Case Western Reserve University Boot Camps

I felt overall the experience was invaluable, where I came from the beginning of the camp to the end was a massive difference. The Instructors and TA's were knowledgeable and helpful, they offered plenty of encouragement and understood how difficult the camp is. The pace is extremely fast and the material is challenging but they give you the room to grow and develop if you put in the work. The student manager really listened to you, responded to any issues or requests and tried to work with you to help you succeed. I would only recommend to people who go in realizing that the course asks a lot of time, effort, and frustration depending on your skill level from you, but will be extremely rewarding as you see your skills and comprehension start to grow. 

The CWRU Coding Boot Camp was an overall great experience. As a mid-life career change, I had decided to go into IT and entered the Boot Camp with very little coding experience,  but after 6 months of hard work, a lot of fun and meeting some great people, I came out a competent web developer and am in the process of establishing a tech startup  based around our final Boot Camp group project. 

I felt the Boot Camp curriculum and teaching was very structured and focused, taking us from web basics in HTML and CSS, quickly through to Javascript and JQuery, then databases (SQL and MongoDB) and on to server-side programming with Express and Node. For me, the icing on the cake was learning React, which quickly became my preferred language. At each stage, knowledge was consolidated with homework exercises and group projects, the final project pulling together everything we had learned, and working in a small team, to create a real-world application from scratch.

That is not to underestimate that it is really hard work, the pace was often very quick with lots of ground covered quickly in class and many of the class activities and homework sessions were challenging. You have to put the time in outside of class, and I found myself studying and coding at least 20 hours a week at home in addition to the face to face sessions just to keep up, often a lot more to really be on top of things. Having said that, the support from the instructors and from our student support manager was faultless and they were always available for help via Slack, for extra tuition before and after class or just a pep talk when it all felt like too much!

I picked a 6 month Boot Camp over shorter ones as the face to face sessions in the evening and Saturday mornings were more convenient to fit around work and other commitments but looking back, one of the great advantages of the longer Boot Camp was more time to work on the group projects, which for me was really the best part. Initially, I was a bit skeptical that I would finish the Boot Camp with a portfolio of projects good enough to show potential employers, but if you put in the work and embrace teamworking with fellow students, this is both very achievable and rewarding. I also took advantage of and benefitted greatly from the Career Service which led a clear and structured program to re-orient students to the tech space and what they needed to do to be ready to apply for jobs and stand out to employers. 

In summary, the CWRU Coding Boot Camp was a good, well-structured course with instructors and staff who, I felt, were truly invested in student's success. Prospective applicants should be aware though - and I'm sure like all the Boot Camps - that they will need to put in a lot of hard work and many hours outside of the class sessions to really get the most from the course. 

 

To start this review, I first want to say how wonderful the administrators, classmates, and teachers were for the whole experience. Administrator - Kim - was always a quick message away. I felt like there was never a time where she would go longer than 2 hours without responding. She was extremely timely and was able to answer any question I had. She continues to support my learning even after the end of the class. Kim is great!

My teacher, Mike, was easy to understand and would make sure that all of his students were keeping up in class. He was able to walk the fine line of moving quickly and making sure that everyone understands each detail. Additionally, I was able to bounce ideas of Mike for projects outside of class. He was quick to give advice and insight, and has a wide range of knowledge outside of the class material as well. I felt engaged in class.

Despite all of the help from teachers and classmates, I was unable to complete the requirements for graduation in time. Working a full-time job in finance and dealing with the sudden illness of a relative in December was too much for me to finish the material in April. I WOULD NOT recommend this class to someone who is working full-time and has other committments. If you are working full-time expect to stay up late nights and work long hours to complete projects and assignments. If you are at a desk job be careful to avoid carpal tunnel as you can spend more than 11 hours a day on the computer. Overall, the class was extremely interesting and worth my investment, but there are only so many hours in a day. I would recommend this class to anyone interested that would be able to spend AT LEAST 25 hours a week working on class material. This class should be considered a part-time to full-time gig. 

This program has many pros and some cons that go along with it. The biggest benefit you will receive is learning to re-wire your brain to learn to code. This can be the hardest part about coding if you see the foreign languages of different syntax on screen and get frustrated at first. You will learn to break down code and the best ways to best teach yourself to read and write it for any language you are learning in the future.
There is a major con to this course. With how quickly the world of development is evolving, the course curriculum is a step or two behind what the current job market is looking for out of a majority of candidates when it comes to what languages and applications you know. Companies are looking for developers with knowledge in Redux, Python, and C# or Java. These are languages you will not be taught in this course.  However, you will learn quickly as a developer that the moment you quit investing time into growing your knowledge base, the industry will start to slip past at a rapid pace. 
So I want to say, do not believe that once you take this course you will have a golden ticket to endless career possibilities. If anything, this is the first step, and the job-hunt grind that ensues may take some time and a tremendous amount of effort. If you take this course seriously, don't take the shortcuts that appear at times, and put in the extra hours (though they can be demanding), then you will be in a great position for getting your new career path jump-started.
 
The staff for this course is amazing. The instructor and the TA's are available whenever you need them and will walk you through any issues or questions you have, no matter how simple or difficult they may seem. 
Career services is OK. They really want to help you find a career, but its more of them teaching you how to job hunt rather than anything else. The instructor is your best solution for real advice when it comes to the job process as they all live it and currently facilitate it for their company.
Happy Hunting. You cannot go wrong with this course, but remember the golden rule post graduation, ABC (Always Be Coding).

Honestly this was a big waste of time and money. Though a bootcamp, there was never a chance to really go in-depth in certain areas and was never truly a reassurance that students understood the material. Most of my comprehension came from tutoring. The last part of the program happened to be during Covid which kinda made it worst due to the lack of focus. Overall I’m just not happy with my time and experience with the program. I feel there was some many scenarios or real like functionally of web development that could have been explained but weren’t. I just expecting more out of my investment.