to scrape data from the web or deploy a model in a web app--I'd actually done all of these things, and had full projects complete with code, presentations, and blog posts forming a highly visible portfolio that I could use to demonstrate to future employers that I actually know how to do the things on my resume.

What Comes After

The bootcamp is only 12 weeks, and much as it's all you can focus on while you're there, it's the means, not the end. I still had to get a job. While I'd saved up enough beforehand to survive an extended job search, I didn't actually want to drain my savings, so I jumped right in. I set a goal of starting a new job within 3 months of finishing the bootcamp and thought about what it would take to get there. I'd heard it was common for it to take 4-6 weeks or more from application to offer, and the common impression I got from talking to bootcamp grads is that you may well end up submitting dozens or even hundreds of applications before you actually get an offer. In short, finding the right fit is a full time job, and even getting your foot in the door enough to have a conversation with a potential employer takes intention, persistence, and a bit of creativity.

Here, however, is where Metis shines as well. The career counselor, Marybeth, as well as the instructors, were involved and supportive every step of the way, constantly checking in and offering help with everything from resume and cover letter reviews to practice interviews to job referrals and facilitating introductions. As long as you're willing to work, they're willing to help. I took advantage of all of these things and I think they paid off. I aimed to apply to 10 new jobs per week, and though I fell short of that goal, aiming high kept me active. It was slow getting traction, but eventually the pace picked up and I found myself juggling calls with recruiters, scheduling interviews, and having to meticulously track each job application in a spreadsheet to keep it all in order.

I feel fortunate to say that, somehow, my job hunt went pretty much exactly according to plan. 7 weeks after finishing at Metis, I accepted a job offer as a data scientist with a focus in computer vision. I'm genuinely excited about both the work and the company, and the skills and support I got from Metis were instrumental in getting me here. Huge thanks to everybody at Metis for all of the help, and best of luck to everybody out there considering a path like this for yourself!

I completed Metis' data science bootcamp in April of 2017. Overall, I had a fantastic experience and learned a ton. Don't be fooled by the "bootcamp" style of learning. The curriculum is rigorous and the coursework moves quickly. You'll do well if you... Read More come prepared to put the work in. I wrote a full review of my experience at Metis on my blog: https://wellandwired.com/blog/metis-data-science-bootcamp-review

After completing the program I started a job at Amazon and have had the opportunity to be a part of some amazing and impactful projects!

Metis was life-changing and worth every penny. Great course materials on everything from absolute basics to current state-of-the-art machine learning. Committed Instructors who really care about teaching and helping you succeed. Super smart classmates... Read More to collaborate and learn with. Tons of presentation practice opportunities which helps boost confidence. Career support from a million different angles, like networking events, technical mock interviews, resume workshops, and guest speakers. At the end of the day you get out of it what you put in, but if you're willing to work hard, and you have the aptitude for the topics on their entrance exam, Metis gives you everything you need and more to land your first job as a Data Scientist. It's certainly possible to achieve this in other cheaper ways, but with Metis you can be confident you're staying on track, staying motivated, and covering all your bases in one intense, neatly packaged 12-week sprint.

I came to Metis with a master's in Stats and a background in financial services. I keep taking self-paced online courses in data science and analytics since 2018. I found those courses helpful but not enough to help grow career from data analyst to data... Read More scientist, so I was looking for in-person and intensive training in data science. My friend recommended Metis to me. As a mother of two little ones, I was not sure if I could handle Metis's fast-paced bootcamp. But actually I did it and Metis is one of the best experiences in my life. I highly recommend Metis if you are shopping data science training to make a career change!

Knowledgeable Instructors: I was at Chicago bootcamp. My instructors Lara and John are very knowledgeable with rich industry experience and deep understanding of theories. I like the way they instruct data science in a clear and practical way. They are always patient and super helpful.

Well-Structured Curriculum: I enjoy the project-based curriculum which prepares us exactly for what we would do at a data scientist role. We practiced pair programming on a daily basis. We also had weekly coding challenges.

Interesting Projects: I did 5 projects at Metis. Those projects cover regression, classification, clustering, NLP, and time series analysis. All the projects were done in two/three weeks, which means you need to push yourself hard and dive into the machine learning algorithms.

Presentation and Communication Training: I am not a native speaker. My English proficiency is limited and my communication skill has plenty of room to improve. I did presentation for each of my projects. My instructors and advisor gave me invaluable advice on presentation and communication!

Career Support: Metis's career support is amazing. My career advisor Ashley is super helpful! She gave me tons of suggestions and help with resume, cover letter, job hunting strategy, connection with recruiters and alumni, interview skills, post-graduation 1 on 1, etc.

Cohort Peers: Cohort peers are smart and from different background. It's a really good experience to know so many interesting people who have same passion in data science. I enjoy the collaborative environment at Metis. We helped each other out with problems and keep in touch after graduation.

In short, I would say Metis is a life changing experience to me. Highly recommend!

I came to Metis Chicago with a degree in Economics, and several years of work experience in financial services and public sector analytics. I was running into problems at work where I knew there was a way to create models that would give us robust answers... Read More and to program sturdy solutions, but I simply didn't know how. I did the bootcamp to learn exactly that- how to use modeling techniques to answer real world questions, and to get much better at programming. I dramatically expanded my knowledge of statistics, modeling, and machine learning, and became a much better programmer. I'm surprised at how much I learned in 3 months. The strong emphasis on real world and business applications of these skills was indispensable, as was the emphasis on communicating my results through visualizations and presentations.

I recommend Metis to anyone who wants to pursue data science and analytics as a career. You actually gain enough knowledge and experience to move your career forward, or to pivot in that direction. The material is fantastic, it's clear that a lot of thought and effort has gone into not only producing it, but revising it to improve it, and curating it to keep it up to date. The instructors are brilliant, they're actual practitioners of the material, and they're excited to have you learn it too. The staff is wonderful, they make the bootcamp an enjoyable place to spend three months, and the career services support is way better than anything your college pretended to give you- it's personal, thorough, ongoing, and effective.

As with everything, you get out what you put in, but there's ample material to strive and learn a lot, and the instructors are supportive and available to help you learn as much as you're willing to. It's not easy, and it shouldn't be- if it were, you wouldn't be learning anything. It takes a significant amount of time and effort, but the payoff is worth it.

I had a great experience with Metis. I was looking for a fast-paced, in-person way to transition from a job in survey research and data analysis to a more coding- and ML-focused data science career, and it absolutely delivered. It was also a ton of fun!... Read More

Pros:
- Amazing instructors. They know both the theory and the practice of the material they're teaching, and they were always happy to help me work through some weird problem or just figure out what to do next.
- I loved the project-based curriculum, where I had to do everything yourself: pick a topic, find the data, plan everything out, build a model, make it better, figure out how to present it. I could work on stuff that actually interested me and I had real ownership of the product. At the end of the program I had a real portfolio of stuff I was proud of, not just a list of skills.
- Focus on presenting. Two to three weeks of project work needs to be condensed into a four-minute presentation, which is tough! At the beginning of the program I thought I hated presenting slide decks, but after five chances to get better at it, I actually really enjoy it.
- Excellent career support - LinkedIn and resume workshops, mock interviews and whiteboarding practice, great alumni network, and unlimited post-graduation support. They really, really want you to get a job. (I received and accepted a great offer exactly a month after graduating, from a company that saw me present at Career Night.)
- The challenging application process means that all of my peers were very smart cookies. I learned a lot just from finding out what other students were doing.
- Tons of extra material available if you want to dive deeper into any particular topic that interests you.

Cons:
- The rapid pace means that all of my projects felt (to me, at least) a little unfinished - there was always some more I wanted to do, but the presentation deadline always hit so fast! I feel like I could have done one less project if it meant more time to work on the others.
- The focus on preparing for a job means that some interesting topics aren't covered in as much depth. For example, you'll learn the basic theory of deep learning and neural networks, but they don't spend that much time on it, because companies don't really hire boot camp grads to build deep learning systems.
- The curriculum is constantly under development (which is good!), but that meant that there were occasional inconsistencies, like programming challenges that didn't always exactly relate to what we were covering that week.

This is my review of METIS Data Science (DS) Bootcamp experience in Seattle, winter session, Jan-Mar 2019.

I really enjoyed my bootcamp experience! I was pretty much coding daily, learning new concepts, and implementing machine learning (ML) algorithms... Read More into various projects pertaining to my interests. It was a blast!!!

Some things that I really enjoyed: (1) The format emphasizes creating design-to-product pipelines for data science projects. Having done 4 independent projects, I felt ready to tackle new problems, (2) my instructors, Chad and Cliff, provided a good mix of academic and pragmatic approaches to learning data science and completing DS projects, (3) after completing the bootcamp and reviewing class material for a couple weeks, I felt ready for interviews, (4) we practiced pair programming on a daily basis, (5) I felt a sense of camaraderie with my peers. (6) in terms of career support, our counselor (Marybeth) was very helpful. She helped me with everything I needed, from resume/cover letter review, job hunting strategy, connecting with other recruiters, etc.

Some things to improve (perhaps only for my cohort): (1) having code reviews or detailed project reviews with students would help I think, (3) I would’ve wanted to have more whiteboarding practice (this one didnt come up until the end, during mock interviews), (3) learning more DS use cases for various business problems would’ve really helped.

Advise for future students:
* The bootcamp provides sufficient (elementary) overview of fundamental machine learning algorithms, at least enough for entry-level data jobs. However, I’d advise future students to also spend some time learning from external resources (books, blogs, etc.) to get a deeper understanding of each concept.
* If you intend to join the bootcamp, look up the curriculum ahead of time and think about what kinds of projects you might want to tackle based on your interests.
* Unless you already have previous programming experience, it would be good to learn python programming and other CS fundamentals yourself.
* Just keep in mind that career transitioning is not as easy as you might imagine. If you are trying/planning to do it, I think your quickest way to getting a DS role is to leverage the domain knowledge you have from your previous career and then implement DS/ML into your field. Also, I learned that becoming a data scientist is more like a marathon, rather than a sprint.

I came to Metis from a very nontraditional background. I received my bachelor's from a conservatory in New York City, where I studied classical French Horn performance. While there, I had every intention of continuing to play music professionally.

I decided... Read More to do Metis for several reasons. After graduating, I spent several years in a variety of positions mostly related to project management and business operations but was looking to get into more analytical/technical professions. I was taking courses on Udacity and Udemy for about a year; while I found those courses helpful and informative, but they were not enough on their own to facilitate a career transition.

I learned about Metis from a close friend of mine who attended. It was a highly transformative experience for him, and he was able to secure a position at a startup where he actually started and is now building the data science team.

Like anything in life, you'll get out of it what you put into it. One thing that makes Metis so great is the community that you join. Some of my closest friends are students that attended my cohort (and even previous and subsequent cohorts). We all helped each other through the challenges that we faced throughout the bootcamp. We learned as much from the instructors as we did from each other by working through our problems together. (Always be willing to ask questions!!!).

While it would be possible for me to (more or less) learn this material on my own, I would not have been to do so as quickly and comprehensively. That said, even if I learned this all on my own, there's no way that I could have achieved the same level of confidence, not without being surrounded by the great instructors, staff, and peers that Metis provides. During the bootcamp, you'll get a clear idea of where the bar is and what you need to do to reach it.

The career counseling was also highly beneficial. They are very honest about the career options you should expect upon completing the bootcamp, and they do their best to connect you with hiring managers and representatives where your unique skills and background will be appreciated.

Without any technical degrees or relevant experience, I was told to expect the possibility of a data analyst position and not a data science position. I had about a 50-50 split in terms of the interviews I was getting between data scientist and analyst positions. Three months after completing the bootcamp, I received two offers from leads generated through the Metis career counselor. One as a Senior Data Analyst and the other as a Data Scientist. I accepted the offer as a Data Scientist.

I took the Metis online Beginner Python and Math for Data Science course to prepare myself for Metis' Data Science Bootcamp application. It had been some time since I have dealt with the mathematical and programmatic concepts required to excel in Metis'... Read More Bootcamp, so this class was the perfect refresher for me. This particular course is an accelerated, but comprehensive dive into all the basics needed to do well in the application process. Each class is paired with a teacher and a TA who are active practitioners in the field of data science. So in addition to assistance with the coursework material, these individuals also provide insight into the field and what a day in the life of a data scientist actually looks like. I really liked the use of Zoom to create a live classroom-like feel as well as access to the teacher and TA outside of class time via Slack. Also, if you may be unsure if data science is the field for you, this class might be a good starting point to see how well you connect/reconnect with the material. But overall I would ABSOLUTELY recommend Metis and, in particular, this class prior to applying for the Bootcamp.