AiCore -

Adam Breeze

I recently finished the Data Engineering course and thought a well put together thorough course with good support. I joined on the government scheme with a surge of other applicants, there were a few teething issues at the start with unrush of students, but I believe they handled it really well.

The course structure of online content followed by projects, to use what you have learned, works very well. The support engineers are easily contacted and very helpful. The evening discord calls are very useful and you get to connect with other students and staff. Personally, I struggled to work on the course while having a full time job, I ended up leaving the job the focus on the course.

I have now finished the course and into to job applications, where I have been getting some good support on on setting up my online profile, LinkedIn, GitHub and my CV.

Overall, definitely a very useful experience and I'm hopeful for a future in the field.

MrFuzzyFishies

There are a lot of conflicting things said about AiCore in the reviews here and elsewhere - some extremely positive - some extremely negative and as someone who has now completed the course successfully I wanted to write the review I wished I could have read before starting it so that those considering can make the right choice.

First of all, lets start with what AiCore is NOT:
- It is not a magic ticket where you spend 6k and get a job that pays 25% extra.
- It is not easy.
- It is not a bank of resources that understood, by itself, will land you a job.

If you're considering the course and expect any of these things, you're going to be disappointed.

With that out of the way, lets look at a few of the best parts of the course. First of all, the structure. This is very well conceived. It begins with a tightly-focused exploration of key programming concepts - basic python through to OOP, Git version control and file types. With this foundation you can then specialise in a number of different professional areas. These culminate in the production of one of six industry-grade projects which you can show off to employers in interview situations. This really does take you, quickly, from beginner level projects to 'ready for first professional position' level projects. Second, the support centre. This is staffed by friendly, competent and attendant individuals who really care about data, the students learning about it and the outcomes of those on the course. The support is available at most times of the day and most days and responses are prompt, professional and helpful. Third, the projects. The projects you undertake on the course really are industry-grade and engage real problem-solving skills that are relevant to the positions you would take up in the contemporary tech industry. For example, for my final project I was exposed to a suite of different cutting-edge cloud based tools.

Now for some of the areas where there could be improvements. First: yep, the resources. Although the focus of the material is good, the quality of the writing, grammar, compositional style etc. is lacklustre. Also, yes, its a bunch of reading and note-taking (but then, frankly, what do you expect? Again, its not a magic ticket!). Second the 'assessments'. Won't say too much about this but just know that they essentially consist of multi-choice q and a and indicate as much about your quality as a programmer/data professional as your GCSE RE grade, definitely disappointing. Third: the 'careers centre'. Don't be fooled into thinking that AiCore has industry connections because they simply don't. I wasn't offered a single interview through AiCore, the work I did to secure interviews was helped by their learning resources, yes, but all off my own back: they will not be 'putting you forward' for jobs - you need to do that work yourself.

So, that gives you the crucial points and some of the good and bad, but what can be said to weigh up the whole experience? You might have noticed this is a 5 start review and I stand by that, in spite of some of the issues with the course that I and others have highlighted. There are a few reasons for this:

1. It lead to the result I wanted: a new, much brighter and better paid career at an interesting company with stronger opportunities for my future.
2. The course and the people who run it are good people and are genuinely geared towards producing successful outcomes for their cohorts.
3. And this is the most crucial point: I entered it with the right expectations and a background suited to making a transition into the tech industry. Namely: I had already been learning the basics of programming for a few months before I started (definitely do this), I had a background in academia and knew how to learn and how to commit to independent learning, I truly dedicated myself to the goal of succeeding on the course, I knew that this was the starting point for industry transition, not the end-goal.

If that sounds like you and you're thinking of applying, do it; just know, you will get out exactly what you put in.

Joel Costa

I've had a good time learning with AiCore. I came into the Data Engineering course with some Python experience, and found that it helped me close some gaps in my knowledge. The course had a pretty good structure, with a mix of notebooks, videos, and practicals helping you cement the knowledge you acquire throughout. The course can be roughly split into three phases. The first phase introduced you to Python, with tutorials that were fairly basic, but still worth it. The more interesting stuff happens after that, when you start learning to work with DataFrames, relational databases, APIs, and work with various pieces of software. It's structured in such a way that one thing seamlessly leads into the other. The support was quick and helpful.

If I had to point out a criticism, it would be the third and last phase of the course, which was about cloud services. It was quite heavy in reading, and didn't include many practicals. I wished there were more exercises, even simple ones, on how to use different cloud services (AWS in this case) and how to connect them with each other. It was arguably the most interesting aspect of the course, but by not getting much to practise the knowledge on, it didn't give you a solid grasp on it the way the other parts of the course did.

The second criticism would be to include a few more projects. Over the course you do three projects that are then evaluated by the AiCore support team. These are useful because they give you a final project on which to use all the knowledge you acquired throughout that part of the course, and you can add them to your portfolio on GitHub. It would have been great to see a few more exercises of that size, even if they were not evaluated by the team.

All in all, it was still a good course. Most things it taught could probably be learned on your own, but the structure it provided was invaluable to me personally. I will note that I was accepted into the government scheme, which means that I'm reviewing this from the perspective of someone who didn't have to pay the tuition fees. This may well influence my viewpoint, but I did have a positive experience with AiCore as whole.

Veronica Sambataro

The Aicore immersive programme has been a really formative experience. I chose Aicore because after having finished university I found myself with a lot of transferable skills but none specific for a precise position and I was struggling to see myself applying for one role rather than another one because I was not really sure on what to pursue.
The team was very supportive, and have been checking how on me since week 1. For every topic there was a library of notebooks and videos available at any point together with many practical to get my hands directly on what I was studying. Also the support team was always available at if I was struggling for any task.
Then I had also the chance to work on projects that were the mirror of real situations, and now I feel more ready for applying for jobs. Now that the 'content part' of my course is finally finished the team is still helping me out figuring out how to better present myself in my CV and linkedin profile and to prepare myself for interviews.

Kay Dragoi

AiCore is a great company with a great team which support you every step of the way through your Data&AI learning journey. They have created great environment for students to collaborate and learn from one another throughout their courses, with live demos and chat rooms available at all times for students to discuss and build knowledge. There is a dedicated team to help with career goals after competition, CV and LinkedIn advice and mock interviews. I couldn’t recommend AiCore enough for graduates looking to kickstart their career in data and AI!

Rakin

This is an extremely expensive set of YouTube videos and Google colab notebooks with some quizzes and projects you can most likely do yourself or reverse engineer from GitHub of previous graduates.

Claims that you can become a machine learning engineer with a simple course like this are completely unfounded. These are not entry level jobs, most requiring years of experience as a data scientist which again isn't an entry level job and usually requires a minimum of a masters or PhD.

The recruitment process is very shady and MLM scheme like. Recruiters will call you up asking you to join the course, giving figures about the number of graduates who have jobs. The figure which varies website to website and per conversation with the recruiter.

Do not waste your time and or money.

Darcy Newmark

Avoid this course. I was accepted on the government scheme so didn't have to pay but still, it was a complete waste of my time. Reading a long notebook with lots of typos and jargon that hasn't been taught yet and then 2 short exercises that usually have an error in and you can't even check! This is no way to learn, the tech support (an online chat, never a call like they say they offer) was unhelpful and the material and software is so bad! You get a routine email every few weeks where they ask how you are finding the course, every time I would say I'm really struggling, and they would literally just ignore me or tell me to talk to someone else. Thankfully didn't have to pay when I dropped out but they made out like I would when I first signed up.

Sam

Scam company, you'll notice that they've removed all their reviews because they were bad.

They also appeal reviews on trust pilot to get them reviewed.

The videos all look like they've been shot 4 years ago. They're also quite poorly explained and I spent most of my time on other websites getting a better explanation of the topics.

The questionnaire you have to do at the beginning is pointless, because I found out I was put onto the Cloud Engineering course because the Data Engineering one was full, so that whole process is made up.

Christos who the "success" manager person was quite dismissive, almost cocky, when I explained to him I wasn't happy about it, no apology, sounded like her was doing me a favour.

The support are lovely people, but sometimes a 15 minute call ends up being a 2 hour back and fourth live chat, so not very intensive, teaching is a skill.

It's not worth the money.