Have you done data analytics before? Dabbled around in any of the programs you need to learn (Excel, Python, Ruby, Power BI, Tableau, etc.)? General Assembly has a couple of free introductory courses to data analytics and data science that really help give you an idea of what data analytics really is, just be aware that you'll get put on their emailing list. Otherwise, I would highly recommend taking a look at Udemy or Coursera and either taking some of their free courses or paying for some of the learning paths, if you catch them at certain times, they'll have things on sale for $2-5 so they can be pretty affordable. It is all video learning, but the instructors respond to questions left in the comments, so I found them to be really helpful. IBM has a data analytics certification on Coursera that provides IBMs' certification.
I signed up for one of those professional bootcamps and found myself strugglingly with the workload, when they say 30+ hours, it's closer to 50+ hours and it's not like a traditional college type course where you have TAs or a professor. Here it's real-world professionals which sounds great except that everyone does things just a little differently. It's really hard to learn a process when there are no standards applied by the people who are supposed to be 'helping' you. I lasted not quite 9 weeks and my day looked like this. Up at 5am, learning until 6:45am when I then had to punch in to work. Worked until 4:30-5pm. Dinner then back at the coursework by 6:30 or 7pm until 11 or 12 at night. Sleep a few hours repeat. Weekends were up by 6 and online ALL day. I finished the first two sprints but then had issues on my first 'project' which then put me two weeks behind. I lucked out that the program I was in offered a refund if you dropped the program, so I got most of my money back. MOST programs do not offer refunds so be very aware of that because they are not cheap. Many also ask for a pretty high deposit that is non-refundable so make sure you are SURE that's the program you want to go with. Also be aware most of those programs do not qualify for things like Financial Aid or 529 account distributions. Some may offer financial aid but there can be interest charges on them so that's an extra expense.
Also, be aware a lot of those Bootcamps don't actually offer any certification, yes you finish the courses, and you may even have a capstone project you can put on a resume but there's no credentials given, even the ones that are 'hosted' by major universities. Universities will have their own programs as well but they are actual degrees rather than a certificate.
My personal experience was that data analytics was not what I thought it was. You spend most of your time, like 90%+, data wrangling (meaning cleaning up data, replacing or removing values, trying to validate the data you're working with, etc.) and the other 10% is trying to figure out what the ask is from the requestor, they very often don't know what they want. It all was a whole lot more frustrating and boring than I expected. I'm still working on acquiring the knowledge but I'm using more targeting classes to get me the specific skills that I need/want rather than a blanket program.
Feel free to reach out if you want to continue the conversation or if you have any questions. Good luck on your journey.
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