Guide to Data Science Bootcamps – Comprehensive listing of Bootcamps in the US
with Kat Campise, Data Scientist, Ph.D.
First, a word of caution regarding data science boot camps: while they can be a great way to dive into the data science world, they are not a replacement for the unique combination of academic training and practical application in advanced math, statistics, research, and experimental design, essential programming skills, and relevant knowledge in the target industry. It’s definitely true that most employers require at least a Master’s degree in a STEM field as a minimum qualification to be considered for their data science positions. Yes, there are exceptions where employers will review candidates who have a Bachelor’s degree. However, the applicant pool is still expected to have a STEM degree at the very least to get past any automated algorithm or human resource personnel that pulls out keywords from your resume/CV.
That being stated, in-person and online data science boot camps can help sharpen your skillset as you apply the knowledge, skills, and abilities required for extracting, transforming, and analyzing various data types.
Boot Camps vs. MOOCs
In the flurry to meet the booming need for data scientists, boot camps and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) rushed in to fill the gap. MOOCs are often free-form, which means you can attend them according to your personal schedule and are often spaced out over the course of several weeks, which means the content is more digestible. Meanwhile, boot camps are typically more intense because they involve a significant amount of information that is compressed into a short time period. If you are serious about learning more about data science and can handle this instructional format, a boot camp is an excellent option to consider.
Data science boot camps have two delivery formats: in-person and online. Most are not inexpensive, ranging in cost from just under a thousand dollars to upwards of almost $20,000 for 8 to 15 weeks of instruction. Also, a majority (if not all) of the boot camps are project-based: by the end of the instructional term, you should have a completed project that clearly demonstrates your ability to complete a data science cycle using Python, R, SQL, Hadoop, Tableau, and accurately apply the appropriate statistical methods.
Some boot camps provide an introduction to enterprises seeking qualified data science candidates and/or boot camper projects are centered on working with those enterprises to solve a specific issue (thus boosting your opportunity to secure a job once the boot camp is concluded).
There is no difference between MOOC and boot camp learning objectives. You will be expected to learn all the usual data science things that can be taught (yes, there are aspects of data science that tap into intuition, which is developed from repeated practice within the discipline, and these can’t always be overtly taught).
However, MOOCs are far less costly — Coursera and eDX have data science learning paths that are freely available — and they don’t offer in-person instruction. As such, learners are self-directed and don’t have direct access to experienced mentors. For example, Coursera assignments are either auto-graded (e.g., multiple-choice questions, exercises using DataCamp, or another instructional partner) or the projects are graded by other students.
MOOC instructional design includes hands-on practice for both guided instruction (e.g. an already well-known dataset such as the infamous Iris dataset or mtcars), and a final project (note: depending on the MOOC, some of the final or capstone projects may be student choice — where you will use a data set of your own choosing — or you will be assigned a data set that is the same for all learners in the module).
Determining if a Data Science Boot Camp is Right for You
It’s important to stop for a moment and ask yourself why you want to be a data scientist. Why? Because it’s a profession that has a high barrier to entry which translates into investing copious amounts of time and money. Sure, the salary is attractive — for the moment. But, depending on which company you work for (or even if you decide to try to start your own company) the salary might not be the six figures everyone sees posted on job search sites. Plus, if you work for a small startup, there will likely be the “many hats” problem. While this isn’t insurmountable, a newly minted data scientist who has visions of “doing data science” all day may be quickly disappointed.
Therefore, it’s always essential to conduct extensive research on a boot camp before enrolling in one. Once you have obtained all of the primary information about a boot camp, evaluate your interests with regards to data science and use this to determine whether the program is a good fit given your career goals.
Will a Boot Camp Help You Get a Job?
The other pertinent consideration is that while data science boot camps may look good on your resume, and you might be introduced to possible employers, they don’t replace the almighty STEM degree. Plus, many boot camps have prerequisites for entry, even if it’s only basic knowledge of R, Python, and SQL along with college-level statistics.
Are You Willing to Travel to an In-Person Boot Camp?
Not all boot camps have an online option available, and you’ll find that most U.S.-based boot camp providers have a limited selection of onsite locations (of course, if you live in those locales, then this isn’t necessarily a problem). Also, many of the boot camps are full-time immersion programs where you’ll be in class or attending various meetups and events every day, five days a week, for the entirety of the boot camp. This is great for networking and mingling with data scientists who are already in the industry. But, if you need to work full time or don’t have a lump sum of money stashed away for living expenses, then the pricey in-person data science boot camps might not be an option.
How Much Money Can You Spend?
Finally, the cost. There are less pricey boot camps, such as DS3 which is free. In-person data science boot camps will, naturally, require that you travel to them; so, there is an additional financial outlay, however small that might be. The more advanced boot camps vary in price from $1,500 to $16,000.
Fellowship-based programs do exist: Insight Health Data Science, Silicon Valley Data Academy, and The Data Incubator are a few prominent examples. You will need to look closely at their entry requirements. The Data Incubator, for example, only accepts program applicants who are, at most, within 12 months of graduating with either a Master’s or Ph.D. in a STEM or social science field. But, on the upside, they do have some high-level hiring partners which include (but are not limited to) Pfizer, JPMorgan Chase, and Microsoft.
Consider This as Data Collection
This information is not meant to deter your data science journey in any way, shape, or form. On the contrary, the goal here is to ensure that you are carefully investing your time and money into a career trajectory that is still evolving. There is still a tremendous amount of hype saturating data science, and all too often the talking heads on social media recommend a data science career merely based on the blog links floating through their timelines: Data Science Shortage! Data scientists dig deeper and ask why that might be true (or untrue). So, it behooves you to start practicing data science and consider this as one part of your data collection process for determining whether or not you have the interest, time, and money to meet the cognitive demands of being a data scientist.
List of Bootcamps
Betamore– Baltimore, Maryland
Betamore offers an 8-week course that covers SQL, data visualization, Tableau, Python, and other elements of data science that wraps up with a real-world project; beginners are welcome to apply. Meeting twice a week for 3 hours a class, students can expect to work at least 7 hours on their own every week to learn these skills. Betamore also boasts a personalized career placement service.
Program Length: 8 weeks
Delivery Method: Campus
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: $2,800
Big Data Bootcamp – Seattle, Washington
The Big Data Bootcamp is a 3-day intensive conference that gives attendees a good overview of data science, with several technical sessions of big data case studies. No experience with databases or programming is required, though those who are proficient may receive job placement assistance from the trainers. Individuals can apply for the conference, as well as corporations on behalf of their employees.
Program Length: 3 days
Delivery Method: Campus
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: $1,499
Bit Bootcamp – New York, New York
Students at BitBootCamp can choose from courses in data science and machine learning, data analytics, Hadoop and Big Data analytics, and advanced analytics with Spark. These are available as night courses, meeting at the New York City campus twice weekly for 4-6 weeks. BitBootCamp also offers a fully immersive program in data science, which is from 9 am-5 pm every day for 2 months, which costs $15,500.
Program Length: 4-6 weeks
Delivery Method: Campus
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: $1,500
Brain Station – New York, New York
Brain Station’s data science course gives opportunities for student-led projects and has a low student-teacher ratio. Brain Station offers flexibility in its scheduling; students can choose between taking the coursework on weeknights for 10 weeks, weekends for 5 weeks, or every day for 1 week. Students should have at least an understanding of basic statistics, as well as experience programming with Python.
Program Length: 10 weeks
Delivery Method: Campus
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: $2,900
Byte Academy – New York, New York
Byte Academy’s data science immersive course is a full-time 12-week program in Bangalore, India. Students will learn about programming with Python, data acquisition, data analysis, Pandas, prediction and machine learning, data wrangling, statistical modeling, Hadoop, SQL, and NoSQL. Students need not have experience with data science prior to entering the course.
Program Length: 14 weeks
Delivery Method: Campus or Online
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: $14,950
Cetriq Training – St. Louis, Missouri
Cetriq’s Big Data boot camp is led by Hadoop consultants, who give hands-on experience to teach the foundational and practical knowledge necessary for Big Data usage. Coursework includes Big Data and its technologies, Hadoop, MapReduce, Yarn, HDFS, data transformation with Pig, structured data analysis, and ways to incorporate data analysis into the students’ own companies. Students will learn material essential for Hadoop certification tests.
Program Length: Varies
Delivery Method: Campus or Online
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: Varies
Coding Temple — Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Online
Coding Temple offers a Data Science + Python boot camp that is a 10-week full-stack development course that can be taken either online or in one of three different cities. This program features one-on-one learning, a capstone project, weekly meetings and quizzes, and practical career prep tools. No prior knowledge of data science is required for this course. Topics covered include A/B Testing, .NET, algorithms, and AngularJS.
Program Length: 10 weeks
Delivery Method: Campus or Online
GRE: Not required
2020-2021 Tuition: $13,995 for both full-time, in-person boot camps (Python + Data Science and full-stack development) and $10,000 for online course; Income Share Agreement available and discount is offered during COVID pandemic.
DataCamp offers over 100 online courses in topics relating to data science. Students can pick courses a la carte, or enroll in tracks that either help them launch a data science career or hone the skills with which they already have some experience. Tracks range from careers as a data scientist with Python or quantitative analyst with R, to skill tracks such as data visualization and time series with R. Certain courses are free for students to try.
Program Length: 4-6 hours per course
Delivery Method: Online
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: $250 per year
Data Science Dojo – Many cities – check listing
Data Science Dojo offers an immersive 5-day course that requires 10 hours a day from participants. Students prepare beforehand with 5 online tutorials on data science and programming and afterward are guided into entering a Kaggle competition. During the immersive experience, students learn about data visualization, predictive analytics, machine learning, text analytics, big data engineering, and more. The boot camps are offered in cities around the world.
Program Length: 5 Days
Delivery Method: Campus
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: $3,000
Data Science for Social Good: Summer Fellowship – Chicago, Illinois
The Data Science for Social Good’s summer fellowship recruits aspiring data scientists from around the world to work together for 3 months on projects with social impact. Fellows are generally current or recent graduates or undergraduates already training in computational or quantitative fields; they work in small groups to solve real-world problems in fields such as health, energy, education, public safety, and environmental issues.
Program Length: 14 weeks
Delivery Method: Campus
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: $11,000 – $16,000
Dataquest offers 60+ online courses in data science, programming, and statistics via an interactive platform that challenges students to write real code to solve real-world problems with real data sets. Students can pick and choose courses that interest them or enroll in learning paths designed to take them from total beginner to job-qualified data professional, with no gaps or prerequisites. Career paths include Data Analyst paths in Python and R, Data Scientist in Python, and Data Engineer. The first mission of every course is free to try.
Program Length: 5-8 hours per course on average
Delivery Method: Online
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: $399 per year
District Data Labs – Arlington, Virginia
District Data Labs offers customized corporate training plans for employees; topics may include programming with R or Python, data ingestion and storage, data analysis and visualization, machine learning, network graph analytics, and text analytics. Instructors can also create custom courses to meet the needs of the company. Pricing is based on the topics covered, the number of attendees, and the number of sessions required to teach the material.
Program Length: Varies
Delivery Method: Campus or Online
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: Varies
DS3 – New York, New York
Eight New York City undergraduate students are chosen yearly to participate in an eight-week summer data science training program, which includes a $5000 stipend and a laptop. The program provides coursework in applied statistics, machine learning, and programming with R and Python. Students work with Microsoft researchers to complete data-driven projects on topics like public school choice in New York City and flow and efficiency in the city’s taxi system.
Program Length: 8 weeks
Delivery Method: Campus
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: free
Galvanize – Austin, Texas; Boulder, Colorado; Denver, Colorado; New York, New York; Phoenix, Arizona; San Francisco, California
Taught in eight different cities around the USA, Galvanize offers immersive courses in data science and in web development. Those interested in part-time classes can choose shorter tracks in Spark for data science and data science fundamentals. There are start dates throughout the year, dependent on the city where the student chooses to learn.
Program Length: 3 months
Delivery Method: Campus
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: $16,000
General Assembly – Atlanta, Georgia; Austin, Texas; Boston, Massachusetts; Brooklyn, New York; Denver, Colorado; Los Angeles, California; Irvine/Orange County, California; New York City, New York; San Francisco, California; San Jose, California; Seattle, Washington; Washington, D.C.; Crystal City, Virginia.
General Assembly offers data science courses online as well as in cities around the world. Students can choose the 12-week data science immersive course, or part-time work in the form of nights, weekends, or 1-week accelerated courses. In the data science immersive course, students learn to create predictive models, visualize data, and develop skills in UNIX, SQL, machine learning, and Python. Career coaches help students transition into gainful employment.
Program Length: Full-time immersive, 12 weeks; part-time, 10 weeks
Delivery Method: Campus or Online
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: Full-time immersive, $14,000; part-time, $3,500; online, $1,250
Insight Data Science – Silicon Valley, California; New York, New York; Boston, Massachusetts; Seattle, Washington
Insight is an elite postdoctoral 7-week training program that serves as a transition for academic researchers preparing to enter the industry. All students receive a full-tuition scholarship and work solely on self-directed projects with help from industry-noted data scientists. Students must intend to become data scientists at the end of this program, and should expect to interview with companies at the end of the program; all Insight fellows who have gone through the job search process found employment within 3-4 months.
Program Length: 7 weeks
Delivery Method: Campus and Online
GRE: Not Required, only for people with a PhD
2020-2021 Tuition: Free
K2’s data science boot camp covers many topics in data science essentials, exploratory data analysis, and machine learning systems. Students also work on both mock and live industry projects and get assistance with their job search in the form of practical workshops and interview preparation. This program requires a commitment of 4-12 months to complete and includes dozens of video lessons and 30 sessions with an industry mentor. Applicants should have 2-5 years in a technical or analytical role, a quantitative undergraduate or graduate degree, and experience with computer programming.
Program Length: 12 weeks
Delivery Method: Online
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: $6,000
Fellowship AI – San Francisco, California; New York, New York
Fellowship AI offers a free 4-month fellowship during which fellows work on machine learning projects with the supervision of mentors. Only 6% of applicants are admitted; prospective fellows must complete a challenging problem (or just “challenge”?) in language detection, image segmentation, transfer learning, or recommender systems.
Program Length: 4 Months
Delivery Method: Campus
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: Free
Level — Boston, Charlotte, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Toronto, and online
Level is a two-month boot camp offered through Northeastern University that is designed to give participants the skills to become data analysts. In this program, a unique real-world issue is addressed each day and students have the opportunity to create solutions to these problems. Level participants will become proficient in R, SQL, Tableau, PowerPoint, and Excel and learn about data preparation, business intelligence, regression analysis, storytelling, and visualization.
Program Length: 2 months
Delivery Method: choice between full-time, eight-week program, five days a week, eight hours per day (campus) or hybrid, 20-week course that meets in-person and online one night per week.
GRE: Not required
2020-2021 Tuition: $4,495 for intro data analytics course; $7,995 for intermediate data analytics course
Metis – New York, New York; Chicago, Illinois; San Francisco, California
Metis, a program administered by Kaplan, offers 12-week immersive data science boot camps that give students the opportunity to build a five-project portfolio. Students should expect to spend 2-3 hours every day in instruction, and 4-6 hours daily on the development of these projects. Applicants must have some prior experience with programming and statistics. Coursework includes an introduction to data science tools, machine learning, linear regression, databases, and statistics.
Program Length: 12 weeks
Delivery Method: Campus or Online
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: $16,000
NYC Data Science Academy – New York, New York
This 12-week immersive boot camp in New York City teaches students beginner and intermediate data science skills with R, Python, Spark, and Hadoop. Students should have an advanced degree in a quantitative field and must complete extensive prerequisite training online before the boot camp begins. Students learn about data analytics, visualization, and machine learning with R and Python, and high-performance computing. Students are expected to complete four projects throughout the course and are then given career placement support.
Program Length: 12 weeks
Delivery Method: Campus and Hybrid
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: $17,600
RMOTR is a 4-month boot camp program that features evening courses on a set schedule. Topics covered in courses include data science, Python, programming, and web development. Students also get the opportunity to learn how to use essential data tools like Numbpy, Pandas, Bokeh, Matplotlib, and Scipy. RMOTR also includes 10 projects that allow students to boost their GitHub profile and thus stand out professionally and opportunities for mentorship.
Program Length: 4 months (20 hours per week, two online courses per week)
Delivery Method: Online
GRE: Not required
2020-2021 Tuition: $349 per month; course offers a one-week free trial
Springboard Data Science Track
This online boot camp is a 6-month program that requires about 10-15 hours a week to complete. The Springboard data science track provides coursework in programming tools, data wrangling, data storytelling, inferential statistics, machine learning, data visualization, and Big Data; students are also expected to complete two capstone projects. Students work with industry mentors in weekly calls and are given career preparation and resources. Springboard guarantees employment within six months of graduation or refunds the course tuition.
Program Length: 6 months
Delivery Method: Online
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: $7,500
Statistics.com – Arlington, Virginia
Statistics.com offers two data science certificates: analytics for data science and programming for data science. Each of these requires 10 courses—8 required and 2 electives—which take about 4 weeks per course to complete. Statistics.com also offers team training and over 100 courses in varying levels that can be taken individually by professionals looking to boost their data science toolbox.
Program Length: 40 weeks
Delivery Method: Online
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: $5,000
The Data Incubator – New York, New York; San Francisco, California; Washington D.C.; Seattle, Washington
The Data Incubator offers advanced data science training for those with advanced degrees transitioning to employment in the industry. This 8-week boot camp provides courses in software engineering, numerical computation, natural language processing, statistics, data visualization, and databases, and parallelization. Fellows complete a set of projects and get job placement assistance through resume building, interview preparation, and contacts with suitable employers. Fellows must be in attendance full time for the duration of the boot camp, be ready to start work as a data scientist within 1-2 months of completing the fellowship and interview exclusively with the Data Incubator’s hiring partners.
Program Length: 8 weeks
Delivery Method: Campus
GRE: Not Required, only for candidates with a PhD
2020-2021 Tuition: Free
The Dev Masters – Orange County, California; Irvine, California; Los Angles, California; San Diego, California; Santa Monica, California
The Dev Masters offer a series of applied labs in data science, including short training courses for professionals looking to add basic data science skills, to advanced training in artificial intelligence and data analysis with Python. The data science certificate program provides a foundation in Python, tools for data visualization and scraping, statistics training, and courses in machine learning. The certificate program ends with a hack day, during which students participate in a private Kaggle competition.
Program Length: 12-16 weeks
Delivery Method: Campus
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition:$6,500
Thinkful offers a data science program with specializations in advanced NLP, deep learning, time series, network analysis, biostatistics, and economics or social science. Students can expect to work 20-30 hours a week for the duration of the 6-month data science program and get close mentorship throughout the course of the program. Thinkful guarantees employment within 6 months of graduation, or refunds the cost of tuition.
Program Length: 6 months
Delivery Method: Online
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: $8,550
UCLA Extension – Los Angeles, California
UCLA offers a 4-course data science specialization for professionals pursuing a career in data science. Students complete coursework in introductory data science, exploratory data analysis and visualization, Hadoop and managing big data, and machine learning using R. Students can complete the program either in a standard, 6-24 month format, or an intensive 10-week format.
Program Length: 16 Units
Delivery Method: Campus
GRE: Not Required
2020-2021 Tuition: $4,300