Hello Reader,
As I near the end of training, I'm thinking of when I first began applying to The Data School in October of 2022. Though I would fatefully join in December of 2023, I have a lot of tips due to the numerous amounts of applications that I made in the time between, that will hopefully help you, Reader as a potential future-applicant of The Data School.
The first step in the process of joining The Data School is creating a dashboard of a topic you find interesting. This dashboard should tell a story and have a clear narrative in what it is trying to achieve. To view some examples of these look here: https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/successful/
My personal progression of initial dashboards certainly grew. To begin with I was unfamiliar with Tableau and created a truly hideous line chart of the revenue of a video game that didn't tell any sort of story or convey any data whatsoever, additionally the formatting (and colour mainly) made it impossible to actually understand. Regardless, I sent the application off. This was an important first step, as with each attempt and each draft you receive feedback explaining what's missing and things to think about within your submission.
After this submission, I was then prompted to send another application for a future cohort (I had a lot to learn). I then made a significantly better dashboard looking at the revenue of Playstation 4 games throughout the consoles lifetime. It was here that I actually explored Tableau and spent time understanding how easy it was to create as a beginner. But again, sending the draft off and gaining feedback was vital. I would send this three times, each not quite being good enough - due to a lack of story or narrative.
On my next and final initial draft; I chose to explore Netflix's first year of open data - largely focusing on Squid Game and it's complete domination of Netflix. Already this title has more of a narrative than simply looking at the revenue of a singular product. During this application I looked more closely at previously successful applications and also spent more time consuming content based around Tableau to push what I was able to achieve.
I would sent this draft off once for feedback, and then another time expecting more feedback but ready to build off of it… but that didn't happen. I had been successful with the following:
Whilst this is by no means perfect & I have since improved it (shameless plug:
https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/tobias.colmer/viz/Netflix2021ViewershipAnalysisImprovements/Dashboard1 )
, and creating it certainly helped for the next phase of the process which was making a 'final' dashboard to present to a panel of The Data School's coaches.
On my first attempt at a 'final' dashboard (I use ' ' here as I did in-fact fail on my first attempt and as a result repeated this phase), I was asked to use Car Accident Reports in Montgomery County, Maryland to produce a dashboard:
Though this was unsuccessful; I'm still quite proud of this dashboard - but I did a poor job of conveying the data during my presentation & interview. This is where my nerves of spending over a year applying came in. The greatest part of this process and my learning here came from the data-buddy I was assigned: Andreea Scineti. She taught me so much, a lot of my general formatting and spacing came from the endless feedback that I requested from her.
Ultimately I needed to present myself in a less nervous way & apply once more with a new dataset. The next dataset I was given was the London Fire Brigade Incident Dataset:
At this point; I'd applied and been through the process enough that I was fairly confident in what I needed to do. I had a clear narrative; namely that vapes were the leading cause of fires & 2-13 floored buildings in Westminster were responsible for an overwhelming amount of False Alarms, in-addition to a good understanding of why I had picked the visualisations that I had. Also, I'd been assigned a new feedback partner in-addition to staying in contact with Andreea, so I had access to a wealth of information on how to best apply myself.
Luckily, the day after my interview & presentation I heard back immediately that I'd secured my position in DS43 & the rest is history.
Please reach out if you would like feedback, or any extra info on the application process.