The Data School: My Journey from Application to First Week

 

 

1. How to Know if the Data School is for You:

First, think about the requirements you need to meet to be accepted:

• Do you have full working rights here in Australia?
• If so, do you have 2 years of availability and desire to commit to the contract and the full program?
• Do you have the time to participate in the interview process? (I’m going to tell you that it’s quite an investment, as the first, second, and third steps demand a lot of time.)
• Do you like learning and putting yourself into challenging situations?
• Do you like working with data? Would you like to make your life all about that for like 8 hours a day? Haha.

You need to consider if this program is for you, but if you are in doubt, take the process anyway because you can learn so much just by going through the interview process. All the dashboards from the application are reviewed, and they will provide you with feedback, which is already so helpful in improving your dashboarding skills.

 

 

2. How Was the Application Process for Me:

 

– First Stage: The Dashboard Creation:

I learned about Data School 2 weeks before the final application date for Cohort 25. I rushed and applied with an “Anime Stream Dashboard,” and it was quite hard to create a story.

When I got my feedback, I didn’t have enough time to correct and reapply because I sent my viz on the last day of the application—don’t do that. SEND YOUR VIZ AT LEAST ONE MONTH BEFORE THE FINAL DATE.

For my new application for Cohort 26, I found a blog from an ex-Data Schooler called “5 Why’s”—I can’t recommend this blog enough.

I did a lot of Tableau learning and built my viz with much more time and with financial data (I found it much easier to create a story and analysis, but it depends, so trust yourself—there are so many creative applications that get to the second step of the interview; mine was super boring.

In this application, I focused on having the cleanest look possible and a good variety of charts and tools/filters to make the viz interactive. So, try to get a theme that allows you to do that to improve your odds.

If you get an email with feedback, read it, adjust your dashboard, and send it back again. Don’t consider the feedback as a failure!

 

– Second Stage: The Video Interview:

Prepare well for your video interview—not just the script you want to say but also using the dashboard while talking and timing yourself. Present your dashboard to a friend or family member and see if they can understand without asking many questions. An extra tip that I got from a book: “You know you’ve achieved perfection, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing to take away” (Antoine de Saint-Exupery). So, don’t add unnecessary words or charts if they don’t make your point or story clearer.

 

– Third Stage: The Final Dashboard Creation and Presentation:

First, congrats on getting to this stage!!!

If you are working, I would say take some days off if you can hahaha. Honestly, it’s a really big dataset that they will send to you, and you just have to put in the effort to make the viz and understand the most from the data you have. It’s definitely not impossible, but it was quite a lot for me, and I had 12 days to do it all.

Don’t get desperate, just do your best, and again, ask for feedback from your recruiter, family, or even Data Schoolers (you can send a friendly message on LinkedIn to see if anyone has time).

 

 

3. How Was the First Week and Was It Worth It?

Sooooo worthy so far, and I believe this training will transform me quite intensely. They are going step by step, but because you have training the whole day, you end up with so much information by the end of the day. Also, every day we have some exercises to do to reinforce what we learned, and every Friday we have a challenge plus a presentation. They make you a master in creating, preparing, and presenting data.

And a plus, everyone here is so friendly and really open to helping and listening to you, so it makes everything so much easier and nicer for you to put a lot of effort into your work because it is just all worthwhile.

I will make another post on how to analyze your data soon 🙂

That’s it. This is all I could gather from my head to try to help and tell a bit about the Data School from my perspective. I loved reading everyone’s blogs about their experience before I got accepted to the Data School, so I hope this helps and makes you excited about this super cool program.

Also, check my Substack if you want to read more blogs

Thanks again and see you soon! <3