Centriq Training

During my time at Centriq, I gained the hands-on experience and additional knowledge I needed to advance my career in Networking & Cyber Security, as well gained knowledge about the Cloud, Active Directory, Linux CLI, (which I have converted to from Windows OS). I am surrounded by amazing and humble people at Centriq who I know will support me in every way. If you’re looking for, or needing a change - step out of the fog and into Centriq’s brilliant ray of sunshine. You won’t regret it! I don't.

When I got out of the military, I was faced with some cold realities: as a submarine torpedoman there are few transferable skills that I could offer to a company, and that of those places my back could not support me working in them.

At a loss for direction, I was informed about Centriq; they offered IT specialist training to even those without any foundational knowledge. I’d always been the one to help with minor issues around the house for my family, and I’m a big gamer, so nervously I contacted them. In just a few days they assisted me with everything I needed to succeed, including the G.I. Bill paperwork.

I showed up to class my first day extremely nervous as I had no foundational knowledge on IT and had not been in a classroom setting since I graduated high school, 8 years earlier. All of that anxiety went straight out of the window after about 2 hours, as I realized I wasn’t alone. 4 other veterans who were dealing with the same discomfort were in the class with me, along with 8 other classmates who also had little to no experience in IT. 

Over the next 3-4 months, we learned the fundamentals of PC and Server hardware, cabling, network construction and management, Cloud management, how to interact with users, answer/solve tickets in ConnectWise, and 4 weeks of Cybersecurity design to help you pass the Sec+.

The instructors were top of the line. All of them were willing to field any and every question I had, no matter how basic or complex. They really made me feel that my education was priority 1, and would offer end explanation, examples and analogies until I truly grasped the information. I truly consider all of them friends and mentors.

In your first few weeks, their excellent staff will assist with resume and cover letter writing/building, and in the security weeks they’ll help with interview skills, applications, networking with their own connections and they even invite companies in to interview students for open positions. Additionally, the rest of the staff helped to make Centriq a place that I wanted to be. They made each day a great day.

I would absolutely recommend Centriq to anyone. I can’t speak highly enough of Centriq and my experience there. 

When I signed up for Centriq Training in 2009, I was 23, had dropped out of JCCC because I simply had no clue what I wanted to do with my life, but continuously heard the radio ads that Centriq had playing on the local KC radio stations. I had always shown a huge interest in IT, so I figured I would sign up for their Full Stack Web Developer course, although I don't recall if that's what it was actually called at the time. I realize now that I was young and naïve, and Centriq took full advantage of this. Like others reviews here, the coursework was very much like taking water from a fire hose. You try to retain as much information in as little amount of time as possible. Our capstone project at the end of the course was building our own ASP.NET website showcasing our talents. In today's standards, it was simply a resume website. We also studied for and took one of the MCP exams for Microsoft, although which one escapes me now. The instructors were awesome though, I will give credit for that. Although it may be red flag worthy to mention that many of the instructors were former Centriq graduates themselves, somewhat foreshadowing my experience with attempting to obtain a job in the developer field. Post graduating from Centriq, I did have a couple of interviews for junior developer roles, but they all boiled down to lack of experience, so I never did land a job. Also, my Sallie Mae student loan from Centriq was eventually bought out by Navient, whom I am still paying back for this whole ordeal, 15 years later. 

My advice for anyone considering going to Centriq Training is don't. Save your money. There's a vast amount of resources available online for minimal payment or completely free. From reading others reviews, it appears now there's more than 2 certifications received with your curriculum through Centriq, but don't let that convince you. Especially if you're entering programming or cloud computing as a potential career. Certifications were helpful 5-10 years ago, but the tech landscape has changed since then. Everyone and their mother has some form of a certification, but not everyone has practical hands-on experience. Learn the fundamentals (whether through a course online or through reading a book) then start building and applying it. Your wallet and whoever was willing to cosign on your student loan will thank you.

I did Centriq back in 2016/2017. I was a young, optimistic 18 year old. I had already had about a year and a half of IT experience in the field, so I was already proficient in my work/field. I went to Centriq to have help with testing and for education on my resume. It's a great place with great staff, but the information they give you is as I would say..... like a fire hydrant. You just put your mouth up to it and try to swallow as much water as possible. The online resources they give you to work on your ceritifications are just a joke, they steal all their content from other practice tests / websites you can access for about $20 or even for FREE. I thought I was lucky to get Canvas rights back again to study again and I've had nothing but headaches from Dayna. I told her I wasn't doing as well as I had hoped on my studying and she just cancels my rights. SO NOW I can't access any of the resources I put over 20 THOUSAND DOLLARS into. Now, onto the stuff that hasn't pushed me to write such a negative review. Centriq helped me with my resume, but what I or my classmates didn't know at the time was that this resume was full of false information that we never learned in the program. I talked to my supervisors at my job now and they've interviewed centriq grads and were usually disappointed because they view this stacked resume of things you learn at centriq, but once they ask what the words on the page meant. The interviewees would go silent and not even be able to answer something on their own resume. It's throws out your credibility on saying you know what you know, or you even are who you say you are. Overall, if you want to get into computers. Just professor messer in your free time and save the headache / pain in the ass Centriq is. Lastly, the instructors are cool... i'm sad they have to deal with such shit resources and have their conscience know they are teaching with terrible resouces

I enrolled in Centriq's Systems & Security Administrator Program in 2016, now know as the Cloud & Security Specialist Program, and it was the best decision I could have made. The instructors were great, you could tell that they really cared about the students and their success. The curriculum has changed since 2016, as one would hope in the technology world, but at the time it was all relevant and applicable to the jobs available in the market. And the student success team was a fantastic resource when it came to securing interviews and providing job listings they felt would be right for me and my specific skill set and interests. I know the cost may seem high, but you get what you put in as a student and Centriq lived up to their promises. I had a job within a month of graduating and have since built a successful 7 year career in the IT field thanks to the experience I had at Centriq.

Centriq Training literally changed my life. Sure, it's an investment, and yes, you are expected to learn a lot in a short amount of time. The coursework can be tough. But the instructors and administration, in my experience, really do care and want to help you succeed. If you apply yourself, and know when to ask for help, you will get through it, and come out the other end with marketable skills and knowledge that will give you the kind of job security and earning power that you may not have had access to before. 

Early in 2023, I started Centriq's updated cybersecurity course with no coding experience except a few YouTube vids and too much gaming. Though the cost gave me pause, the end results were well worth it. The staff created a positive learning environment, and despite the intensity, I gained a solid grasp of cybersecurity and cloud solutions.
Centriq not only polished my resume but equipped me with practical soft and hard skills I've struggled with in the past as an introverted gamer. I landed an entry level data engineer role at Datadog that couldn't be a better fit.
While the price was steep, the return on investment is undeniable along with the accountability help from instructors. For anyone serious about entering cybersecurity this new year, Centriq offers a transformative experience beyond textbooks and . I'm grateful for the dedicated instructors who made it possible. I 100% recommend Centriq for anyone looking to land a job in tech fwiw. 

Most of the instructors were knowledgeable and helpful. The cost is high at $22K. There is a lot of information to learn. Unless you work part time or are unemployed, it is hard to grasp and retain concepts and work on homework projects--keeping up is difficult for those who work and have a family. You will be exposed to C#, HTML, CSS, some JavaScript and jQuery, ASP.NET, web forms, and SQL. There is a final project that all students do and then the project is presented to students, teachers, and potential employers. All students do the same final project. If you want to set yourself apart from the others, try creating some projects on your own, separate from the ones the school gives you to do. If you have prior experience in programming, bootcamp should be easier. For those with no experence, I do not recommend this as a way to learn about programming, or at least spend some time on free courses like Codecademy to see if this is something you want to do and invest time and money to learn. You get a certificate from the bootcamp school, but I'm not sure if employers put much stock in a certificate. If you can show an employer that you know what you are doing and do not need handholding as an entry level developer, that will help set you apart. Make sure you ask a lot of questions like how many students get jobs, how long did they stay in their first job, what is the average salary offered to your students, did you follow-up with employers to see if they were please with the level of knowledge your students got from the program, do employers value a certificate from your school (is it worth something because of the knowledge you gained by going to their school). Check to see if there are complaints about the school. You may want to check with employers in your area to see if they have heard of the school, if they have hired any of the school's graduates, are they please with their knowledge and performance, would they hire more graduates, etc. If I had to do it over again, I would have saved my money and spent some time learning on my own. Once I hit a wall, I would have put the time to get a degree in the field. There is no substitute for time and experience and 4-6 months of boot camp schooling will not give you the depth of knowledge, unless you have prior experience with programming and want to add to your current knowledge base.

I went through the Full-Stack Developer training in Spring of 2015. I was young, just dropped out of a four-year university where I found that the traditional learning style was not for me. Centriq offered me a fast-paced, immersive, and fun atmosphere where I learned the fundamentals of all facets of application development (hence, “full stack”). It is like drinking out of a fire hose at times, but that manifested itself for me, as a challenge. Throughout my training I was offered a high-level of career assistance well beyond what I received at my tradition four-year university. Since graduating (actually 2 weeks before I had even finished the program) I have had a steady, fulfilling career first as a MSSQL Developer, then a BI Developer, and eventually a higher level analyst. I shutter to think what life would be like if I had never accepted the challenge of attending Centriq, and to this day I refer friends and colleagues to the program when they show interest in Information Technology.

Overall my experience with Centriq is positive. I took the Cloud and Security course, so I can not speak for the other courses that are offered. Ill describe my overall experience then have some bullet points below for pros and cons. I started my course earlier this year after dropping out of college, thinking that this will be a better option than 3 more years of college. Throughout the course, you are given an insane amount of information, and it comes at you fast. Taking notes, asking questions, and doing as much work as you can is the most important thing that you can do. Being in person in class every single day is a must, missing a day can put you so far back. The instructors are all amazing, want to be there and to help you, honestly best part of the course. Some of the content has been meh, but overall for what it is and what is says to be, it is spot on in my opinion. If you are going into this thinking that after 4 months you are going to be able to land a $80K+ year job, you are going to fail. The first job you get after Centriq will more than likely be Help Desk, which they do prepare you for when you are learning. I think this is a smart move, as this will get you a lot of experience in the real world, that school simply can not give you. The two certifications that they offered was the MS900 and CompTIA Sec+. I am still studying for these on my off time, but you can 100% get the MS900 done while you are in school. The Sec+ you will not, as the classes for that are the last weeks of the course. While there is not job placement, they do have great career services, sending out your resume, and sending you job listings as well. I was able to find a job a couple weeks after school ended, and I am sure if personal life stuff did not happen, I could have lined a job up for the week after classes were done. I worked a part time job during classes as well, and there are break weeks that if you need to study/pick up extra shifts, there is that option. We did go on a tour of a company, and during the tour the guide went off on a rant about how you should only use your break weeks to study and nothing else. It felt super tone death to me, as I had to pick up extra shifts the entire week just to afford to do the drive back and forth to the city to do this course. I choose not to work there. I will have another comment about them in the cons. 

Now for the pros. 

• Amazing staff, wanting to help and teach you anything you want to know. 
• Lots of information, in the form of notes, assignments, instructors, different certs or training websites. 
• Professional Development, if you have not worked in a customer service environment, this is a plus for you. Just good knowledge on how to work with customers or in a professional development. 
• It is only 4 months long. Compared to a 4 year degree, I think this is the better option if you want to start working and building experience, as everyone starts at the same position. For my current job, the coworker I have been training with has a 4 year degree, and we are starting at the same position for the same pay. A degree does not mean anything, except for some picky jobs. 
• My class, this one is up in the air, as this will change for every course, but my class was fantastic. Everyone who goes here is looking for something, and that is a career in IT. We all were able to build each other up, and were there for when we needed each other. Personally better than the college experience, where it felt like no one wanted to be there. 
• Know nothing about a computer and want to learn? This is built for you. The first few weeks are very slowly building up very base knowledge, however if you really don't know computers, you HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION. 

And of course, the cons. 

• Burn out is real, you will get burn out. You have to prepare for that. 
• We went on a tour of a company, and during the question part of it, the tour guide was somewhat rude, and gave an insulting low starting pay, $16 an hour. Whatever you do, do not work for a company that pays that low after going to school. Do not. This tour really ruined my mental image of what I was doing, but when I started to apply for jobs, I realized this was a one off thing, but it was still negative. 
• Professional Development. Yeah this is also a con, as someone who has worked in a customer service environment, this was always a drag in the morning to do, because it was just common knowledge. From what I heard, they are reworking the Professional development, so this might be better now, lets hope. 
• The price. I payed 26 thousand dollars for this. Comparing this to the degree I would have gotten from college, this is significantly cheaper, and only took 4 months. For me, being able to have some knowledge and being able to get out into the work force is more important then taking the extra couple years to finish my degree, you may agree, and I get that.  
• Starting out jobs after you finish. IT Help Desk is not the best job in the world, and that is where 90% of people are going to start their IT careers at. You cant expect to get the high paying senior level job after only 4 months of school, you can go to college for 4 years and end up at the same spot. 
• This is an ENTRY level course, so the first few weeks will be a snore fest for people who know more than a base level knowledge of tech and how it works. I have personal experience with computers, building them, ect, so going over was RAM and a CPU was, was incredibly boring, but it does pick up. 

Hello,

They will except all MONEY, VA, GI, sing you name to a loan application! Centriq Training is just a test prep building, Resume builders of lies, and money hungry vultures! Veterans and NON-Veterans stay away and go to community college to start, earning an Associates Degree an then Bachelors! The cost of Centrig for one course can pay for 2 years a Community College and just 3,000 short of a year at Park University (Big difference between Park and a testing facility). Furthermore, multiple companies will NOT hire you without an actual College Degree, they DO NOT recognize Certificates as an Education!

I attended the fullstack web developer track at Centriq Training. My experience there honestly changed my life. From day one of the track, you are learning. It is a fast paced, full immersion experience. However, if you are willing to invest the time and effort, you will be successful. The instructors are amazing. They were all really invested in the success of their students. You are able to schedule individual mentoring sessions with instructors if there is a concept that you are struggling with. Also, pretty much all of them were around both before and after class to answer any questions students had. Throughout the track, they provide career preparation training which if you follow through with helps you stand out as a job candidate. They also have many local companies that hire (almost) exclusively from their track and reach out to them with new job opportunities which Centriq pushes out to current students. They also have continued career support after graduation. When companies reach out with jobs that require more experience, Centriq pushes those opportunities out to their alumni. Overall, I can't recommend this program enough. I had multiple job offers within weeks of graduating and continually increased my salary over the course a few years.