APPLY HERE: https://bit.ly/2W6wcFD
Read a more recent review of the program here, written after completing Week 9
This past Saturday, I completed the first of 13 weeks of Correlation One’s Data Science For All (DS4A) data science boot camp, and it was such a fun ride! Our classes run on Saturdays from 7AM – 5PM PT, so it really was a whole day absolutely chock-full of data science training, networking, and coding!
A little background:
“DS4A is a competitive, merit-based immersive 13-week (Saturdays only) program led by a world-class teaching staff from top universities like Harvard, Columbia, and MIT. The DS4A program features the premier data analytics and AI training in the world. Lead Instructor Natesh Pillai of Harvard University will work with you to explore data science in ways unlike any other program. Our training is hyper-practical, based on business cases and real-world commercial contexts. You will learn to work faster and smarter, connect models to commercial applications, and execute full-life-cycle data science work in applied contexts. Our programs have also earned worldwide recognition, including a Harvard Business School case study.”
– Correlation One
Correlation One has also run similar trainings in Colombia and in the U.S. exclusively for women (Women’s Summit), so they’re definitely on track to train thousands of diverse data scientists *completely for free*!
To get accepted, I submitted my application and C.V., and completed a 90-minute skills assessment and an interview. And out of 8,500 applicants, I was one of the 500 selected participants for the first cohort of DS4A’s Empowerment program (<6% acceptance rate)!
We use a variety of platforms (Slack, Zoom, and Jupyter Notebook) to access the course materials and connect with other Fellows, but I think my favorite part so far has been the combination of live chatting on Slack during the Zoom lectures! Seeing other people’s responses (which are often hilarious memes and ridiculous, Natesh-themed emojis) to the lectures in real time keeps things fresh, interesting, fun, and engaging. And working through the course materials on Jupyter has been so useful. Instead of having to switch between a text editor and Terminal to write and run a Python script (which is how I’m used to doing things), Jupyter Notebook allows us to do all of that interactively in one place!
Our first day was surprisingly very enjoyable! Prof. Natesh Pillai is the lead instructor for the course and it’s incredible how he makes learning Python and data science skills fun (and funny!). He’s incredibly down-to-earth and relatable, and his baseline level of energy and hype is laudable, especially given that he has to teach data science to 500 students bright and early on Saturday mornings! 😂 He also has a sick music playlist (Metallica, Michael Jackson, Drake, etc.) that he plays while we work through exercises, and it really adds a levity to the experience that I enjoy!
To complete the course with a certificate requires attendance at all or most of the lectures, completing three Extended Cases (like homework assignments), and turning in a Final Project with our group. There’s also an opportunity to earn an “honors” certificate as well (requires getting at least one “Excellent” grade and two “Good” grades on the Extended Cases), so you know I’m going after that! The Final Projects will all have interactive user interfaces, a Datafolio with our presentation, and will answer some important question using publicly available data in new and interesting ways.
My group and I are still thinking about potential project ideas, but I’d love to do something that addresses societal racial inequity and provides meaningful, actionable solutions to whatever problem we choose to tackle.
I’m actually really looking forward to waking up at 6:30AM on Saturdays now, lining up my assembly of caffeinated drinks and Plucky (a crochet duck I made that stands in for my rubber duck debugging buddy), and diving deeper into data science! I’ll keep ya posted on how it goes! 🤓 📊
If this sounds like something you’d love to participate in, apply here for the 2021 cohort of DS4A!
-Vicky
🦀 origami crab 🏝️ 
Hi Victoria,
How are you? I recently applied for this program and received an email to complete their online skill assessment. I haven’t done many online assessments before and I am worried I might underperform in this assessment. If you don’t mind, may I know roughly what type of questions will be tested in the assessment? I also would like to know how your experience has been so far in this program. Thank you in advance and take care!
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Hello! The Correlation One skills assessment was my first time doing a skills assessment too! Most of them were questions about how you might interpret different kinds of data (sales data, consumer information, etc.) or they might ask you to draw conclusions given particular situations/information/data sets. I don’t usually think about data in this particular way because I’m a biologist, so I wasn’t used to the kinds of questions they asked, but I guess I must’ve done okay enough since I got in! 😄 It was challenging, but I enjoyed it!
Since I’m nearly done with the program, I’m actually planning to do another write-up about my experiences sometime this weekend, so stay tuned for that!
Good luck with the assessment!!
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Hi,
Thanks for the introductory write up. Will you do a closing write up? Were there legitimate job opportunities?
Thanks for the insight.
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Great job on the write up. Please include a post bootcamp write up.
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Hi David, I actually posted one yesterday! It’s pinned at the top of my blog tab. 🙂 Let me know what you think!
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[…] enough to ace this interview. Fight through your pain, they say. Around this time, I also found Victoria Morgan’s blog post about her experience in cohort 1. It was inspiring to […]
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