Pre-Dojo:
As a student assistant at her university
Had a passion in data science, but needed guidance, support and training.
Although he received a degree in cognitive sciences, he lacked the practical skills necessary to enter the industry.
After Dojo:
As a Data Analyst at Western Digital
Strong skills and knowledge base to support her new career
She dreams of returning to her Master’s degree program after more experience in her field.
Program: Online Data Science Part Time Bootcamp
Testimonial:
I’m certain that if I hadn’t taken this bootcamp, I wouldn’t have been able to get a call back or even considered applying for data science jobs.
Please tell us a bit about yourself. What were you doing professionally before the bootcamp?
I am currently 23 years old and have many hobbies, just like a fresh college graduate. I enjoy hanging out with friends, and I just moved back home. It’s been great to catch up with everyone. Before this bootcamp, I was a student assistant at my university.
Why did you choose to enroll in a Coding Bootcamp, other than the desire to learn data science?
I received a degree in cognitive sciences in college. I felt that I received a theory-based education, even though it didn’t have a lot of technical knowledge in cognitive science. I have always loved data science and was interested in learning more about it. I wanted to be a data scientist bootcamp member as soon as possible after I graduated.
What was the secret to Coding Dojo’s success? Why did you choose Coding Dojo over other programs?
So I graduated college in December 2020. Before that semester, I was already looking into data science boot camps. Coding Dojo was the first to pop up online, I believe. I did look into it but, being in college, I decided to “Okay, I’m going to keep this in my mind and return to it when it’s ready.” It just so happened that I connected with an old friend, and she had signed up for Coding Dojo’s bootcamp. It was so nice to find out that someone I was close to was already a part this bootcamp. So I thought, “Okay, if she’s positive, I might as well give it another try.” “Why did I choose Coding Dojo over other programs? It was because I didn’t need programming experience. I had only taken one intro to C++ at college, but I didn’t have any programming knowledge. It was also very affordable. I looked at other bootcamps and the price was excellent. You also had extra office hours and could chat with your friends via Zoom to discuss the work. It all worked out great for me.
Take us through the first few weeks of the program. Which parts were your favorites? What parts did you struggle with?
I had high expectations about learning everything about data science. I was very interested both in machine learning and data cleaning. When I went through the curriculum, I was impressed that it covered every topic I needed and in a comprehensive manner. It was also nice that we learned Python before diving into data cleaning and machine-learning. That was also really wonderful because I had tried to learn Python on my own by just going online and trying to figure it all out. It was nice to have someone actually teach you and be available for help during office hours.
Do you have any funny stories to share about bootcamp? Make friends! Do you have fond memories?
It was funny because my teacher was so wonderful. There would always be moments when you wonder what to do if you have missing values. Do you want to just drop everything? Or do you want fill it in, or specifically in machine-learning models? What models should you run and what metrics should be applied to them? The best part was that we were working on a project and knew the answer, but when we are in the real world, we are trying to answer other peoples’ questions. We would ask her, “Which one do your think is the best?” So we would always ask her, “Which one do we think is right?” She would always respond, “It depends. It really depends on what you want to do with the data. That was the best part. It was funny because every time someone said something, we would reply with “No, no. no. it depends, what you are trying to find.” Our instructor Noel wouldn’t reward us if we did something really well, but she would always give brownie points to us because her last name was Brown. We’d all be so happy about that.
If your graduation date was near, you should h