Is Flatiron Data Science Boot Camp Right for You?

An honest review to help prospective students make an educated decision.

7 min readSep 7, 2020

Boot camps have been on the rise in recent years; aimed towards teaching students job-ready skills to enter a new industry or field. Large cities and hubs may offer numerous on-site boot camp locations, but more and more we see education expanding to online services and this of course makes no exception when it comes to boot camps. As of today, I will have completed the full-time online Data Science boot camp program with Flatiron. It’s my hope that this blog will tell you both what this program is and isn’t so that you can decide for yourself if this path is right for you.

So Why Did I Choose this Path?

I’m someone who always wanted to further my education, but the circumstances always seemed to make it more difficult than it needed to be. I’m not someone who comes from money and have seen the stress and burden of college loans. The schools I wanted to attend I either couldn’t realistically afford or wouldn’t have the time and energy to be able to work to support myself and my education. I’ve looked into alternatives and online always seemed to be the best option when it came to both time and money. I had tried some different options in the past, but they weren’t a good fit for me.

University of the People sounded great and the material was interesting, but it lacked the human element I was hoping for. There was little to no interaction with instructors or even class mates which just felt…strange. I’m someone who likes to be able to actively ask questions as I learn to further my understanding and I just wasn’t getting that there.

I eventually stumbled upon Flatiron and it seemed like a perfect fit. Their free prep courses were great and interesting. Their jobs report was nothing but promising and the price sounded reasonable for what they were offering. My plan was to start in July of this year but when Covid hit, it created a kind of perfect storm that led to me starting in April. This was perfect because it’d allow me to get a feel for the first few months of the course without having to leave my job. Needless to say, I stuck with it and am happily looking at careers in an industry I’ve always wanted to be able to work in.

The Services and Expectations

Payments

Flatiron does offer a variety of flexible payment options, all with a money back guarantee. The most intriguing of which is their ISA (Income Shared Agreement), which defers all payment until you have obtained a job after the course. There are some caveats to be aware of with this payment option similar to most loans, but it does provide a great opportunity to get into a course without the immediate stress of financial burden.

It’s important to note that you are not guaranteed a job through their course, but by following their methods will have a better probability of obtaining one. In order to be eligible for that guarantee there are still requirements you must meet on a weekly basis for a six month period post course completion.

The key requirements to be aware of are as follows:

You must demonstrate “good faith efforts” (as determined at the sole discretion of your Career Coach and the Career Services Team) towards an active job search for a Qualifying Job Offer (defined below);
On a weekly basis, you must make contact with at least eight (8) individuals, verified by first, last name and title, at prospective employers within your field of study
On a weekly basis, you must post at least one (1) written or video blog post (containing your original thoughts and ideas, providing all appropriate citations and references to third-party content from other sources), focused on a topic in your field of study on a public URL that can be verified by Flatiron School

Full requirements are listed here.

Career Services

Upon starting the last month of the course you will be paired with someone from Career Services. Their sole goal will be to help you perfect your resume, online presence/branding, and prepare you for a successful job hunt. This will include numerous things such as resume review, skill assessments, mock interviews, and more. As mentioned above, this is also where your money back guarantee comes in and the person you’ll be regularly meeting with post course completion to ensure you’re meeting the requirements.

The Course

The full course description is available here and is an accurate description. In five months (for full time students) you will go from learning the foundations of Python to the inner-workings and implementation of neural networks. It’s important to note that time-span. The course is not for the faint of heart as you will be learning a LOT in a short period of time. In all honesty, the past five months has felt more like two years. It’s quite remarkable to think back to the first month when everyone was struggling to create plots properly and then compare it to now where we’re creating new and unique image classification models, generative language models, GANs, and more.

The way the course flows is that it’s broken up into five different modules that essentially encompass the five months of the course. Each module will consist of three weeks of learning the material with week four being spent on a project encompassing the material you just learned.

If I’m being honest, it’s these projects where most of the learning will actually happen. You will try and fail countless times to implement the methods you just learned until it finally clicks. Often times you will even learn entirely new things that weren’t covered in the course but allowed you to create the project you wanted to create.

These projects are intended to be viable portfolio projects. Meaning that you will create a complete GitHub repository, record and present your findings in a non-technical manner as if you were presenting on the job, as well as writing a blog about your project.

For an example of this, you can view my complete repository and files for a project completed during month three.

The Interaction

As I stated above, I’m not a fan of online courses with little to no interaction. I like an engaging education experience. This is where I was pleasantly surprised by Flatiron’s online course. While awkward at first, getting to know the instructor and fellow class mates quickly became the highlight of each day of class. Having a dedicated hour each day to ask questions and get answers or directions to go was exactly what I was wanting. My only real complaint in this department was that it was only an hour each day and more time would have been useful for some of the tougher lessons. Even so, friendships were quick to form and relationships eventually moved outside of the classroom into weekly online happy hours, game nights, and endless supplies of inside jokes.

I think it’s important to note that interactions will vary. Talking to some of the instructors it does seem things like this are more likely to happen during the full-time course due to most everyone being on similar schedules. Although on more than one occasion we were joined in our happy hours by some part-time students.

The Inside Scoop

With the exception of my experience within the interaction above, any Flatiron student can confirm everything previously mentioned. With that in mind, there were some things I encountered that I wish I had been aware of or known to expect. Keep in mind that my experience is solely within the full-time Data Science program and I can neither confirm nor deny the expectations of other Flatiron programs.

The Pros

Access to a wealth of information
Introduced to a wide variety of tools and libraries
Opportunity to make wonderful connections and lifelong friends
You will use a lot of Pandas
You will learn to create your own unique projects and presentations
You’ll learn more statistics than you know what to do with
Non-tech family members will think you’re a wizard
You will be coding almost every day
You’ll be able to spot the difference between good data science and bad
You’ll develop skills for talking about your work in a non-technical manner

The Cons

Lessons are almost entirely delivered in lengthy, dry documents
A lot of time may be spent searching for alternative resources to accommodate your learning style
Lessons sometimes feel like they’re out of order or are missing important pieces
Solutions to coding lessons sometimes include coding methods not covered or explained in the course at all or until a much later date
Ethics in data science is only briefly mentioned and glossed over
Unscheduled days off aren’t actually days off because you won’t be given more time to complete the course and will still have to adhere to the course schedule
You’ll learn and forget more statistics than you know what to do with

Personal Advice

In all honesty, almost every online course will probably have the same issues to some extent. Flatiron does have room for improvement, as I’m sure they all do, but I enjoyed my time in their program. I can personally confirm that you will learn a great deal in their course, but it will require a great deal of work on your part. If you feel like this is the path for you then here’s some additional advice to help you on your journey:

Complete the entire free prep course
Don’t stress too much for your technical admissions interview. They’re mainly looking to see if you understand the very basic fundamentals of Python and mathematics. Although, make sure you know what a derivative is
Get a jump start on the foundations of Python; understanding the basics of how functions work will help you get your bearings much quicker
Brush up on your Algebra and Calculus skills
Know that you and your classmates are in the journey together and you’re only doing yourself a disservice by not interacting
Seriously; talk to your classmates

Hopefully, this has given you a better idea of what to expect from Flatiron’s full-time Data Science course. If there’s anything you’re still curious about then please feel free to comment or reach out on my LinkedIn and I’ll be happy to help a fellow student however I can. Good luck out there!