BrainStation

 My initial form of contact occurred in early December. I spoke with an advisor to discuss my background and interest in the program. Within that conversation, I discussed my economic status at that time and became attracted to Brainstation because scholarships were offered to applicants. I made certain to clearly articulate that I would need full coverage offered in a scholarship in order to pursue a course such as web development since I was not employed. 

The advisor then expressed that they admired my interest and drive in order to understand the program. The advisor also discussed previous instances where a promising candidate had a financial need and was offered more assistance financially. Overall, the conversation was very positive and the advisor invited me to apply for the web development program on their site.I submitted all parts of my application by mid December. An important part of the application included an assessment challenge,  which I spent a considerable amount of time on. I went as far as scheduling a phone call with the advisor at the end of the assessment challenge just to make sure that my assessment was well done. Once I  submitted my assessment challenge, I received an email invite for a virtual interview; this occurred three days after I was affirmed of completing the assessment challenge successfully. The interview also went positively well. I recall even discussing ways that I would improve my assessment even further, using real world scenarios. 

Overall, I was extremely passionate and excited to have found a Boot camp that seemed to have accepted my situation as it refers to my economic and employment status. That same week, I received an email congratulating me on my acceptance into the web development program and quickly shared the good news with my family. My consistency and hard work had paid off and I was on my way to becoming a software engineer. At this time I awaited my official agreement to be drafted and updated on my online application for my review.
Two weeks from my approval I emailed Brainstation as I was yet to see a drafted agreement update on my application. The New Year arrived and there was still no reply to my follow up. I became a bit concerned since I looked forward to knowing the details of my agreement and needed to make informed decisions financially ahead of time to pursue the program. Still I remained patient and hopeful. A week prior to the start of the program, I was yet to receive any form of contact or update from my advisor and/or Brainstation. Still I remained patient. Finally, I decided to contact my advisor regarding the matter. The program was to start that Monday and I had not seen any updates on my online application.

The advisor reached back to me a few hours later. The conversation opened up with a general hello. The advisor then followed up by asking me if I have considered other boot camp programs, to which I replied “no.” At the moment, I was confused as to why I was asked this, being that Brainstation was the only boot camp of my interest based upon thorough review of the coding program. The advisor stated that I certainly was more than capable based on my successful completion of the application. I followed up the conversation stating that I had emailed Brainstation weeks in advance since I did not see updates to my agreement on my application. I continued to explain my growing concerns on whether the program was still active since no one reached out to me. The advisor confirmed that Brainstation had over 100 successful applicants and that the boot camp was set to begin next week. At this point, I was offended and felt cheated out of an opportunity. The advisor then began a slew of apologies and mentioned that they failed to communicate with their co workers during the time they were away from the office due to sickness.

From a professional standpoint, I expected Brainstation  to meet me halfway since on numerous attempts, I followed up with the organization. The advisor apologized once more, as he knew I was coming from a good place of heart, but told me that Brainstation could only offer a scholarship of $3,000 as a result. I was asked to consider applying for their February cohort. Quite frankly, this did not suffice as the cost of the boot camp is $15,000. It also demonstrated that he did not truly consider my financial situation through his lack of communication. The advisor lastly stated he will update my agreement for my review at that moment. When I made the decision to pursue Brainstation, I rearranged my schedule and strategically planned to join the January Cohort as I knew that the following cohort in February would not work out for me. I was clear, thorough and consistent in explaining my economic status through communication. Brainstation showed itself to be very unprofessional and quite frankly offensive in several respects. I decided to write and share my experience for several reasons. Firstly, I have been unable to contact anyone in the corporate office via (800) 903-5159. Secondly, I want those of you who are reading and interested in the program to experience what I went through. Lastly, I hope that Brainstation reads my story and improves their communication and professionalism overall. 

Thank you.  Read less

The instructors show and tell you about the content instead of teach it. You're instructed to learn it independently outside of class hours which I could have done on my own without investing thousands to have a live class and instructor. Since the instructors didn't know how to actually teach SQL from the basics the class was lost for 3 to 4 weeks and time was lost to keep trying to go over it and content was skipped. There is no career support like they promised on the call when I signed up. They just ask if you have questions about working in the field. You will not be prepared for an entry level data analyst position upon completion, it will take a lot of outside work during and after the course to get to that level. 

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I completed the 10 week UX design course at BrainStation virtually and received my certificate. This is a part-time course that also includes completing a UX portfolio project. I enjoyed having hands on experience with the project - it helped me to apply what we were learning in the class. This is definitely an introductory class. I would have appreciated more support with job assistance, for example having 1 class that was dedicated to how to build a UX portfolio that explained what else we should include aside from the one project we created in this class.  Read less

Last month I took the Social Media Marketing course at BrainStation. It was a 7 week online course that touched on many new and popular social media platforms. This course is great if you are an entrepreneur or looking to grow your skills within social media.  Read less

On the whole, I was pretty disappointed with this course for how much I paid for it. I just finished it yesterday. 

• Class size was huge, which meant not a lot of time for questions
• The instructor is probably amazing at doing data analytics himself but found he could not clearly explain concepts 
• Multiple times per class I was told "you probably don't need to know this" or "you can just Google this"...so why am I paying over $2k for information I don't need or could figure out myself?
• Class felt a bit disorganized. While I realize a lot of schools are getting used to the digital thing, Brainstation has offered online courses for awhile, so I would expect it to be more ironed out. We spent about 15 minutes in last night's class watching the instructors discussing between each other how long people should have for presentations...the day we were supposed to do the presentations...when we had already been told we had 10 minutes to present. It just felt very disorganized and unprofessional. 
• Campus support was very unhelpful-- I had to miss a class due to a religious holiday and they offered no help in figuring out alternatives and simply told me I could miss up to 3 classes and still get the certificate. 
• When I spoke to a learning advisor and explained what I wanted to get out of the class, he assured me it would be a good fit for my role and function. However, I found the curriculum much more technical than expected. 3 classes on SQL, including advanced queries. To me, it feels like they need 2 streams of data analytics, one for those wanting to learn these technical skills, and one for professionals who want to understand the fundamentals, how to interact with data teams, and how to tell stories with data, but don't necessarily need advance technical skills.

I think if I had a different instructor, I would have had a better experience, as I have heard others say they enjoyed their Brainstation experience in the past. But based on the experience I just had, I would not take another course there.  Read less

The online (virtual) Product Management 5-week course at BrainStation was a fantastic program that introduced you to the foundational knowledge of Product Management and it's real world application. Led by industry experts, the class focused on applying knowledge to real-world use and skills transference, having students share examples from their own school or work experience to understand concepts of Product Management methodology and process.

Despite being virtual, I found the class engaging and informative and was able to connect with my peers through regular break-out rooms for group activities. The instructors were lively and made an effort to get to know all the participants through break-out rooms and interactions. 

This class was a great way to develop skills and knowledge in the industry! I highly recommend it for anyone who is looking to learn more about Product Management and start a new career in the field.

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BrainStation has a lot of work to do to make this program live up to all they sell it to be. It’s brand new, so I have hope they will get it right, but at this point, it’s not worth the money. Great instructors and good experience overall, but the pace was often frenetic, we glazed over topics, leaving very little time to develop technical skills (which is why most of us took it). Doesn’t touch on e-commerce or Amazon - weird, given today’s world. Also provided almost no actual support in making a career transition. You’re really left to figure it out on your own.  Read less

I'm quite satisfied with my learning experience at BrainStation Vancouver campus. I took a 10-week Data Science course first then a Machine Learning course which is related. I had a Master's degree in Environmental Science and only a little coding (python) skill from self-learning which worked out fine. The instructor for both courses was Alireza. He has rich experience in the Data industry and co-founded his own company. He is very patient and provides first-hand experience and cases in the course. If you take this course I suggest spending some time previewing the learning materials before each class and try to ask more questions and initiate more interactions with the instructor and your classmates. That would enhance your learning experiences. Also it's a good opportunity to seek advice on a career change or promotion during the course.   Read less

I completed the Product Management training at BrainStation with Michael Ayoola as the instructor. I highly recommend it to anyone seeking to learn about product management. 

The course does a solid job at covering a broad set of PM topics while adopting a hands-on approach to learning through in-class exercises and projects. 

Micheal was incredible at summarizing the vast amount of information and bring complex concepts to life through his experiences. He made himself available to answer any questions outside class and provided additional references to anyone wanting to dive deeper into certain topics.

I also enjoyed the balance between presentations and learning from pointed discussions and the perspectives that my class mates raised during the class.

The biggest value that I personally got out from the course is the immediate application of the concepts I learned at work and seeing the utility and practicality of what I learned. 

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It's a great class if you are starting out and trying to learn the basics of UX design. This is a beginner's course and if you already have some knowledge of UX, then it probably might be better to learn on your own or learning from a mentor. This course somewhat lacks of mentorship and you're often left in the dark.  Read less

I found the course to be the equivalent of topics that are touched throughout first year of art school, except to all be condensed into a few weeks. This is great for those who are looking for hands-on experience in seeing whether UX is right for them, where they get to explore the fundamental theories and tools that are relevant to the current UX climate that's happening in the industry, as taught by industry-experienced instructors. However, I signed up with the expectation that this UXD course (2018) is the part-time version of their UXD full-time, which is actually a completely different program, and this explains why I'm only giving it 3/5 stars, where I was only borderline satisfied with my experience but disappointed that I was misled with the title of the program. I'm currently in the midst of taking their 2020 UXD full-time program, and the intensity, content, and practices are everything that I dreamed of. The part-time course consisted of a single mini project where the student went from paper prototyping to Sketch App. Read less

Insightful instruction from leading digital marketing professionals. This course provides a great foundation to digital marketing, and covers social media, search, and email marketing. I didn’t have a marketing background, and was able to successfully navigate the course, thanks to the comprehensible material and excellent instruction from the professor. Read less

I did a lot of research before picking a bootcamp. I believe they were the best priced, but I can definitely tell you that the course material, instructors and support staff were really wonderful. Honestly, I've rarely dealt with nicer people. This boot camp is a very good choice.  Read less

Starting off I originally felt the first 2 weeks were way too easy and slow.. They really could of started off with just 1 week of the easy/everyone knows this material.  After that, it started to get really challenging.  I would say the projects made sense but after getting some feedback from other students who didn't finish some of their projects and somehow got a better mark then me that was something I figured was completely unfair.  Other than that, the course itself for 12 weeks was hard and challenged me beyond my limits that I thought weren't possible.  We lost 3-4 students during the first 4 weeks.. so this course is not for everyone! If you cannot keep up they won't do anything to help you.. You're basically on your own if you can't keep up that's it gotta drop out.

The teachers, we started off with 3 awesome teachers who teached me a lot! We were told by week 4 that we were losing 2 of our teachers (Who one works in SEO and week 5 we were doing SEO so that really sucked).  That was a game changer for me.. I felt like I was somewhat discouraged because of this.

After that, our final capstone which you will have to come up with your own brand idea (THE BIG IDEA).. was an amazing experience for myself creating a brand from a start-up position.  That was amazing to showcase it at the end of it all on DEMO day which is the single most important day of the course (At the end).

Now, let's talk about Demo Day.. first of all my whole course was online (Due to covid19).  We proposed our project infront of maybe 60-70 people and we were told with a 97% chance of hiring rate at the beginning of the course.  Yes 97%.... so after demo day all of my classmates (13 of them) not 1 of them got messaged by any recruiters!!!! This was the single most dissapointing thing ever as we waited 12 weeks for this.. and BrainStation said so many good things about it and that it would help our career development.. Well I'm still job searching 3+ weeks later and trying to get my foot in the door.  I do understand it's entirely on me to find a job but the whle " 97% hiring rate and we will help you get a job " kinda was false advertisement to be honest.

Take it like a grain of salt.. this course definitely is worth it I would say but don't expect much of getting help towards finding a job you're clearly on your own with that.

All in all, a very awesome course and 5/5 for classmates and teachers helping guide me through it.  I now hope I can find a job soon enough!! Take this course if you really feel you need the experience but don't expect much for help with job searching.. also the career deveolpment part was more or less a joke really.. they didn't help much for my resume at all!! Just gave me a template and told me some guidelines and post on it (1 review from it that's it.. over 12 week course)... and linkedin.. they just kinda said the DO's and DON'TS... No help in regards to actually doing your linkedin profle and what to say.. So I would say this course If I was to rate it out of 10.. I would give it an 8 out of 10.. if they can fix their problems with acutally helping out with linkedin profile and resume and getting recruiters to talk to us... Then it's a 10/10.

Thank you though for the experience and I will definitely recommend this to a friend if I want to.

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I took an introductory UX design course with Brainstation and coming from a completely unrelated background (I work in finance) it was easy to follow and a lot of fun!

The course was in a small group setting and encouraged a lot of interaction between classmates. It was incredibly helpful to hear unique experiences and meet people from various backgrounds that I wouldn't have otherwise gotten the chance to meet. The content was valuable and gave me access to tools I wouldn't have otherwise discovered on my own. Although I took the course more for fun and wasn't considering a full on career change, I feel equipped with the right resources should I want to pursue something in UX/UI. Brainstation instructors were also great overall - they were friendly and always welcomed constructive, honest feedback.

Highly recommend! Read less

Great little program to add to your resume but not if that’s what you want to do for your career. I knew that going in but a lot of students would take hours of class time just asking career questions and I felt time could have been used more appropriately to actually learn about the content at hand. I just feel like we could have learned more if time in class was used better. The structure wasn’t always clear at times either and could have been better. Prompt feedback on projects would have been nice too instead of waiting a week to find out that you have to redo everything you’ve been working on. I honestly feel like if the class size was smaller, it could have been a lot better.  Read less

Disorganized programs. Disorganized administration.  TA's that don't have much knowledge of programming, but are highly opinionated about the industry when they have no experience in it. Instructors play favourites, and only help students that they like, and give one word answers or brush off completely the other ones. Save yourself the money and watch youtube videos to learn the same things or enrol in an actual college. There are claims in teaching "industry best practices" which is not entirely true. The instructor's behaviour is discriminatory. Example: I told him one teammate took credit for work I did and didn't let me present it, and he didn't even response. 
There were git commit history proving this. Now that person is hired as a TA. Which brings me back to my first point about TAs. They are the ones that are teacher's pets. But don't have actual knowledge, only repeat what they are told, and take credit on other people's work. DO NOT enrol in this program. You are better off enrolling in a college or university. Or even watching youtube tutorials. Read less